As the boat was not provisioned for the time it would take to explore all the openings we had discovered, and as the capabilities of Port Darwin were sufficiently great to require the presence of the ship, I determined on returning immediately to Shoal Bay. VISIT FROM THE NATIVES. During the time we were absent, some of our people who had been on shore, received a visit from a party of natives, who evinced the most friendly disposition. This verifies what I have before observed, as to the remarkable differences of character that exist between many Australian tribes, though living in the immediate neighbourhood of each other; for, it will be remembered, that at no great distance we had experienced a very different reception. Those people amounted in number, with their families, to twenty-seven, and came down to our party without any symptoms of hesitation. Both men and women were finer than those we had seen in Adam Bay. The tallest male measured five feet eleven, which is three inches less than a native Flinders measured in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The teeth of these people were ALL PERFECT, an additional proof that the ceremony of knocking them out, like others practised in Australia, is very partially diffused. The rite of circumcision, for instance, is only performed at King's Sound, on the west side of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and near the head of the Australian bight on the south. Mr. Eyre, who discovered the existence of the rite on the last-mentioned part of the continent, infers that the natives of the places I have mentioned must have had some communication with each other through the interior; but it is possible that at a distant period of time, circumcision may have been very generally practised, and that having become gradually disused, the custom is now only preserved at two or three points, widely separated from each other. I do not advance this as a theory, but simply as a suggestion, as there is some difficulty in supposing communication to have taken place across the continent. MIGRATION OF THE NATIVES.