As the subtitle suggests, an account of a missionary's interactions with and observations of the local Aboriginal people in the South-East of South Australia. The largest part of the book is the ‘Memoirs’, accounts of the Smiths’ attempts to “Christianise and Civilise” but it also includes some information about moieties, customs and legends. There is also a vocabulary of the Booandik language at the end of the book.

A sad picture emerges of the decline of a rich culture in a single generation, glimpsed through the gaps in this narrative.