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Title: Impressions of Australia Felix during four years' residence in that colony Notes of a voyage round the world Australian poems, etc. / by Richard Howitt.

Author: Howitt, Richard, 1799-1869.

Published: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, London, 1845

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IMPRESSIONS

OF AUSTRALIA FELIX.

"Here you have Port Phillip depicted by a hand on which you may thoroughly depend. My brother, from whose letters these are extracts, is a man well known in the literary world; and is, moreover, well known to a considerable circle as a man who is independent in mind and character, has no party feeling, and never joined himself to any political party, but at the same time would stand by the truth to the death."—Author of the Rural Life of England, in Tait's Magazine.

"A writer of true poetical feeling, and considerable poetical power."— Blackwood's Magazine.

"He has a fine taste for Nature in all her simplicity; a keen perception of the beauties of the natural world. He writes affectionately, and unaffectedly. We recommend his book to the million of readers who study nature in books, if not in the fields. He is healthfully English in his compositions."—Athenœum.

"Full of genuine pictures of Nature, animate and inanimate."—Leigh Hunt.

DANCE OF THE PORT PHILLIP NATIVES.

IMPRESSIONS

OF

AUSTRALIA FELIX,

DURING

FOUR YEARS' RESIDENCE IN THAT COLONY;

Notes of a Voyage Round the World;

AUSTRALIAN POEMS, &c.

BY RICHARD HOWITT.

"I don't know any pleasure equal to that of ranging at liberty, with no care upon the mind, river, and wood, and coast, in new countries. We enjoyed ourselves up to the very height of earthly delectation, you may be sure, especially after eighteen weeks' sea imprisonment. Then almost everything we heard or saw were new. The trees, the shrubs, the flowers, the birds all new—and although there is in all situations something to be endured as well as enjoyed, I would not willingly leave the past undone as it regards these countries. There is something for the memory worth retaining."

AUSTRALIAN LETTER.

LONDON:

LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS.

1845.

LONDON:

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEPRIARS.

Epistle Dedicatory TO GODFREY HOWITT, M.D., FELLOW OF THE BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH.

DEAR BROTHER,

On the same couch in infancy did we, the youngest of six brothers, sink to rest; in the same quiet old-fashioned English village were spent together our happy schoolboy days; and in our father's fields, than which none are more delightful, did Nature first surprise me into poetry, whilst you she fascinated with her insects and her flowers.

Together did we cross the immense ocean which now separates us; looking at the same time on the almost entirely new nature of Australia, amongst the wonders of which you still reside. To no one, then, could this volume be more appropriately dedicated.

Great was the change from the old land to the new for both of us; to me greatest. Society such as you had resigned received you—the refined, the intelligent. Books, intellectual converse, these, with my customary dress, were relinquished for the homeliest garb, to perform the humblest duties, and to contend with the commonest cares; adapting myself austerely to one undivided purpose. To you it is known how to my new vocation was devoted my whole heart, and with what results. The Port Phillip past is a painful reality, and the future as painful an uncertainty. With new means, new opportunities in a newland, or where there ought to he such, it yet depends on our British Government, on the British heart, on its nobility and generosity, if not its justice, whether you, and, alas! how many others, have only exchanged one country for another; substantial good and imaginary evil, for real evil and imaginary good; on these it depends whether or not you are to look as in the old land on the future with all the anxieties of a parent. I trust it may prove otherwise.

One poem in this volume will remind you of the pale high forehead, thoughtful countenance, dark eyes, and dark and curled hair of one, by whom on shipboard it was recited with no common zost. For him, with deliverance and rest, the angel of death waved his wings over your threshold, as once before, to remind us that,—

Beside the eternal ocean we are dreamers;
We hear the billows whispering evermore;
We see fair barks with their departing streamers,
And lonely left, pace sadly on the shore.

With ardent solicitude for the prosperity of Australia Felix, notwithstanding what those who think falsehood can serve any cause or country may deem otherwise; and with the most anxious aspirations for your well-being, and not for yours only but theirs who make for you home, brightening it with many forms of happiness, I present to you this volume.

Your affectionate Brother,

R. H.

Nottingham, Feb. 20, 1845.

PREFACE.

WE promise to ourselves many pleasant and profitable adventures in the world, which turn out in the acting, not so very advantageous, or felicitous. The Wimmera and Yarraine in Sir Thomas Mitchell's Australian Expeditions, were fine rivers flowing through a rich countiy: and in our day-dreams, four of us were to purchase on one of those streams a square mile of land each. We should have, we decided, as much back-run for cattle and sheep as we desired. Two of us were to be located on each side. Bridges we were to construct, houses to build, and roads to make, associated with a world of strength in such union, in the most congenial fellowship. We touched the land, and these air-castles vanished. Land so far up the country was not surveyed: and special surveys there were none until afterwards, as there are none now. The spell which had bound us together was broken: we were scattered to the four winds of heaven: some to different lands. Change fell upon us; dispersion, darkness, and in some instances, death.

What a lesson it would be, how fraught with entertainment aud instruction, could we, without violating the confidence and courtesies of private life, reveal to the reader, the whole eventful history, the disquietudes, the vexations, the losses and disappointments of a ship's cargo of emigrants: in fact, the fortunes of all those who went with us in search of the golden fleece!

Britain has dependencies, children more than twelve thousand miles off, for whom the home-kindness sends out occasional suits of comfortable clothing: yet which unfortunately, constructed without accurate knowledge of the size of the persons, do not fit. Then only think of the uncomfortableness and destitution endured whilst vast voyages are performing to and fro: that often twelve months must elapse before any inaccuracy can be rectified; and of the consequent colds, fevers, ague-fits and convulsions which take place. Such is the situation of our Australian dependencies. The Special Survey System constructed for Port Phillip, and the Uniform Price System, were suits which did not fit, and were ordered to be hung on a peg—or laid aside in the colonial government wardrobe.

The Convict Assignment System did not fit: the Probation suit was to supersede it, but it did not fit; and once more the Convict Assignment System, turned, altered, and newly trimmed, is worn, restlessly and with abundant anathemas, by Van Diemen.

Adelaide, Britain's fair Australian daughter, had a fever—and the cure cost us 150,000l.

Other and as deadly injuries have been inflicted on Australia, by Whited Sepulchre Emigration Books. I allude to such as the "Twenty Years' Experience of Australia:" "Australia Felix" by a former editor of the Port Phillip Gazette, and numberless others. In many instances these cheap delusions—some of them to be had for sixpence—have cost the purchasers 20,000l. How many people, alas, totally unfit for the task which they undertook! have returned, ruined by such delusions, and have spread widely through society a false idea of the land; whilst many others, unable to return at all, have in their letters done it a like injustice.

But as it regards my own book—

Walter Savage Landor has said, that "labour brutifies and it may follow, if I have not laboured excessively, that the weight of the axe and the plough have possibly imparted a little of their heaviness to my pen. The holiday-writer, more of a looker-on than a worker, has here the advantage of me. I know it is not well to remain too long on the outskirts of civilisation, in the valleys and on the-plains. That there is a purer atmosphere on the higher grounds: in the bracing air more amplitude of intelligence: a more energetic character of healthfulness for body and mind. Nevertheless the age is an active one, is a worker, and may sympathise with me. Had I been more of an artificial being, more social than solitary, the reader had found in this book more of hostelries and coteries, but less of that out-of-door companionship of nature which moulded my tastes at home, and has attended me abroad. In this there may most probably have been both loss and gain.

Moreover, truth is unaccommodating—a stately walker on highways—not permitting any of that wandering in by-paths— none of that erratic divergence so natural to travellers, and so especially refreshing to poets, ever ready to luxuriate themselves in open spaces, and green fields:

"in fresh fields and pastures new."

Fiction, like the pope, is more liberal of her indulgences: any exaggeration is by her permitted for effect. Hers is the whole wealth of light and shade—the fine free hand, and the masterly touch. The hard outline softens before her; the formal relaxes; and over the most disagreeable objects hangs her veil, how gracefully! Her satire, and sprightly sallies of malice, are irresistible. Alas for truth, the awful—the reverence-exacting— and for me.

In conclusion, I must present my thankful acknowledgments to G. A. Gilbert, Esq., of Melbourne, for the original picture of the Dance of the Port Phillip Natives, whence the lithograph at the commencement of this volume is taken.

Nottingham,

February 21, 1845.

CONTENTS.

IMPRESSIONS OF AUSTRALIA FELIX. JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO VAN DIEMEN'S LAND AND AUSTRALIA FELIX.

"ARE we, too, amongst the Arcadians?" Sigh we to keep sheep in the beautiful wilds of Australia Felix?

"By sweet rivers, to whose falls
Sooty girls sing madrigals?"

Is it not enough that two brothers have already traversed the vast wilds, the savannas, the prairies, and forests of North America; that one of them yet feels in his constitution the effects, after twenty years, of privations and fatigues then and there endured; and that the other, smitten with brain fever, moulders in an alien grave in New York? Are the wishes, the prayers, the anxieties of our parents in their extreme age nothing? No; all is in vain; some fatality, like that which impelled Robinson Crusoe to go to sea, in spite of entreaties, forebodings, and presentiments of disaster, urges us to this voyage. Undeluded by the scene-painting in emigration-books, unfascinated by the felicitous name of Australia, the beautiful and happy! my brother, the physician, his brothers-in-law, J. and R. B., and myself, have decided on emigrating to Port Phillip in Australia Felix.

What we promise to ourselves is briefly this: the Doctor is anxious for a more salubrious climate to improve the general health of his family, hut more especially, if possible, to save the life of his eldest boy, to whom one more English winter would be certain death. As a naturalist, also, he has dreams and expectations. He expects, moreover, to better his condition, rationally I hope, in this world's wealth. The last consideration is, I believe, the sole inducement his brothers-in-law have in quitting their native country. Mine, with none to care for, and uncared for, neither doing myself much good or harm in England, in a worldly point of view; I who,

"both man and boy
Have been a dreamer in the land;
Contented if I might enjoy
The things which others understand:"

I expect to slip the time not unpleasantly, to see and hear something new, to somewhat expand my mind, and to enrich it with novel imagery.

Never had any one more boldly developed, say the phrenologists, the organ of locality; something then must be endured in quitting England—the home of our heart, the fountain of our intellect, the source and foundation of our moral being.

The separation is past. We have seen London, "that mighty heart," probably for the last time, as it was the first. London— the one city of the universe—the home both of the living and the dead—of sages, poets, and statesmen—peopled as it was by the past and the present—haunted by the immortality of Milton and Shakspeare—by all that is greatest in thought or act—everything sublimest and most majestic of the ancient world seemed there concentrated and perpetuated.—A Chatham, a Nelson, a Burke, and a Goldsmith—these names, and how many others? have consecrated it. A noble and a famous city it appeared to them —they were proud of it; yet they, little as they seemed in their own estimation, how have they shed a golden splendour upon it! Pacing its streets, the common pageantry of wealth and fashion were its dull realities; to me more real was its world of heart and intellect—the unseen, yet ever present. Thus, in the one city, I seemed overpowered, so full was it of old and living memories. Pome, Athens, and Jerusalem—these were no longer in ruins—here they and their races had more powerfully and beautifully sprung up; London, to me, was a city made out of many cities; and its soul—the Divine human spirit—had there invested itself with the light and grandeur of all earth's greatest in all ages and nations. No wonder that Rome, Greece, and the Holy City itself, and their visitation, seemed now a diminutive ambition. I saw London with exultation, and passed away from it with pain.

Here let me warn persons of sanguine temperament, who are at all made of excitable stuff, not to wander much about, seeking out the most delicious spots in their native land, if they are about to emigrate, especially in spring and autumn; at which times England is a paradise; but to shut their eyes and ears, and dash right off for the port. Merry England is studded all over with old ruined castles, on breezy eminences; many throned amongst rocks of savage sublimity and amongst hoary woods. It has also rich abbeys and monasteries, splendid in their decay, embosomed deep in green valleys, haunts of delicious quiet and seclusion by lakes and rivers, amidst scenes of the most bewitching beauty. How grand, too, are its venerable cathedrals, minsters, and churches, many of them the most magnificent specimens of architecture in the world! It is sprinkled also with numberless quaint old rural villages and farms; overshadowed by, or sleeping amongst, grave woodlands. Moreover, go where-ever you will, its localities are famous, rich in lingering traditions, imbued perpetually by the spirit of the past; it is full of history and poetry. Forget all these, good emigrant, and make right off for your ship.

We have ourselves endeavoured to do so* And now the pests of emigration:—the leave-taking, the packing up, the nuisance of custom-house and custom-house officers, and the dry-as-dust weariness of dockyards and jetties, the lumber of chests and packages—thanks to patient endurance, is all over.

EMBARKATION AT GRAVESEND.

August 30, 1839.—We have left London for Gravesend by the steamer, 30 miles; and, for us an uncomfortable beginning, it has rained most of the way. We have seen Greenwich Hospital; a place that does honour to our countiy; where, after life-long wear and tear, many a jolly old tar has cast anchor for the last time, and in a good port too. There let them spin long and tough yarns, enjoying themselves to their hearts' content.

We left Gravesend about noon for the ship, lying two miles lower down the Thames. Our company and luggage filled, almost to overflowing, two boats.

August 31.—We left our berths at half-past three o clock, a.m., roused by the tremendous swearing of the surly old pilot, who was on deck urging the seamen on. They were preparing to weigh anchor; all hands up. For the novelty of the thing, I make one of them. I do as the others do, as a learner should, seize a handspike, fix it in the capstan, and work at intervals for more than an hour; clumsy, as a land-lubber is sure to be, but by degrees learn what I am about. The anchor is raised after a great deal of hurry and hubbub. The bluif old pilot all the while stalking about, hoarsely giving directions. When the anchor is raised, part of it slips back. "D—— the fellows!" roars the pilot. "Ye, O!" cry the sailors, heaving at it. All soon right again. Now all the seamen are on the forecastle, tugging, one after another, at the cable, to raise the anchor yet higher up, singing in unison, "Cheerly man, cheerly man, O, ye, O!" A chorus very pleasing to us, who heard it for the first time. Now the anchor was "fished up short."

We have set sail at half-past five. After sailing down to the Nore, the wind blows from the south-west, quite contrary; we are, therefore, compelled to cast anchor again at eight o'clock. We lie at anchor all day, the wind blowing fresh; and towards night very fiercely—quite a gale. Began to feel queer, ate no dinner, and took very little tea. Dizzy rather, but not sea-sick. The ship rolling with a most uneasy motion.

September 1, Sunday.—Some old sportsmen on board have taken out and examined their guns, thinking of to-morrow—now nothing to them; yet they may be thinking of shooting excursions in Van Diemen's Land, or Port Phillip, some six months hence.

The Lady East has passed us this morning, bound for Calcutta. She is either more daring, or better able to rough it than we, for our pilot won't stir a jot.

It is wearisome to be thus weather-bound in the neighbourhood of land. Are the winds unwilling that we should leave our native land? Are they a little like us? It may be so.

It is rather consolatory, after all, that the Lady East has only passed us a short distance before she also is compelled to cast anchor. There she may lie and dream of her destination, the East Indies.

At noon, there was a cry on deck "The British Queen!" Starting up and rushing to the ship's side, there she was going by us with a direct and graceful motion, in despite of wind and tide; proving her pre-eminence over our weather-bound thing. Our ship and its movements, in comparison, seemed to.belong to a long-ago condition of things—to systems and ages outworn. I felt as though I were in some extinguishing comet, that was half slumbering in the ashes of its decay—and here was sprung up a new world. Why, the British Queen will go to America and back before we are at Madeira.*

For a month gone by, the winds
Seemed as they would blow no more;
Now they rush out hurly-burly,
Just to keep us at the Nore.

September 2.—We were awoke at four o'clock, A.M., "all hands aloft;" the wind dying away. Men all busy again weighing anchor, and singing as before, "Cheerly man O! cheerly man, cheerly man O, ye, O!" And now, at seven o'clock, we are cutting away before a brisk wind; the sun glittering on the water very pleasantly.

We cast anchor in the evening between Margate and Ramsgate, in eight fathoms water.

September 3.—Weigh anchor, and make sail at eight, A..M.; wind favourable, S.W. by S. Changed in the afternoon. Beat to windward until four, P.m., then back ship and anchor in the Downs. The day has been deliciously bright and clear; the water heaving and dancing gracefully, and glittering and flashing in the sun.

We saw clearly the coast of France, with its white chalky cliffs, corresponding in appearance with the English shore of North and South Foreland.

There is a fine reach of coast, almost crescent-shaped, from Ramsgate to Dover, with the town of Deal in the centre. The chalky cliffs, and long strip of brown sand below, washed by the sea, looked very beautiful. We sailed past Dover, and repassed it, being compelled to tack about through contrary winds. We had, consequently, a good view of the Castle, the neighbouring country, the cliffs (reminding us of Shakspeare), and of the town itself, snugly embosomed betwixt two lofty headlands of precipitous cliffs. The day was, as I have said, veiy delightful. The fine expanse of variously coloured water, the sprinkling, almost innumerable, of vessels, large and small; the French shore, seen with great interest by us for the first time; foreign ships, French and Dutch, near us fishing; the undulating and rich expanse of English scenery, studded with gentlemen's seats in the distance, with the North and South Foreland light-houses near the shore; these, added to the animation on deck, the grouping, the chattering, and light laughter of the passengers; the singing and bustle of the sailors, from time to time reversing the sails; the cheery breeziness and brightness mingling with eveiything; each and all conspired to make the place and time very inspiriting. Yet, after all, we are in the evening only advanced thirty miles on our voyage, returning, as I said before, to cast anchor in the Downs.

This day at noon the pilot left us. For two days past, four stout young fellows with a boat had heen lingering about; sometimes near, and sometimes on deck, in the hope of conveying him ashore; so that, when the persons officially appointed arrived with another boat, loud were the threats, fierce the menaces, and desperate the contention for the honourable, or rather the lucrative office; nor was it terminated until they had spent considerable time chasing, intercepting, and sailing along-side each other, putting each other back with their oars, grappling each other's boats; with uplifted oars and fists putting each other's skulls in jeopardy. We long expected the boats would be upset, whence drowning might ensue, if they did not in their frenzy kill each other before. After we had been kept long in painful excitement, the pilot selecting his boat, they went off in dangerous companionship; both rowing strenuously together; both raising sail together. When far off, we heard plainly their loud vociferations; and the rough-voiced old pilot louder still, trying to quell the storm with oaths. I think he could seldom have been out in rougher weather. Such scenes mav occur often—to us, however, it was new.

September 4.—Wind contrary all day: and we are in the same position.

September 5.—The day beautiful. The sea, and vicinity of Deal tempting; consequently a party of us go ashore. Range about the coast, buy a few things in the town for the voyage: dine: some of the party get drunk; and to complete their folly, make the watermen, who have to take us back to the ship, drunk also. The wind freshens, the tide is coming up; rolling in long ridges up the sandy shore. We attempt to put off, get the boat filled again and again with sand and water; but finally succeed in leaving the shore with the loss only of many things which had been purchased to make the voyage more endurable. So much for our thoughtless party and drunken watermen.

September 6.—Another beautiful day: another day of wearisome anchorage in the same position. Some of the passengers amuse themselves with shooting at a mark; others are fishing; and others gone ashore. If time hangs heavily upon them now, they must summon up no ordinary fortitude for the voyage that is before them. We have this day been a week on board. The name of our captain is Peter Kay, our chief-mate Mr. M'Donald, our second-mate Mr. Gibson. There is one of the crew I feel much interested in, a fine sailor-boy, a farmer's son, the ship-apprentice. He is the very beau-ideal of the ship-boy. He has good features, and a fine intelligent countenance. He has been well educated too; is full of hope, and expects some day to be a captain. If, as Milton says, "The child shows the man, as morning shows the day," he will be one, and will then think himself the greatest man in the world, except the captain his master.

Amuse myself the rest of the day with writing verses, amongst them these

STANZAS.

The noble isle before us,
The land we soon must leave,
Our fathers from their sires received,
And hoped we should receive.

In many a pleasant hamlet
They wore their lives away,
Calm men and sage, from youth to age,
And there their bones decay.

Beyond their native homesteads
Their thoughts would seldom range:
The seasons in their fleetness
Seemed all they knew of change.

Weekly their old bells chiming,
'Midst Sabbath sunshine blest,
The living led amongst the dead,
Where now their ashes rest.

Sweet homes of endless quiet,
Those churchyards hoary grey!
Where slumber lies in deepest grass,
And shadows rest alway.

Our fathers' toils are ended,—
Alas! their children roam,
O'er land and main, a pilgrim train
To seek an alien home.

In many a lonely region
The dwelling sad to raise;
Or in the den of savage men
To wear out woful days.

Few—few into their native land,
Returning, shall be blest:
Shall find the true, the fond and few,
And with their fathers rest.

September 7.—In the evening the wind has freshened, and at nine o'clock blows a gale: obliged to cast out another anchor.

September 8.—The second Sunday on board. The breeze pleasant: the day bright: still adverse winds. These are entirely owing—credit it, considerate reader!—to a very simple circumstance: one of the passengers has thrown overboard a black kitten, and the sailors are full of consternation about it. Everything that happens out of course is referred to it. The winds have been contrary ever since: they were before, but that is not thought of. The last anchor was broken; this, too, is a portion of our black-cat-drowning calamity. Seamen are, I find, very superstitious. On the base of the fore-mast a horse-shoe is nailed to keep off witches.

September 9.—A day like the last: winds still adverse. Overheard the sailors talking and swearing about the black kitten. They were busy prophesying fresh calamities.

September 10.—The sea very calm; and all the seamen busy weighing anchor, and making sail. No music now in "Cheerly man O!" most heartily sick of it. How soon we have grown out of our sea-childhood! Wind scarcely a breath. We just perceive the ship move. Doctor Johnson, didst thou not say that if thou must go to prison, it should be to Newgate, and not to sea? O, learned Doctor, you had been on ship-board, and thus evinced your wisdom by such preference! The day very clear and warm. The wind gradually getting up. We again pass Dover, with its fine cliffs—celebrated in song by poets, and one sweet poetess, Mrs. Hemans.

We see in passing some small villages on the Kentish coast. Nothing we see but is English, and that makes lis feel that we are Englishmen. Wind yet contrary; and to have come twenty miles has cost some trouble; yet here we are betwixt Dover and Dungeness. This is the first night that we have not come to anchor. The wind being more favourable we sail all night, and leave Dungeness far behind. The sun went brightly down, leaving a beautiful sky. Behind us the long range of chalky cliffs towards Dover was veiled half way down with fleecy mists, such as are seen frequently in Cumberland and Westmorland. As the night set in a thick fog enveloped us, so that the misthorn had to be blown every ten minutes on the forecastle, to warn other ships of our whereabout, to prevent us running foul upon each other.

September 11.—The wind more favourable, but faint: the sea yet very misty. The Branken Moor, outward-bound like us, —and for the same portion of the globe, to Adelaide and Port Phillip—is just a-head. We crowd more sail, and come up with her. We sail cheerily in company nearly an hour. The two vessels draw near and nearer to each other; we are next-door neighbours, and converse in a neighbourly manner. All of us are visible: eighty souls in the Branken Moor, passengers; outnumber forty-eight.

The people exchange news, &c., until the ships get too near for each other's safety: getting entangled in each other's rigging. After some stir, the vessels are separated.

During this meeting of friendly ships, as if to celebrate it, a little bird sang sweetly aloft, first on the shrouds of our ship, then on the other.

TO A SINGING-BIRD ON SHIPBOARD, NEAR SHORE.

Thou happy bird, from ship to ship
Flit lightly, blithely sing!
As when amid thy native woods
In soul-expanding Spring.

For many a year, the voice I hear
Has cheered my native dell;
The thymy heath, the wolds beneath,
The brook and mossy well.

Thy happy strain is of a time
When life had endless scope,
For breezy joy without annoy,
For fancy and for hope.

A song of woodland seasons, passed
By lakes and rivers clear;
Of days I spent by Mole and Trent
With friends and kindred dear.

Friends true of heart, the large of soul,
Whose thoughts in living flow
Shed Eden grace o'er many a place.
Both late and long ago.

O, silly bird! and canst thou come
With us to sail the sea?
Ambitious bird! be thy own land
Sufficient still for thee.

Try not the untried, seek not the unknown;
'Midst thy old friends be gay;
Sing but one sad and farewell song,
Then landward wing thy way.

Care never dwelt within a breast
Whence such blithe ditties flow;
Nor wandering pain, by land and main,
That man is doomed to know.

The land we love all lands ahove,
And friends, do we resign;
Not freely—nature is thy friend—
Hope, freedom, space are thine!

But thou, sweet bird! hast nought to shun;
Thy soul has felt no blight:
Well hast thou sung thy parting strain,—
Now landward take thy flight.

For us—of every storm the sport,
Impelled by wind and wave—
On hasten we, far lands to see,
Or find an ocean-grave.

The weather has been so hazy that we have not seen land at all to-day. The mist-horn is every now and then blown, at noon, on the forecastle. The captain thinks it likely that we shall not see land again.

September 12.—All night and all day the vessel has been sailing with unfavourable winds, and against the tide; losing by one tide what it gained by the other. We were off Beechy Head yesterday, and are so to-day; with only this difference—the mist is gone, and once more we gaze upon dear Old England. A coast of chalky cliffs and bare dark moorlands, unenlivened, as far as we can trace, by any villages. In the evening we had a near and distinct view of Brighton, of George-the-Fourth Brighton, of Pavilion notoriety.

September 13.—We have this morning seen afar-off the Isle of Wight, high and bold. The night has been extremely rough, as I augured from the wild dark massiveness of the clouds—dark foreground with orange and crimson gleaming through—a strong contrast of dark and bright, such as Martin would like to see, and would imagine without seeing. A pilot-boat has been out to us from Portsmouth to learn our destination. Several of our passengers sick again to-day through the turbulence of the weather. We have here witnessed many laughable scenes, owing to the vessel's being all on one side, and everybody stag gering and holding themselves by anything or anybody that comes in their way. Everything in motion; tins jingling, the dishes and meat topsy-turvy on the floor. We have to hold our plates that our dinners may not run away from us.

September 14.—Well had it been for us had we gone in with the pilot yesterday. Towards night the wind increased, and at midnight the sea was stormy. Add to this we were in danger of losing the ship and our lives. Another barque, seen long enough by a light she displayed, before we met, came in dreadful collision with ours. Hitherto, when the sea has been rough I have lain down to rest in my berth without the least dread of danger, but on this occasion a foreboding of some coming catastrophe kept me from undressing and awake. Others in the ship had the same feeling, and after retiring to bed got up again. They had also an impression as I had, that we were aground. This sensation however was owing to the motion of the sea. About two o'clock the vessels struck each other, front to front. As it happened, fortunately, the captain, the other officers, the sailors, and some of the passengers were up; occupied at the time taking in the sails, the wind being very rough, and the ship lying very much on one side. When the barques met, tremendous was the crash, stunning the shock, and it seemed miraculous that both did not immediately go down. It is impossible to describe the consternation and alarm of all on board. The rushing out of people fore and aft, like city-people brought out by an earthquake: the bawling, hoarsely heard in the storm and darkness of midnight, of the captain and the crew: the hurry to and fro of lights, borne by people half-naked, brought out by the, to them, unaccountable concussion: the double darkness of the night, and of their rigging lying upon ours: the efforts on our part to clear ours from theirs: the uproar of voices partly drowned in the roar and dash of the sea: the wild wailing of the wind: the rush of axes cutting away ropes and spars: with the recoil and thunder as the ships alongside were dashed against each other by the waves: of these things no idea can be conveyed. And when we had got clear, we were sure to anticipate the worst: in fact, all expected the ship was injured irremediably, and that it and all were lost. This impression was evident on all countenances.

Quick and eager was the look-out for planks and spars to save ourselves upon. Some got into the boat outside the poop, but abandoned it just in time to save their lives, it being immediately swept away by the other vessel.

The bowsprit, the cat-head, and cut-water, were also swept away clear. The captain with great presence of mind called all hands to their duty: and "to the pumps" was the cry. But here, as it generally happens, something was out of the way in the confusion; something was also out of order and unusable, so that much time was lost before they were in active use.

Being ready dressed I was on the poop early, indeed before the vessels struck, and thence witnessed the whole of the fearful scene—one that I shall never forget, and hope never more to witness.

At length it was ascertained that the portion of the ship under water had suffered little injury; and our captain with great skill and promptness got the vessel into something like order; and all waited anxiously watching for day. What a host of things had gone overboard to lighten our heavily-laden ship, yet what confusion, and lumber, and ruin, and nakedness did the welcome daylight reveal! Soon after dawn a flag was displayed for a pilot: and one at length coming, we entered Portsmouth about 10 o'clock in a most forlorn condition.

September 15.—What a contrast with a night of horrors! how fresh and clear the breezy morning, with the Isle of Wight in full and fair prospect: and then tranquilly havened in the harbour of Portsmouth. Mr. Smith, commander of the Branken Moor, who had sheltered here from the tempestuous sea, has been on board, and says we have indeed had a most providential escape, being as we were on a leeward shore; total wrecks being in such circumstances so common.

Our fair enemy, or rather fellow-suiferer, is the Sophia, bound from London for Sydney; carrying, like us, Australian emigrants. We knew it was a lady, for the ship's figure-head, a wooden beauty, profuse of clumsy and square ringlets, was left on our forecastle, as was also a part of her bowsprit.

Poor Sophia! I heard her main and mizen masts fall into her, just when the last ropes were cut which tied us together in unholy communion, with a dreadful crash. She was a powerless wreck, her hull floating about at the mercy of the waves, until found by an Irish steamer the next day and towed into London.

September 16.—Traverse Portsmouth; much delighted with it. See an old building in Portsea with a gilt bust of King Charles I., and a tablet under it inscribed, "After travelling through all France and Spain, and enduring many dangers both by sea and land, he first landed at this port in Oct. 1623." This was after his romantic love expedition to the courts of France and Spain, attended by Buckingham. The perils how very light, compared with what they were fated afterwards to endure! Buckingham was assassinated in the High Street of this very town; and Charles, after contending against the adverse flood of many disastrous years, lost his head for—if they were such—his political crimes.

September 17.—Reflecting on the manly conduct of our captain, I composed the following

STANZAS.

I.

With a brave captain did we take
Our voyage towards the ocean-tide,
Content with him slow way to make,
With adverse winds, through waters wide:
Confiding in his skill as one
Who knew what best to seek, or shun.

II.

We stood by him in danger's hour,
With death's dark shadow o'er us cast:
And heard him cry with conscious power,
That he would stand by helm and mast:
Unfaltering on destruction's brink—
And sail with her or with her sink.

III.

By his firm courage succoured thus,
We toiled our doubtful lives to save:
We stood by him, who stood by us,
And God our lives unto us gave:
Assured, who thus their tasks fulfil,
Will make the best of what is ill.

IV.

God prosper him, "where'er he sail!
Propitious gales around him play!
Whilst our good thoughts can never fail
To waft him on his venturous way.
And a proud thought 'twill he, that thus
We toiled with him, who thought for us!

September 18.—Whilst the ship is refitting, we take many pleasant walks in Portsmouth and its neighbourhood. Amongst other suburban places we visit Kingston, once a separate village, now a portion of Portsmouth. In the church-yard it was that the bodies, brought hither in wagons, of the crew of the Royal George were buried. On one gravestone, a very fit emblem of the sailor's life, is represented a vessel tossed on stormy waves. It reminds us of Spenser's lines:—

"Calm after storm-—port after stormy seas—
Rest after toil, doth greatly please."

September 19.—My brother William arrived from Esher, in Surrey. With him 1 visit the fortifications of Portsmouth in the forenoon. In the afternoon we go to Gosport. Thence we take a trip in a steamer to the Isle of Wight. Ryde, with its long wooden pier—quite the town promenade—is a delightful watering-place. How gay are the town and the pier with parties of fashionable people; how fair and numerous our most elegant and loveable English ladies! To leave England never seemed such folly as now. What madness to leave the many and one! My mind was busied all day imagining the homes, sylvan nests, paradises, of all the fair creatures we met. Then I thought, in the poetry of the "State Trials," how

— in the neighbouring Isle
The woods of Binstead shade as fair a pile:
Where sloping meadows fringe the shores with green,
A river of the ocean rolls between,
Whose murmurs, borne on sunny winds, disport
Through oriel "windows, and a cloistered court.
O'er hills so fair, o'er terraces so sweet,
The sea comes twice each day to kiss their feet.

And I was glad the old nunnery was in ruins, and that order of things too; that no more maidenly beauty and domestic happiness were sacrificed at its cold shrines. Those times were, and are, very poetical; but young ladies look much better, much more healthful and happy, out in the sunshine amongst other flowers, than in old pilgrim cloisters where

"—oars beat time to litanies at noon,
Or hymns at compline by the rising moon."

"Yes," said I to myself, "I would give something to know the domestic histories of many of these fair and intelligent beings who meet here to be scattered again; for to me the scenes and incidents of homely and elegant domestic life are of more engrossing interest, than all the national histories, called national, ever written.

September 20.—We visit the Government Biscuit Manufactory for the Army and Navy: see also the Victory, Nelson's old war-home, the scene of his victories and death: also the Queen's Yacht—very costly. We go over the Docks, and witness the inanufacturing of many, almost all, of the articles used in the National Docks, for the fitting up of man-of-war ships. "The Queen" man-of-war, said to be the largest line-of-battle ship'inthe world, not yet quite completed. Here I composed a poem, called

PATRIOTIC EXULTATION.

A famous land is England!
The birth-place of the brave:
By land, by sea, the bold, the free,
On mountain and on wave.

With joy once more I hail her,—
And pace her streets once more:
Escaping scarcely utter wreck
Upon a leeward shore.

Through this old city fortified,
I walk with heart elate:
And feel myself once more allied
To all that's good and great.

I climb the Victory's ribs of oak,
Where Nelson fought and bled:
I see the spot whereon he fell—
The room which held him, dead.

Dear England! what a place is this
To stir a Briton's pride:
To think on all that thou hast won;
Resisted, or defied.

To think on all thine empire vast,
Thy wealth by land and wave!
To think on all thou in thee hast
Of fair, and wise, and brave!

And can such glory have an end:
The language die we speak:
We who in arts and arms surpass
The Roman and the Greek?

For glorious nations were of old,
And men of mighty fame,
That but in narrative, and song,
Have left a living name.

Imperial cities, once the heart
Of regions without bound;
Famed Ilium, Babylon the great,
Once were—but are not found.

Whilst some, in Eden lands which bloomed,
Have deserts round them spread:
And naked stand the skeletons
Of hoary empires dead.

Venice, with marble palaces
That long decay withstood,
Had in her day vast merchant sway,
Had wealth and fortune good:

But Christian Faith for merchant gold,
Late venturing to gainsay—
Even from that hour, her wealth, her power,
Were doomed to wane away.

Rome, seated on her seven hills,
Had prowess and renown:
With wings unfurled, of all the world
She won and wore the crown.

Ambitious was she—haughty, cold:
Loved Empire more than Man.
God saw: and willed that all her sway
Should end as it began.

Our country! when we think of these—
For thee we feel some fear;
Lest thou, like them whom we condemn,
Shouldst have thine Autumn sere:

That all the glory of thy Spring—
And thy long Summers bloom,
Should fade away; and thou, as they,
Prove but an empire-tomb.

When storm o'er other nations hung,
Thy sky was ever clear:
And unto thee the nations looked
For succour in their fear.

Nor vainly didst thou lead them on—
Thy glory was complete:
The mighty conqueror, conquered, fell
A suppliant at thy feet.

O, be beneficent as strong,
Blest isle! still help and save:
Then long mayst thou, as thou dost now,
Reign wide o'er land and wave.

September 21.—Leave Portsmouth with the "Visitor of Remarkable Places" in a steamer. Pass Ryde—Cowes—and thence to Southampton. Thence by railway to the city of our ancient Saxon kings, Winchester. A noble old city; full of olden-time poetical spirit. Kind-hearted, homely, pious old fisherman Izaak Walton—thou author of "our sweetest prose pastoral!"— I stood by thy grave, in Prior Silkestead's Chapel, in the venerable Cathedral! That was something. We found that in Winchester some good men had fitting monuments; and that our English David, Saxon Alfred, had no spot consecrated to his ashes and his memory. Well, England is his mausoleum, and his fame is his best and universal monument. I should not like to see him equestrian-statued, self-raised, like one of our modern kings. I shall say nothing more of Winchester, all having been said that is necessary in my brother's "Visits to Remarkable Places."

September 22.—I again saw Esher, visited once more Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, and saw for the last time my parents; one of them now, alas, numbered with the unforgotten dead!

September 28.—When I returned to our ship it was not yet ready to set sail, so on—

September 29—I walked nine miles, and pleased myself with an examination of what was left to modern times of Portchester Castle, with its huge desolate courts and halls, its immense court-yard, and, well guarded from enemies by land and sea, its fine large old Norman church and churchyard in the centre. It was the Sabbath, and the rich tones of an organ issued from it, blent with Sabbath sunshine; and we sat down under the ivied walls in the cool shade, forgetful of all weariness. Day after day went by now unrecorded, anxious to be setting sail: this we did on

October 2.—Left Portsmouth at 4 P. M. Workmen busy: the ship thrust out to sea before she is ready, to save harbour dues, and, perhaps, to be wrecked. The workmen return before we pass the Needles. Much to be done yet before the ship is in a ship-shape condition, especially in her rigging. Many a rope, cut on the night of our disaster, yet unrepaired. Never mind, say the merchants: the vessel and cargo are insured, if lives are not! The wind to-day favourable, but gentle.

October 3.—Wind the same. Toward evening the wind freshens. About nine o'clock it becomes stormy. About half past nine there was a cry of a vessel coming upon us mid-ships. What an outcry from our people; theirs now perceive us. Some on board give up all hope: but the brig rights herself, and drops by our stern—a hair's-breadth escape. Immediate joyful exclamation of "All's Well." As the night advances the storm increases. The wind blows what the sailor's call "great guns." All possible sail taken in, but the vessel rolls and pitches tremendously. The captain confesses it to be a fearful gale. Were the tackle taut and trim it would matter little, but he knows it cannot be depended on; and, should anything break, we must be cast ashore. The gale is in our teeth, and we are compelled to go with the wind. In this way we are driven by the tempest, from near Eddystone Light-house back to the Isle of Wight, fifty miles. The glass is going to atoms: every attempt to stand or walk is perfectly ludicrous: and were it not too awful a time would fill us with laughter. There is more slipping and sliding than at Christmas: more tumbling than was ever performed by mountebanks. Many a bump received now is not felt until afterwards. Every thing at liberty now uses it. The eatables, for which we have no stomach, are seen with as little remorse topsy-turvy on the floor, the dishes uppermost. It is confusion worse confounded, or chaos come again. The decks are overflowed; every thing is wet that we touch, and so are we. Thunder go the waves on the bulwarks; over they sweep, wildly and widely covering the decks. The sea is one dread phosphoric illumination, sublimely, beautifully grand: the very spray turning to innumerable stars, all pearl over the ship.

October 4.—As the day dawns the wind becomes more gentle and regular, dying away to a safe, fine, free wind, driving us along about seven knots an hour, in the right quarter. The morning quite exhilarating. Very few in the vessel during this terrible night but have been sea-sick, illness adding heavily to the miseries of the time.

October 5.—Nearly out of the Channel.

October 6.—Never dawned on land a day of more delicious promise, never was fair promise followed by more happy performance, than on this beautiful "sabbath of the ocean!"

"The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration."—WORDSWORTH.

Service for the first time on board. To be now regularly attended every Sunday.

October 7.—A gentle breeze: favourable: the bosom of the deep heaving gracefully as—the reader may fill up this vacuum for himself—or with this simile:—

"As Portia's bosom rose and fell."

We sail about three knots only. Six ships in sight: afterwards seven. Two homeward-bound; four or five going out.

October 8.—The sky nearly cloudless and bright. The sea gently rippled—almost a mirror. Very cheering is the visiting and companionship of land-birds. They bring a pleasant home-feeling with them. On Sunday a willow wren was with us nearly all day, flitting about, below and above. Yesterday we were honoured by a migratory wheat-ear. To-day a swallow has been skimming about us. Very welcome it is, although silent. We only listen for its twitter to see old chimney-tops, houses, and homesteads come vividly before us. The dormant history of a life awakens in the song of a familiar household bird. Sea-birds we see also: they belong to the present, land-birds to the past.

The range of sea prospect is less extensive than I had expected, and less diversified with objects—ships, animals, birds, fish, &c.: but these may increase as our keel drives on more largely into the capacious deep. We are now in lat. 47° 64' N., long. 8° 35' W.

October 9.—Yesterday we saw some Mother Carey's chickens. To-day it is stormy. Wind against us till noon, then it changed in our favour. Making famous way, eight knots per hour. More petrels seen. No ship in sight all day. Lat. 46° 24' N.

October 10.—Again very stormy. A large quantity of porpoises leaping and cutting through from wave to wave, round the prow of the vessel. A brig seen on the lee-bow. Very faint indication of there being such a thing as a sun; the captain not able to take an observation.

A person observed to the chief mate that it was likely to blow a gale by-and-by. "A gale!" said he, "what is it now?" The uproarious jolly sport of the porpoises in the morning was prophetically malevolent, as though they enjoyed the coming of a storm for us. Lightning faintly seen in the distance towards night.

October 11.—All the night has been stormy and dark. Everything capable of giving out sound, doing its best to entertain us. Not a pot or pan but must present us with its natural music. What a rattle, jingle, crackle, and splash! Wood and water dash and groan. A confusion of all inanimate languages, animated by the tempest. About two o'clock the wind was one overwhelming flood of sound—then suddenly fell a torrent of rain—and as suddenly all was still—the sails all hanging lifeless round the masts. The wind had at once shifted into the opposite quarter. All cry aloud "the ship taken a-back!"—in a minute, however, the wind filling the sails from the right quarter. The gale very strong; to land-lubbers rather fearful. Daylight very anxiously expected by all of us. A bright morning—too bright—dawns on the gloomy and terrible darkness and storm: a glittering brightness as of rain. Rain, and a most luminous rainbow—gold, purple, and vermilion—spanning the wild and mountainous ocean. It fades away softly as a dream: a dark cloud follows it: the wind again piping loud—the air cold: a deluge of hail the consequence. All still in a moment: the wind gone as though we had been dreaming: again the old cry, "the ship a-back!" and again in a few minutes all is right. To know that the ship was taken "ar-back," as seamen term it, was a circumstance of terror when winds were strong, as vessels are known to have gone down stern-foremost when so situated: so then, when we heard the cry of "all right," we were suddenly relieved of a great burthen of apprehension.

Now we speed along pleasantly, eight knots an hour. Fine now and breezy, the billows riding high, foam-crested. Very animating sunshine. The sky all bright azure or fleecy cloud.

About two o'clock we see a vessel a-head, coming full sail towards us. Consequently she is tacking against the wind. All is animation on board. The poop, the forecastle, the rigging, crowded with eager expectants all anxiously looking on. The vessel proves to be a Belgian of about 200 tons burthen. She nears us, cutting along like a fairy, with magical grace and lightness; sometimes nearly hidden from us by the interposing rising and falling waves. Had the sea been less billowy we should have spoken her, the captain getting out his trumpet for that purpose. She rode by us just out of hearing: her people busy as ours were with telescopes. They would read our ship's name, as we theirs, and report us in London, if she touches there'—or in Holland.

The scene was novel and delightful—the day so brilliant and spirit-stirring—there was sunshine in our hearts—let us hope there was in theirs.

How most anxiously desired, and how full of pleasure when obtained, this meeting of ships on the solitary ocean!

The whole of this day making good way, about eight knots an hour. Opposite Oporto. Lat. 43° 16' N., long. 11° 20' W.

October 12.—A dawn partly bright, partly clouded—slight showers followed by a succession of the most brilliant rainbows. Wind brisk: going nine knots an hour. I have been watching in idle moods the rich marbled appearance of the sea by the ship's side. The deep dark blue of the water broken up by the progress of the vessel through it into a lighter colouring—black, with snowy foam: very beautiful.

Beyond all imagination is the silence of the ocean! I sometimes go on deck at midnight when there is nothing steadfast in our watery world but the stars. Far-reaching and dread is the boom of majestic billows, the sound at times fading far off. We exclaim with Byron,

"O storm and darkness, ye are wondrous strong!"

But to me more strong, and most perfectly absolute, is the deep and solitary quiet of the ocean. It seems to me that the universe is listening infinitely; the stars twinkling lights in the vast temple; whilst the dash and welter of waves indicate, as by a minute-finger, the capacious going on of ages of Eternity.

Yesterday the first shark was seen. Lat. 41° 11' N., long. 12° 45' W.

October 13.—Wind still fresh and favourable. Yesterday we were opposite Oporto, now we expect very shortly to pass Portugal altogether. Stormy petrels more abundant.

Commend me to a Jack Tar for heartiness and trank joviality. We last night gave Jem Cooney, one of our sailors, when going upon watch, a glass of grog. He drank our healths in a respectful manner—then in a facetious manner; and with a cheery countenance, said he would give us a seaman's toast: it was this— "Here's to the man who eats his own plate, sleeps every night in his own coffin, and every day walks over his grave." A landsman would not at first understand this. The sailor's biscuit is his plate—his hammock is his coffin—and the sea, over which he is perpetually pacing to and fro, is his grave.

We are already past Portugal.

Another vessel over the weather-bow. Furl our sails to come near her. She proves to be a French brig from the Mediterranean to Havre. Our cook, being a Frenchman, speaks her. She has few people on board, whilst we make a goodly show; all out, old and young, all eager for the sight. The ship's name is Charlotte Auguste. Perhaps our friends in England may now hear of us. Our captain sets the seafaring French people higher in our estimation for politeness and punctuality than they were before, and certainly we did not heretofore lightly esteem them. He says we may more certainly depend on their good offices than on those of our own nation; John Bull being too often careless, negligent, or forgetful.

It is Sunday, and there has been service as before. The very ocean seems aware that it is a holy time, for although the morning was cloudy, the sun now shines upon us from the purest azure—a divine afternoon. The billows seem to have checked half their roughness—dancing and glittering in the sun.

October 14.—How rich, breezy, and summer-like is this day: full of southerly feeling. Called on deck to see some whales: two rather small and one large. Wind fresh. Ten knots an hour.

October 15.—Wind rough, but to compensate for a little tossing, in the right quarter. We expect to pass Madeira in the night. I hope not. The sea is to-day more beautiful than I have yet seen it. I could watch it for hours: how perpetually changing from mountain to valley—purely blue, and crested everywhere with foam.

A Dutch barque has crossed over to us; some of our simple people said she was a pirate; but when our colours went up to the mast, hers went up too, and olf she passed behind us away towards the east.

Our ship is heavily laden; sails consequently very slow, and is to our frequent mortification left behind by other ships. She will not, to use Byron's words,

"Keep pace with our expectancy, and fly."

Now Mother Carey's chickens get very common and familiar: whales, sharks, and sea-birds: terns, and large, clumsy, black-rook-looking birds—boobies. Lat. 35° 13' N.

October 16.—The sea never looked more animated and beautiful than now: reflecting as it does the deep azure of the heavens. We are driven briskly before the wind, and the ocean is blown into mountainous ridges after us, dashing up high, and ending in sheets of foam. The deep blue colour of the water and the snowy foam contrast well.

This morning, at five o'clock, Madeira was seen to the east of us twenty leagues off, so that our hopes of nearing and touching there are at an end. This morning there was a birth on board, a son born to Mr. G. Greeves, and yet there were enow of us, unless we knew how, by humility and goodness, to maintain or add to the true dignity of human nature. There are already too many of us always seeking for some paradise, yet wandering away from it. How strange! the new emigrant goes to Australia without his knowledge or consent. Well, other children do the same; most of us do so, who are full-grown children. Leaves blown about by the winds are we, yet we persevere in our own wisdom; deeming that we shape our own destinies, when nothing can be furtlfer from it.

October 17.—Lat. 31° 32'N., long. 18° 53' W. The very finest day we have had; yet not exactly what we wished for. "O for a strong and stormy gale." to urge us onward! After so much time lost in the Channel, we never go fast enough. We this evening had the most resplendent sunset—" Glory beyond all glory ever seen." Wordsworth, who described, in Miltonic blank verse, " an evening sunset on the Lake," should have seen this on the ocean. How ardently did we desire that all our friends were with us just to participate with us in this vision, for we felt how utterly poor would be either prose or verse for its description! How we watched silently its progress, still looking upon the west, whilst the time seemed to dilate itself from moments into hours; our eyes resting fixedly on the deep repose of the clouds and the sky, rich with all hues—fading— fading into a calm and most luminous moonlight! To have seen the clouds, so warm and brilliant—rubies and sapphires, whiten insensibly to the purity of pearls, and to become like angels' wings. The night, balmy and bright, was a fitting counterpart to the day. Some grampusses seen to-day.

October 18.—Wind stronger; going seven knots an hour; yesterday only two. Not a vessel in sight; not a bird or a fish to break the weary monotony of sky and ocean. We are apparently climbing the same watery hill, and are as far as ever from the top. This morning we have been anxiously on the look-out for a sight of one or more of the Canary isles. But the day has softly, hour after hour, faded into night—into a most beautiful moonlight night, and we have looked vainly for Palmo and Ferro.

October 19.—"Land! land!" Land it surely is. It has fixed outlines; whilst the clouds, though very tranquil and land-like, will be found, if we watch steadfastly and patiently, to vary. It is an island, and Palmo. Now we have a more clear delineation before us of another island—Ferro it must be. We are nearer to it, and see, as we get still nearer, the bold lofty headlands and precipitous rocky shores. A fortnight has elapsed since we saw land, and there is something very pleasant in the consciousness that we are once more near it. Then the weather is so delightful too, fine and breezy. Now there is some new revelation in the distance, all eyes are occupied, and more quick and eager and interesting is the conversation of all who crowd the deck, poop, and forecastle; it lies far off, and is seen rising boldly into the heavens. All exclaim, "It is the Peak of Teneriffe." St. Helena lies on before us; the island of the chained eagle of France; and his grave. One of our seamen has been there. He says, "When I looked on his grave and its willows, one at the head, the other at the foot of it, the spot betwixt two mountains; after the noise of all his battles, the place seemed awfully sad and dreary."

October 20.—Two ships are in sight, and one island far off. The winds are driving us to the west. It is again the sabbath, a calm midsummer day. The clouds have a dreamy luxury in them, and call strongly to mind the Castle of Indolence

"And of gay visions in the air that pass,
For ever flitting round a summer's sky."

The character, the tone of colouring of sky and ocean, have very much changed. O! the richness, the beauty of the voluptuous south.

I have not yet seen anything of Neptune or of his family, the Oceanides. Blind Homer was well acquainted with them; but perhaps it was the privilege of blindness. As the outward closed, they rose gradually upon his inward sight:—

"Blest fiat of imaginative will!
To people the unpeopled, and to fill
The hollow of the mind and of the main,
Neptune arose, and all his sea-horn train."

Amongst the rocks of the Canary isles, among the dancing and whispering waves, the Sirens were certainly not visible, doubtless they still haunt their old favourite Greek isles, and may sometimes be here also. However that may be, we heard them not. Still it must be they who inspired Keats with the beautiful line—

"Heard music is sweet—"

and act up to the spirit of their own inspiration.

We are this day in iat. 27° .N. The sea has been as tranquil as some deep glassy woodland pool. Now, what a change! the winds are up, and the waves roll after us in broad long ridges of foam. These must be the trade winds, for we are cutting along nine or ten knots an hour.

October 21.—We have to-day reached the lat. 24° 31' N. The trade winds blow steadily and strongly. A locust came flying about the ship this afternoon; one of the passengers caught it, and my brother has preserved it carefully. I saw it with greater pleasure than any African would one of a famous and voracious tribe—the locusts of Egypt.

We yesterday sailed two hundred miles. A poor way-wearied swallow has rested upon our ship:—

THE WELCOME VISITOR.

When weary, weary winter,
Had melted from the air,
And April leaf and blossom
Had clothed the branches bare,
Came round our English dwelling
A voice of summer cheer,
'Twas thine, returning swallow!
The welcome and the dear.

We heard, amidst the day-break,
Thy twitter blithe and sweet,
In life's auspicious morning,
The precious and the fleet!
We saw thee lightly skimming
O'er fields of summer flowers;
And heard thy song of inward bliss,
Through evening's golden hours.

Far on the billowy ocean
A thousand leagues are we,
Yet here, sad, hovering o'er our bark,
What is it that we see?
Dear, old, familiar swallow!
What gladness dost thou bring!
Here rest, upon our flying sail,
Thy weary, wandering wing.

What glimpses of our native homes,
And homesteads, dost thou bring!
Here rest, upon our quivering mast,
Thy welcome, weary wing.
To see thee, and to hear thee
Amid the ocean's foam,
Again we see the loved, the left—
We feel at home—at home!

October 22.—The ship's butcher caught a martin this morning in the cow-shed, nearly exhausted. When it had rested itself in a cage for some hours, on being liberated it circled about the ship, as if again to try its fitness for the infinite of sky and ocean, then stretched fearlessly right onward, and disappeared.

To-day, for the first time, I saw flying-fish, and thought of the old mother's question to her sea-faring son: "Well, my lad, what wonders have you seen at sea?" "Why fish, mother, flying about like birds!" "Nay, nay—tell no lies, my lad; I shall not believe that." "Well then, when we were in the Dead Sea, on weighing anchor, there came up with it a chariot-wheel—marked 'Pharaoh.'" "Yes, my lad, we 've all read of that—that's Scripture; but the Bible says nothing of flying-fish." Lat 22° 17' N., long. 21° 37' W. No ship in sight; we seem to have lost sight of them entirely.

Often, in England, I have seen a rich purple colour far up above the sunset; lower, rather nearer the horizon, the softest green, a most beautiful pale green, softening into orange; whilst, with the latter colour, the hills nearest the sun have been steeped, glowing in it. Here, all these are more intensely warm; the orange, too, with a brown tone in it, a rich silky brown.

October 23.—Adieu to gorgeous sunrises and sunsets; adieu to the sun, to the moon—now at full—and to the many-eyed brilliancy of stars! How strange to us, who have never before seen it, is the appearance of the sky; and has been for the three last days. The heavens are black-veiled perpetually in one suffusion of smoke-coloured cloud. This, I am told, is characteristic of this part of the sea on the African coast. In England, with so dense an atmosphere, we should expect, or have rain. Rain, here, we have not. The very ocean is tinged by the clouds, and looks like so much lead-coloured silk. Dissatisfied we are; it is not healthful; and then, only think! it would be miserable on land to lose night after night of the moon's full beauty and benignity; here, more tantalising. The sun, with all his tropical array of perpendicular fire, we are more willing to dispense with. Locusts now in numbers visit us; are caught eagerly, and wherefore? It is a new pursuit.

It is very pleasing to watch the flying-fish, which are evidently startled by the ship, rising out of the water, skimming away often in flocks, touching in the sea, then, like so many swallows, flying on again.

October 24.—It is a perpetual pleasure to watch the stormy petrel lightly treading on the water, seeming to walk on it. Some writer says, the name petrel implies that it was given to it, because of this circumstance, that of the little Peter, from St. Peter walking on the sea. Its motions are quick and graceful as those of the house-martin, a bird that, in its shape and colour, it, at a distance, very much resembles. Here we saw a wheat-ear. It flew timidly about the ship, flitting to and fro: alit timidly, then went away. We have this morning passed within fifteen miles of San Antonio, one of the Cape Verd isles, but were not able to discern it, owing to the mistiness of the atmosphere.

Some whales have been seen to-day, and one shark. Dimly to be discerned in the dusk, yet not far from us, a vessel quietly sailing on in company with us. Our people hung out a light, and soon their light, also, answered to ours. She passed on a little a-head of us, was again seen in the morning, and then altogether disappeared. Three ilying-fish wore this morning found upon deck.

We have not been gratified with a sight of any of the Cape Verd isles.

October 25.—A fine day—something new to us; clear, breezy, and making good way. Wind has changed from the north-east to the south-east—not so favourable for us. A faint gleamy light seen on the horizon to the east—supposed to be from a volcano in one of the Cape Verd isles. Beautifully moonlight.

How very phosphorescent is the sea, bursting into millions of stars round the vessel! until the moon, with a more soft yet pervading light, swallowed them up. Lat. 16° 5' N., long. 25° 56' W.

October 26.—Neptune's razor has this day been made; and is "warranted to keep what edge it has got in any climate." A sea-comedy to be acted by-and-by to those who have never crossed the Line.

A brig, supposed to bo English, has hove in sight, then disappeared. It was evidently homeward-bound.

October 27.—Lat. 11° 13' N., long. 24° W. A shark keeping us company; also large numbers of bonitos—the enemy of the flying-fish. The latter start out in large flocks, and scatter themselves, like coveys of partridges that have been shot at, all over the sea, evidently pursued by bonitos.

The day fine; yet, as Solomon says, there is nothing new under the sun. There only wants a ship in sight to break the weary sameness of one day to another. And no sooner wished for than here it comes:—

A sail! how eagerly rush out
The people at that welcome sound;
How anxiously they look about,
And search the wide horizon round.

This proved to be a Dutch vessel, of about 700 tons, from Batavia to Rotterdam, heavily laden with Eastern merchandise.

October 28.—No observation to-day; sun obscured.

October 29.—Heavy squalls, with rain. We have lost the trade winds of the northern latitudes, and are left to the tender mercies of a tropical sun, with the variables, to the rude kindness of squalls and thunder-storms, to the weariness of calms, and to rains that fall "as though the world were drowned;" and this we must expect until we cross the Line, and fall in, Heaven speed the day! with the south-east trades.

Becalmed we were, also, yesterday. Now clear and bright, we sleep on the gently heaving water; then, almost immediately, the winds blow fiercely upon us, the heavens are blackened, and as suddenly the rain falls in torrents, and all is bright and still again. During the calms, large fish leap out of the water. Two vessels are in sight. Every few minutes the sailors are in a bustle, singing as they reef, or unreef, the sails. Such is the nature of tropical latitudes in the neighbourhood of the Equator.

All is not, however, disagreeable. What beautiful, calm, moonlight nights we have had! And the waning of the moon is peculiar; it fades away from the top level, then is hollowed by degrees. In England, I never saw the crescent float level as it does here, like a little boat, but more or less always on one side. Many of these nights I sit alone, in the pearly light and breezy air, thinking of my old English friends, and compose verses such as these:—

TROPICAL NIGHT THOUGHTS.

WRITTEN AT SEA, LAT. 7° N. LONG. 24° W.

Night broods over the ocean wide!
The waters heave, and ripple and glide;
The air is so soft, that we scarcely know
Whether we sleep on the brine or go.
The lightning slips from cloud to cloud,
But thunder is none, or low or loud.
The crescent moon, a silver canoe,
Floats level through the rifts of blue,
Then cuts through a cloud and smiles anew.
The stars in heaven burn and glow;
Whilst this we feel, and this we know—
There's a God above, and his love below:
That thousands of voyagers there be,
Who lie down to sleep on the mighty sea,
Putting their trust in God as we.

We have left the safe and the solid earth,
The home and the country of our birth,
The friends of our youth and our manhood's prime,
With thoughts of the past and the coming time.
Nor is it for lust of lucre alone,
That we are over the waters blown;

That we from the land we love are sped,
The land of our living, the land of our dead;
Our household gods have absolved us, to go,
More of the wondrous world to know;
Perchance that upon a foreign shore,
Loving our land, we might love it the more.

Nor seem we away from our country or friends,
Or the love which everywhere extends:—
Our dearest haunts we ever must see;
With the most beloved we ever must be;
The love that was ours by an English fireside,
The affections over us still preside,
They follow us over the ocean wide;
Like angels they start up from the past,
And over us watch, and will to the last.

When vexed with calms, when tried with storms,
Their presence we feel, though we see not their forms;
And of wind and of waves the sport, we come
To the same God. our Haven and Home.

October 30.—Lat. 7° 30', long. 24°. We this day met the Franklin, bound for Liverpool, from India. By her I forwarded, amongst others, the annexed letter. Heartily, rather selfishly, did we bid God-speed to the good ship Franklin.

TO WILLIAM AND MARY HOWITT, ESHER, SURREY.

Off the Cape Verd Isles. Old Ocean, Oct. 29th, 1839.

"DEAR BROTHER AND SISTER.

"We are for the first time becalmed, and calm though we seem, we are rocking to and fro with a most 'uneasy motion.' We are in lat. 8 deg. 43 sec. N. and long. 22 deg. 40 sec. W. On the whole we have had a most prosperous and pleasant voyage. We left Portsmouth Harbour on Wednesday the second of this month—nearly upsetting (we are fond of the vocation) the Spanish Pirate, as we were turning round to get out.—One of the ruffians looked, as he was calmly eating, as if he would cut our throats with the most graceful ease and satisfaction. On the Friday night, O the unlucky day! we very narrowly escaped being run into by a brig: our people shouted to them, just in time, to turn their helm, and they dropped upon our stern. They were coming upon us mid-ships—all was given over for lost—and joyful was the exclamation, which rung immediately on her passing by us, of 'All's well!' Our vessel, it was imagined on all hands, was a doomed one, and that should we escape in one way, we must be lost in another. The wind was at the time getting up, and oh! what a night of storm and darkness followed! We had there our 'crowning mercy' of a sea-storm. Eddystone Lighthouse had been seen in the distance—but there our progress was fated to stop—the gale absolutely drove us back about fifty miles; thus we were again in the neighbourhood of the Isle of Wight. What a sea did we that night behold! sheets of mountainous flame—the whole mass of waters being full of phosphoric light. It was awfully magnificent. The captain declared afterwards that had any-thing given way we must have been wrecked on the shore. Our rigging, it must be remembered, was bad—and we went to sea with too few seamen and unprepared for a gale. The ship has, however, since been put into better condition by our new mate, who is a most indefatigable swearer and worker. Many of the passengers had decided to quit the vessel, as it seemed impossible to get clear of the English Channel: they were wearied out with the unpropitious and calamitous circumstances which had attended us ever since setting sail from Gravesend. Many of the ladies anxiously inquired if we were near any port—and importuned the captain to put into one; but he was too fond of good company to gratify them; aware that had he done so as soon as it was possible, the next morning, many of them once touching the English shore would have never returned to the ship. Holding out on leaving our friend the Channel, we sailed for the south-west, thereby avoiding in part the Bay of Biscay—not, however, entirely—there for two days, and worse nights, we were taught to respect its stormy character.

'Wild waves along the Atlantic blown
Beat on us with tremendous power:
The winds with an unvarying tone
Hurry us onward, hour by hour:
But hurry us to brighter skies—
Before us fair Madeira lies!'

"Truly, fair Madeira lay before us—but we were not favoured with a sight of it. We passed it in the early morning—with regret,—our captain being the only favoured mortal, and he only got a glimpse of it twenty leagues off. The Canary Isles we have seen, Palma, Ferro—and the world's wonder—and a great object it is—the Peak of Teneriffe! It was enveloped in a fleecy mass of most pillowy summer clouds: but an immense way up, the mountain was seen in large ranges through chasms in the clouds. The shore of one of the islands was rocky and precipitous. We had these in sight on one of the most delicious and calm summer days ever seen there—and never to be seen at midsummer in England. The character both of the sea and sky, in tone and vividness of colouring, wonderfully delighted us— how changed from the dim and dingy north! One sunset and one sunrise have so astonished us with their sublimity and beauty, amongst many gorgeous ones, that we have nothing left to see in that way. Some of the crew said they had seen similar in Bombay and in the Eastern ocean: never any to surpass them. The dullest pieces of human nature in the ship were as much swallowed up in the vision as the most cultivated. The deep crimson clouds—with a purple flood of light high above, all gold, and lemon-coloured below, deepening into a browner tone, very rich, and far surpassing in intensity and warmth, as the painter expresses it, the most resplendent ever witnessed in many of the lake sunsets of Westmoreland and Cumberland.

"We have seen many of God's wonders.

"For leviathans we must be content to write down whales— sharks, these have already heaved by our ship's side, at various times, their villanous shapes. Whenever we are going to have the sea a little more stormy than usual, we have shoals of porpoises revelling and playing about the vessel. Only one or two specimens of the nautilus have been observed, and I regret not yet by me. A shoal of bonitos, the great enemies of the flying-fish, were seen sailing in company with us on Sunday morning early, and they kept with us for hours together; we were driving on before the wind at eight knots an hour. Of flying-fish we have seen thousands—they start up often in flocks like so many swallows: they fly very often a great way with the smoothness and steadiness of the partridge, dipping in the water like swallows—and flying again. Stormy petrels have been very frequent and familiar visitors—following commonly in the wake of the ship. We have also seen sea-terns and oyster-catchers, and others of which we do not know the names.

"I passed from Europe, you will be sure, with regret; and often addressed our unrevering and unpoetical ship, (but what eared she?) in regrets like the following—'You are taking me away from England—from Italy—Switzerland — Greece and Germany; those lands of the human soul! where is to be found the noblest shape of man, the god-like! Europe has old institutions and old ruins; it has science and civilisation—it has history and poetry—and these perhaps I am leaving for ever!' To remind us more forcibly of home, we have had swallows and other English birds resting wearily on the ship.

"Here I must pause until to-morrow, for the gentle breezes playing on the sails, although they do not move her along one jot, have so swayed her about—I am tired, heartily tired. I have rested a little and proceeded. What a change! and suddenly too; yesterday we had a squall, darkness at almost noon, wind and heavy rain; and with it ended the trade winds of the northern latitudes. Now the tropical sun is nearly roasting us alive. The day is more glaring and hot than in England at midsummer; and you are now cold enough. "Very wonderful in their strength and continuance are those winds. They blew us along day after day for nearly a fortnight in high triumph, for many days two hundred knots or more per day. I often told our shipmates that it was all enchantment, and that we should be waking some morning and find ourselves beating about the mouth of the English Channel. We have met several ships, two only of which we have been able to speak with: both of them promised to report us; one a French vessel, from the Mediterranean to Havre, the last a Dutch, from Batavia to Rotterdam, the day before yesterday. To send letters was impossible. Now the sea is calm we may have a chance of coming near enough each other without danger; although even now there is another evil, — there is no wind to bring us together. This is certainly a long and arduous voyage: tomorrow it will be a month since we left Portsmouth, and we are yet eight degrees from the line. Had the winds held on, we should have been there on Thursday; now we may sleep on the heaving bosom of the ocean for weeks under a burning sun!

"Of how very small account is a day in the solitude and immensity of the ocean: the sun gets up on one hand and goes down on the other,—there is nothing but our vessel between the blue heaven above and the blue deeps below; night comes down upon us, and we have made, as it seems, one more day's sail towards eternity.

October 30.—There are two vessels near us this sultry tropical morning, and one of them seems bearing down to us, I must therefore conclude this letter in haste.

"How little have I said to you of the abundance I want to say! But I must submit. A beautiful nautilus last night sailed by; very large fish were leaping up. Now the heavens are highly blue, with vast masses of black clouds. Good bye."

We have just had another tropical squall; have made sail for a few minutes, and now, the rain having fallen smartly, are becalmed again.

October 31.—A squall, and rain in torrents: here there was indeed bustle and contention, the seamen all eager to catch the rainwater for washing; then what washing and scouring, and hanging out of clothes to dry! We have reached our line,—the clothesline. Now the winds have died away until the ocean is one expanse of liquid sleep; the sunset how wildly sublime 1 like red-hot molten gold next the horizon, and all purple above, deep purple. As the day-light died the wind blew fresh, and when dark a gale; we had too much canvas out to be taken in quickly by a handful of seamen: at a small distance from us the sea appeared to rise up level like a wall, with the black sky resting upon it: all hoarsely bawling to take in the sails, the ropes all in disorder through hurry; and the sailors running to and fro, doubtful what to do, or not able to do what they would or were commanded.

"Reef the fore-topsail!" roared the captain. "Ay, ay, sir," shouted the mate; but reef they could not, all exclaiming: "it is filled like a balloon!" What a rush and roar of wind through the sails! how calm a few hours ago! Now all are in consternation, and the women fainting. It was fearful to see the vessel blown almost on her beam-ends: and the seamen are in the rigging! how liable to be blown out—as they frequently are. Sometimes the wind sweeps them to a watery death, sometimes the waves wash them over the bulwarks—such is the sailor's fate.

Here, as in other similar gales, there was more the appearance of danger than the reality. The captain was intrepid, the other officers active and dutiful, and what was fearful was rendered less so by sober exertion and skill; no one can tell what ships and lives are lost by drunken and disorderly captains and crews. We were fortunate, nor were we I hope unthankful. This gale, says our captain, was the tail-end of a tornado: it might be—or a dragon's tail, for it lashed us fiercely.

November 1 .—A most brilliant morning; a ship over-against us, holding on apparently in the same direction: it was seen last night, and has made like progress with us; what sort of a day have they now in England? rain, hail, fog, sleet or snow most likely: the damp leaves falling, the ways miry. It is midsummer with us, bright warm midsummer. We have seen three pilot-fish, indication of a coming shark.

Books are at sea a great feast, perpetual enjoyment: Cowper's translation of the Iliad has been my daily intellectual treat. I shall scarcely need any other book. What knowledge of human nature! what bursts of eloquence! his is the true soul of Poetry —imagination and power. Homer, like Milton, must have been old when he gave to the world this—with the exception of Paradise Lost—this unequalled mass of practical wisdom, full of

"Years which bring the philosophic mind."

In the words of his own venerable Nestor, he would not regret the loss of youth, knowing how

"Other gifts the bounteous gods bestow
On other years."

Or as Wordsworth has beautifully worked out the same experience—truth embodied in immortal song:

"Those aching joys are now no more,
And all those dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur. Other gifts
Have followed for such loss: I would believe
Abundant recompence."

Not a breath of air; we are becalmed the sunset most gorgeous! pillars and domes of flame-coloured cloud, partly lost in blue, pale blue fleecy masses, with a blending of all colours. I exclaimed, with Wordsworth,

"Ah me! how quiet earth and ocean were;"

but could not continue his exclamation—

"As quiet all within me."

These dead calms were to me the most awful and restless visitations possible. Not alone were they suspensions, sleeps of the elements; they were the embodiment of the universality of death. Time and eternity seemed blended into one; the very sun seemed to rest in the heavens; motion, if not space, was in its grave; it did not seem possible that there could have been, or be, such a thing as a wind. The land we had left, or for which we were bound, were the illusions of an idle faith; any other kind of enchantment seemed preferable. Still we have a kind of half-consciousness of some little change in the universe: the sun slides quietly down and dips leisurely into the ocean; and the moon and the stars come tranquilly out and gaze at themselves steadfastly from the dark blue heavens, in the dark deep glassy sea. Progress there is in the planetary system, hut none for us.

November 2.—No progress; hot intensely in the sun, breezy in the shade. Lat. 6° N., long. 22° W. Here day after day we lie, brought hither by the imperious trade winds, in the neighbourhood of thousands of ships, but few of them in sight: all in the same predicament; Hood might call it a Line-En-graving.

November 3.—Fine day, very; ship in sight. This is another ocean sabbath. Now we are once more in motion; two vessels in sight; a shoal of large porpoises very near us.

November 4.—seven ships m sight; the wind brisker, going six knots an hour. Now there are eleven ships in sight, none very near us. Lat. 4° 40', long. 21° W.

November 5.—We were a week in the variable winds. This night also was squally; a night of utter darkness, a heavy gale of wind, and rain in torrents. Lat. 4° 4' N.

November 6.—-The sea rolling heavily, with the storm abated; we expect to be again, if not now, shortly in the south-east trade-Winds. The breeze is brisk and more regular, as in the former trades. Flying-fish again, start up also as in the other trades. We have a ship a-head, another aft, so three of us are sailing in one direction, only a few miles from each other; one of these, a light quick sailer, had all the afternoon been gaining upon us; and in the dusk she passed us by, and was still, when it was star-light at a speakable distance: she thought fit to reply to our captain's two first questions, but declined all other talk. We set down the people for broad-bottomed unmoveable Dutchmen; it was, doubtless,

"Some rich old burgher of the ocean flood."

November 7.—A most beautiful morning; light wind, going only four knots an hour; the sky at sunset was ribbed with salmon-colour, very rich and beautiful. I hope we have done, for some time at least, with flaming copper-coloured sunsets—the certain presage of tempests.

November 8.—Lat. 2° 20' N., long. 23° 32' W.

November 9.—Once more in the trade winds.

November 10.—This day is a remarkable one in our voyage: at 1 o'clock P.M. we crossed the Equinoctial Line.

The line-shaving was a droll affair, the pageant was grotesque enough. Neptune and his wife, goddess I ought to say, were quite in approved costume. I little thought, when busily oiling paper to wrap my linen up in at Nottingham for the voyage, that the dark brown would turn to a golden yellow, and part of it be fashioned into a most superb crown for our God of the Equator! But so it was; and worn by him, until he got drunk, with becoming dignity. Alas for our poor elemental divinity, the Goddess got drunk too! and so outrageous grew she in her drink, that for her own and the public safety she was obliged to be put in irons: having shown herself bloodily inclined, and threatened the lives of several on board. She behaved herself well during the shaving, as did also "the stern god of sea," as Milton terms him, until, seizing her lord's trident, she broke it to atoms over some unruly fellow's back. Some twenty or twenty-five were shaved, soused head-over-heels in a sail filled with water, and moreover had buckets full of water dashed upon them; few on shipboard escaped being wet through, even of such as were not shaved. I took my station above the motley assembly, and thence witnessed, unshaved and unwet, the whole process of initiation. The shaving-day was on the 11th of November, being postponed till then, it being Sunday about one o'clock p.m. that we crossed the equator, yet even on Sunday Neptune came on board and hailed the ship; inquiring, in his hoarse sea-voice, who we were, and to what port bound? On being satisfactorily answered, he disappeared again in the sea, promising to revisit us in the morning and inquire into our healths. A flame attended his going far to leeward of us, seen for miles illuminating gloriously the darkness of the sea and the night. The flame smelt of tar: some supposed it a flaming tar-barrel. It might, only that such thoughts are impious; and only allowable when we reflect that Neptune is a very old sailor, and might rather be expected to smack of that kind of thing than any other. That night too, though Sunday night, water was thrown about in all directions. The Lord of Misrule was the only lord who exercised any authority. I escaped almost miraculously, not having a wet thread upon me, yet I was here and there, everywhere, amongst the thickest, and saw others have bucketfuls thrown upon them; one bucketful was indeed dashed at me, but I leapt behind a sail, and that received it instead of me. "Are you wet?" asked many a dripping comfortless wretch. Had I said "No," half-a-dozen bucketfuls would have been the answer. I, Quaker-like, answered with another question, "Who indeed is not?" so in the dark they thought me as wet as themselves.

In the afternoon a ship was observed coming after us, and she neared us as it grew dark. It was a large vessel, and evidently a good sailer; she came at a short distance from us, and opposite our ship, when it was neither light nor dark, there being a crescent moon three days old, and the stars; there she was, too distant to be spoken with, and it was too dark for us to see her colours or read her name. We decided that it was a frigate, and English, for at sunset we heard the evening gun. The sound of it was strange in this solitary sea; for we might say, as in Coleridge's Ancient Mariner,

"We seemed the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea."

She passed us very easily, and was out of sight in the morning. Now that we are near the South American coast, we are reminded of Robinson Crusoe, and of his attempt to reach the mainland. He speaks of the Oroonoko, which is rather further hence to the north-east.

November 12.—Alas! "the god of the ocean," Neptune, was last night royally drunk, and this morning has a boundless thirst upon him. Noah, that famous old sea-captain, after the first long sea-voyage, aweary of the universal briny element, got drunk, and almost all his mariner-children have inherited the infirmity.

November 13.—Lat. 5° 11' S., long. 29° 50' W. Winds stormy; the heavens clear; the sea foaming; sailing south-west-half-south, five, six, and seven knots an hour.

November 14.—Lat. 7° 24' S., long. 30° 50' W. The days bright, the winds gradually eastward, and our course more to the south. The nights rather rougher, but starlight, moonlight, and beautiful. The Pole-star has passed away to the northwards. The Pleiades and Orion are northing. Sirius is a brilliant nightly luminary about ten o'clock; and Venus, almost lustrous as a moon, about four o'clock in the morning. The flying-fish still start up continually about us. They are seldom observed except in the trades. What a lazy luxury it is, in breeze and sun to lean over the weather-bow of the vessel, hour after hour, thoughtful, or in Southey's mood of mind, " pensive but not in thought," to watch the waves in endless procession, in evervarying forms—the prow dashing them into wild spray—falling in perpetual rainbows, ousted as perpetually by the foam. This indulgence is akin to Byron's —

"Alone o'er steeps and foamy falls to lean:
This is not solitude, 'tis but to hold
Converse with Nature's charms, and see her stores unrolled."

Not more than 200 miles from the coast of South America; one day's sail with a brisk wind.

November 15.—The sea beautifully rude; rolling in large waves, deeply brightly blue, breaking everywhere into foam. Not more than 250 miles from the South American coast.

November 16.—Two vessels in sight; one outward-bound, the other a Danish brig, the Dolphin, from Rio Janeiro, for New York.

We this day saw two other dolphins; a beautiful sight the fish of that name. The first glimpse this that we had of these many-coloured wonderful creatures. Lat. 11° 45' S., long. 33° 30' W.

November 17.— One of many fine days. Lat. 13° 45' S., long. 34° W.

November 18.—The sun nearly meridian, casting the smallest perceptible shadow: two more days, and it will pour down upon us perpendicularly its scorching fire. Our first mate stuck his penknife upright in the deck, and the shadow lay as nearly equally round it as could be. It is quite a novel sight to us North-men to see the sun in the zenith; exactly over-head. "There is a fine breeze coming," cried the mate. "How does he know?" thought I to myself; "these sailors are very weather-wise." I looked to the east, whence the softest breath of air was fanning us, yet in the sky was no palpable indication of wind; there was none of that whisking about of the clouds, none of that sweepiness, nor yet any squally appearance, no massy pillowy or black clouds; "How can he tell?" I looked on the sea to the farthest verge of the horizon eastward, and there saw —not the wind, certainly—but what the mate had seen, a visible indication of it, the waves spreading and sweeping broadly on, with a regular and stately march. On they came, the wide expanse foam-crested. Now they are not far off; now they are even here: they dash playfully high against the ship: the sails are filled, and we rush pleasantly onward. Lat. 15° 58' S.

November 19.—Unfortunately we have lost very early the trade winds; the ship veering to all points of the compass. Sailors doing little but reversing the sails; and, quite a novelty, we have been for two hours becalmed. Many birds are observed going in one direction; these the mariners term boobies. We must be near the isle of Trinidad. Cloudy and rainy. Lat. 17° 51' S.

AN OLD-NEW SEA BALLAD.

We had not been at sea, at sea
Weeks but barely three,
When our steward said, with a very long face,
Not a bit of cheese had we.

The sago and the arrow-root
Were done about the Line;
And there were fears about the water,
And doubts about the wine.

To eat the salt-pork was sorry work—
We boiled it both and fried;
The beef it was rank and the water stank,
And the pigs of the measles died.

We had not been at sea, at sea
Weeks but barely five,
When every biscuit in the ship
Began to be alive.

Some of them had been before
A voyage in the same ship,
And so they grew rebellious,
Not liking a second trip.

We stared on them you may be sure
With looks of sore dismay,
For some were blue and some were green,
And some were hoary gray.

They once were baked it was supposed,
Although we couldn't tell when;
So, just to kill the living things,
We baked them o'er again.

If Rutherford in his old age
Should ask for parish relief,
God send he may eat his own biscuit
And try to eat his own beef!

We had not been at sea, at sea
Weeks but barely six,
Before our tea was a black sea—
Black as the river Styx.

At sea, at sea we had not been
Weeks but scarcely seven,
When not a soul of our company whole
Thought biscuit was bread or chalk was coal,
Or that the sea was heaven!

We had not been, we had not been
At sea weeks barely nine,
When the sea-carrion creatures
Looked on and longed to dine.

The hungry shark, he sought our barque,
And he was nothing coy,
He opened his mouth and wagged his tail
As a dog might do for joy.

But this we must say, as well we may,
And say it with right good-will;
That Captain Kay in a pleasant way,
Shared both our good and ill.

Then health, then health to Captain Kay,
Whilst in this world is he;
May pleasure greet him on every shore,
And happy success at sea!

November 20.—Calm morning; in the afternoon a gale from the south with heavy rain. Ship lying close to the wind with close-reefed top-sails, labouring hard to make little progress. The sunset lurid; wild stormy light; not without gorgeousness and sublimity. The moon rose largely dilated, beautifully tranquil amidst the rack of clouds, and the heaving and dashing of the sea. Lat. 18° 36', long. 30° 46' W.

November 21.—Lat. 19° 48' S., long. 31° 10'W. Day bright and breezy. Course south-west half south.

November 22.—A dreary, weary, gloomy day. The only thing consolatory in it, we are going eastward a point. We are this day lat. 20° 30' S., consequently opposite, though sadly far to the west, the isle of Trinidad; once inhabited by the Spaniards, but now deserted. For two days preceding the heavy gale on the 20th, we were going eastward in the direction of it; and our captain intended, for the refreshment and gratification of his people, to lie-to, and allow us to spend half a day upon it. This we had anticipated with great pleasure. Our good captain was willing to delight us, but the winds were not—they blew us and our wishes away to the south and south-west. We are 150 miles westward of it, and were not, therefore, allowed even a glimpse of it in passing. There is a charm in the idea of an "uninhabited island," which we doubtless owe to Robinson Crusoe. It has a ruined church, and some desolate dwellings. There are upon it other indications of human civilised residence. What a still sadness must sleep amongst those deserted abodes! How must that old church in decay and utter solitude diffuse about it a feeling of silentness—of mortality, as in mockery of human aspirations, sad undoing of the work of human hands! The dead around must seem doubly dead, unvisited by the footsteps of the living. We were to have killed sheep, pigs, and goats—once tame, now wild. Something we should doubtless have done, and have seen something to have been remembered. Good bye to our hopes of seeing Trinidad!

November 23.—A change—the morning bright and beautiful. We are blown along as briskly as our patient heavily-laden camel-like beast of a ship will go.

There is little "new under the sun," save that we are just under it; the sun being vertical, or nearly so. Lat. 22° 30' S.

November 24.—To our great satisfaction we are going in the right direction, south-eastward. In the evening a tempest anticipated. Dark massy clouds to windward, thunder, vivid lightning and rain. A gloomy night. Lat. 24° 38' S., long. 30° 16' W.

November 25.—Going our true course briskly. Day after day we are taught what solitude is on the vast deep. The last ship we saw was on the 20th, and was more like a phantom-ship than a real one, seen as she was dimly through the misty rain. Now it is stormy and raining, and most miserable. We are in the temperate zone, but find nothing in it temperate.

November 26.—Last evening the cloudy darkness of the sky prevented us seeing the sun at its setting; only a most intensely glowing contracted furnace-like space being visible. The sky had a wild fiendlike sublimity about it. I could fancy Lucifer had winged his way through it—

"—aloft incumbent on the dusky air,
That felt unusual weight

whilst a black speck on the copper flame of the horizon seemed to complete the image of his there entering, as at Hell-gate, the Inferno. We have this morning, how delicious the contrast! a clear pearly-clouded sky; the ocean sleeping in the sun, and tranquilly-beautiful as some mountain lake: with the vessel nearly motionless. Last night all was bustle and clamour, the sailors busy reefing the sails; this morning all is ease, brightness, and lazy tranquillity. It is sometimes by inward emotions that the beauty of the external universe is hallowed; a bright day made more bright; one of Wordsworth's days,—

"One of those heavenly days which cannot die."

Yet this, by mere contrast only of bright from dark, is memorable, sui generis; bright, warm, quiet and delicious; a breathing space in the work-a-day world of waters, and may not inappropriately be termed "the sabbath of the ocean." Lat. 26° 45' S., long. 26° 10' W.

November 27.—A fac-simile of an English spring-day, cold and bright. In the afternoon what mariners term a long sea, flowing from the south; indicating, they say, a storm in that quarter: perhaps coming to us. Lat. 27° 7' S., long. 25° 50' W.

November 28.—The sea-swell has subsided in the night to a most perfect calm. Dolphins five or six seen under the bowsprit, half the size of the first; one of them is harpooned and placed to die upon deck. How beautiful, how vivid the shades of colour, one fading away after the other. Well may poets sing, in many a glorious simile, of the dying dolphin!

November 29.—Little to be noted this day, only that, like too many others, it has been and is gone; one more day, a blank in the lottery of our life. Time and the ocean, those huge leviathans, swallowing our days, as they will us, up. The first Cape-pigeon seen; a most beautiful bird, cf the petrel tribe.

November 30.—A large and stately bird seen this morning— that bird of good omen, that Coleridgean creature, the Albatross: we only caught a glimpse of it, floating lazily and cloud-like afar off.

THE ALBATROSS.

Take not the Albatross:
I love to see him glide,
The regal bird magnificent,
Over the waters wide.

Amid the southern main
Where billows rage and foam,
This wilderness of mountain waves
Seems his perpetual home.

Wrong not the Albatross:
It is a holy thing!
Still let him fan the desert air
With his capacious wing.

It cometh from the Sun,
With light into the soul;
The drooping mariner to cheer
Where wildest billows roll.

It glides into the mind,
In the mind's thoughtful hour:
With broadest images sublime
Of Peace and tranquil Power.

How like a spirit pure,
Its station doth it keep!
A soul of calm amid the storm,
Lone brooding on the deep.

Oh spare the Albatross!
I would not see him slain,
Still let him wing as he has winged
The immeasurable main.

As from creation's birth
He thus had ever flown;
As thus unto the close of time
He would soar on alone.

Still let him seem to move
Between the sea and sky:
A nature pure that must endure,
A thing not born to die.

December 1.—Lat. 30° 50' S., long. 21° 31' W. Not certainly the bird of " good omen" has the albatross proved to us except in one respect, that we have been imperiously urged onward by a stormy gale; morn, noon and night, onward were we blown, in the right course, by a wind which threatened to leave not a thread of canvas on the ship. Byron could have had a treat superior to any "Bay of Biscay O," if indeed he loved to be

"Where the strained mast is quivered like a reed,
And the rent canvas fluttering strewed the gale!"

Whilst sailing with our fore-top-gallant, main-gallant, and main-royal all close-reefed, our main-top-sail was rent to shreds about midnight. Nothing more magnificent on land or ocean could be witnessed than this sea night-scene. Every mountain wave seemed as if it would bury the ship; yet most buoyantly she overtopped them.

In the morning how sublimely grand the spectacle! The vast and mountainous wilderness of waters sun-brightened beneath a warm azure sky. Towards night, the horizontal sun, glowing resplendently in the west, tinged the blue waves and the spray astern, with a palish green light; and built up for us in the east a gorgeous rainbow; and flushed the few remaining storm-clouds with a wild staining. The ship, a noble object, betwixt them, rising and falling. The albatross gliding by on motionless pinions, sometimes near, then hidden in some retired valley amidst the ocean mountains. Anon, as our ship again ascended, visible, a most stately object. All the while the spray dashing wildly over the decks.

December 2.—Rose betimes; long before daybreak. The Pleiades, Aldeboran, the constellation of Orion, and Sirius, nearly overhead to the westward. The moon, a thin crescent, and Venus, both looking beautifully bright, in the east. The waves weltering in the darkness against the ship, and the wind strong as a mountain torrent.

This evening a large brown moth was caught in the ship, 7½ inches across the wings; it is of a South American genus, and thought to have come thence.

December 3.—Lat. 32" 44' S., long. 15° W. One albatross and a few petrels seen to-day.

December 4.—Shoal of porpoises. Lat. 33° 24' S., long. 13° 25' W.

December 5.—

Day after day, week after week goes by—
At length another vessel we descry
Beneath the same wild cope of ocean sky.

The Southern Cross, of which those at all conversant with the constellations of the southern hemisphere must have heard, is now visible, and an interesting object, a little after ten o'clock at night. It does not now appear to the best advantage, being inverted, and in rather a leaning position.

The Magellan Clouds, two of them white, the other dark, three in number, are also prominent objects in the starry heavens. They are at first sight nothing more than small patches of fleecy cloud, two of them, but when looked at steadily, are nothing more or less than spots on the heavens—the milky whiteness of innumerable stars closely congregated; just like detached portions of the Milky Way. The black cloud being only the reverse of this, or the total absence of stars, a blank in the starry universe.

We have had many whales about us, of a small kind, sending up a vapoury steam whitely against the dark clouds. There were also, for more than an hour, at the stern of the ship three or four of those superbly-winged birds—the albatross, gliding to and fro with a soft dream-like motion. All the specimens of this bird have been more or less coloured, dark or light brown on the upper sides of the wings and back; in a few of them, the bodies have been entirely white. Those that have come under our observation have been not more than a year or two old, as after that time they grow whiter until purely white. We have been losing in latitude to-day, the wind being contrary, but have gained a little in longitude. Lat. 33° 15' S.

December 6.—Another and more beautiful individual of the petrel genus seen to-day, the Cape-pigeon. It is white seen above you, but when you look down upon it as it skims along the waves, or rests upon them, it is barred and spotted with a rich warm-toned brown, sprinkled over with white, and on a white ground. The more we go southerly the more of these we are to find. It and the albatross—small as a pigeon the former, and larger than the eagle the latter—are the most beautiful seabirds yet seen by us. The wind against us. The ship seen yesterday, to-day out of sight. Another of the petrel tribe has just made its appearance, called by our sea-faring people the snow petrel. It is said to breed on the New Shetlands in the South Pacific, and to rear its young in the snow. The upper part of its body and wings are grey, and white under.

December 7.—We now see more than a dozen birds of the albatross kind; if not of different species it must be, as I have before stated, difference in age that causes so great a variety in size and colour; some being not apparently more than four feet, whilst others are eight or ten feet across the wings; some purely white—others brown—and some nearly black.

One of these birds was shot in the morning, and another wounded and left to die a lingering death on the water. There is wanton cruelty and waste of life in this useless, aimless slaughter of creatures which you cannot obtain. Should any evil consequences follow the sacrilegious murder of the "bird of good omen," there will not be wanting many of our mariners to know whence our miseries are derived. It is a superstitious weakness akin to good. The Christian and the poetical philosophy of the New Testament and of Wordsworth, came strongly into my mind,—of the sparrow not falling to the ground disregarded:— and of

"The Spirit that is in the boundless air,
That is in the green leaves among the groves,
Maintains a deep and reverential care
For the unoffending creatures whom he loves."

A dim Coleridgean superstitious feeling came over me, when in the afternoon our calm breezy heavens were hung widely with a dark and stormy drapery of clouds; and also when, shortly after, the wind got up, and we were enveloped, for a short time by a misty rain squall. It seemed that

"Suffering nature grieved that one should die."

A large black whale was seen by us in the afternoon; five or six birds, called whale-birds, making their appearance at the same time. They are about the size of the turtle-dove; in voice and shape they much resemble the swallow.

One of them settled on the point of the flying-jib-boom, and although several times driven thence by seamen attempting to catch it, it always returned to the same place. It is a very pretty and friendly bird. Its body is white, its tail forked, its head nearly black, its bill and legs dark-orange. It lingered with us till the dusk, then disappeared. What with this bird, the whale, many species of petrel, the number and constant flitting to and fro of the albatrosses; and the coming hurry-skurry about the prow of the ship of a rampant, leaping, racing shoal of porpoises—we were kept, during most of the day, in a state of lively excitement. Lat. 35° 48' S., long. 10° 35' W.

December 8.—Our fifteenth Sunday on the ocean. Public religious service was observed on board for a few sabbaths only, beginning with the first Sunday after the storm in the English Channel. To me it seemed the piety of fear; and with the sense of danger, the form of piety vanished. Many of the whale-birds have been twittering and chuckling about the rigging, and settling on the yards. They must be birds of a shore-haunting genus, that have followed the whale too far out, seaward, they have so much the appearance of weariness. There seems to me ample scope, a wide field for the naturalist, amongst the bird-tribes of the ocean; especially in the vast expanses of the South Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Nor would it be unpleasant to have a vessel at one's command on a mission of the kind. Of course, our merchantmen never turn a jot out of their way, or linger a moment, to obtain any object scientifically interesting or valuable. Nor, indeed, though it seems hard to us, ought it to be expected; and indeed,

"How should these money-bags see east and west?"

For a day, the wind driving us westward, we were making for Tristan DAcunha, the residence of Governor Glasse and his small community; but changing again, we leave it to the southwest.

Wednesday and Thursday we made little progress; yesterday and to-day we are making up for it. We are now in lat. S. 36° 2', long. W. 7° 34'. At noon we were visited by the largest porpoises we have yet seen; the kinds, sizes and colours, are various.

In the distance, to the north-east, a vessel is seen. If a whaler, as we suppose by its lying-to, it is occupied with a whale recently caught.

December 9.—Rough weather. One consolation we have in our dull ship; it is strong and tight, never leaking more than ten or eleven inches of water in the hold, even after a gale. This is well—and what is still better, our captain is, we made the discovery long ago; sober, active, anxious for the safety of the vessel and the crew; ever on the alert when there is the least appearance of danger; tenacious of his authority; as a sailor skilful, allowed to be so by those of the crew and passengers who know anything about the matter; and he has consequently the confidence of all on board; and as a man he is kind and gentlemanly.

The weather is now chill enough for an English autumn; but perhaps this feeling we are indebted for to tropical latitudes. We owe to the southern icebergs the cold of winds which are blowing thence. West longitude 4°.

December 10.—Five whales seen. The sea a lively animated picture. Inspirited by the weather, I wrote—

UPON THE OCEAN GOD IS NEAR.

Upon the ocean God is near—
The "wing of the Most High,
In calm and storm, a gracious form,
Broods over sea and sky.

His love is breathed in every wind,
His voice in every wave;
His life, His light, in the stormy might
Of ocean's billowy grave.

His bow of promise we behold,
As gorgeously arrayed
As when, amid a world destroyed,
'Twas first to man displayed.

His gentlest creatures, dove-like birds,
Rest on our wandering barque;
They seek our vessel as the dove
The life-preserving Ark.

The banner of his love, the sun,
Shines on us day by day;
His presence nightly in the moon
Illumes our watery way.

We cannot go where God is not
In goodness ever nigh;
Thus when we sleep upon the deep
We move before His eye.

This evening we passed the meridian of Greenwich, having come, driven on by strong winds, since yesterday 184 miles: good bye to the west longitudes! Our south latitude is 37° 40'. This part of the ocean belongs to the vast and almost illimitable "fishing grounds" of the southern hemisphere: consequently we have had about us nearly a dozen whales to-day; some of them near, and sending up abundantly their watery steam into the sky.

Our barque is seldom without the pleasant companionship of many and various aquatic birds; from the magnificent albatross to the little stormy petrel, a martin-like bird; or, as it is called by seamen, Mother Carey's chicken. The grey or snow petrel is more common now. There are many other species of the same genus. Of terns many kinds. The pretty dove-like whale-birds grow also more abundant.

December 11.—Strong stormy winds: compelled to take in much canvas. What albatrosses we now see are nearly white. A large black bird, veiy like a domestic hen, seen; it is called the Capehen. A current sets in against us strongly in this part of the ocean from the south, so that when we seem going forward six knots an hour, we do not in reality advance more than four. To-day, as heretofore, our young passengers have amused themselves cruelly with shooting our confidential and beautiful visitors the whale-birds. "You wretches," exclaimed our chief mate; "you may depend on't you'll have a gale of wind for killing those birds, before you get to Launceston!" A graceful superstition protects the robin-redbreast; I wish the mate's denunciation might prevail to protect these. East longitude 3° 5'.

December 12.—We have notcomeall this wayfor nothing; there are now near us a kind of large fish called sea-devils. The very whales seem to shun us, on what account they can best judge. Wind variable, air cold.

December 13.—Cloudy and cold.

December 14.—Many changes in wind and weather in a little time: sails furled, then shook out again: one moment the day bright and warm, then dark and rainy. Although it is summer time, on the sea the air is cold. In the tropics the thermometer ranged from 80° to 96". Here it is seldom lower than 60°, or higher than 66°. On land the reflection would be stronger, and it would be consequently much warmer, if not intolerably hot.

We have had for more than a week a long rolling swell from the west and south-west. The motion of the ship is intolerable. Up we go, and down again, rocking and rolling. Long. 11° 40' E., lat. S. 37° 30'.

December 15.—On land there is a chime of sabbath bells in most Christian lands, and here upon the waters wide and deep there may be piety and worship, but it is without any outward indication. Silence seems the universal principle; nor can solitude and silence find a more absolute empire for their sovereignty than the ocean. E. long. 13° 30'.

December 16.—Last evening the sky presented the most wonderful appearanee; the shapes, the whole character and colouring of the sky and clouds at sunset, must certainly have been peculiar to this latitude of the southern hemisphere. Such azure clouds, and purple, clouds the usual colour of the sky itself, whilst the cope of heaven was purple above, and round the horizon to some height it was a pale green, and in other places a reddish saffron, with here and there pale golden lines immediately next the sun, with other lines of the liveliest lake imaginable. Then the clouds all round the horizon had a gorgeous and various colour-ing; the cope of heaven being in fact all one rich sunset. This perpetual pageantry of the sky takes away considerably from the weariness and monotony of long ocean-wandering. Many and loud are the murmurers, who complain of many things which never trouble me. That of which I most complain is, during a long sea-voyage, the utter, grave-like ignorance in which we are kept as it regards intelligence of what is passing on land. We are dead to the world; severed from its various and thrilling interests. From port to port not to linger, not to visit us at sea, friendly intelligence is wafted on the wings of the wind. "Who knows," I have sometimes said as a ship has gone by us, "but that vessel may bear within it news of life or death, grave or lively matter, food for smiles or tears; for others it must, and may for us."

On Sunday night at nine o clock, leaning with the doctor over the ship's gangway, we speculated on the position of the ship; whether it was stationary, had a backward or a forward motion, so thoroughly did we seem becalmed. Now there is no doubt as to our progress. Then the heavens and the ocean were dark and silent as the grave. Now what a change! at six o'clock twenty sails fluttered in the breeze; in an hour's time ten of them have been taken in, and others reefed. The winds are up, and wail and whistle through the shrouds. The spray dashes over the bulwarks, intimating a fearful night.

December 17.—Soon after midnight the gale had somewhat abated, and the clouds blown separate in the heavens revealed through many a chasm myriads of stars burning brightly, and over the weather-bow of the vessel Venus large and lustrous; a most resplendent spectacle. To-day we are in 18° east longitude, in the longitude of Cape Town, to the south of it two degrees. In the morning we were becalmed, and a boat was lowered, partly that some of the passengers might have the pleasure of sailing about the ship, and also to take up some aquatic birds. Hitherto what had been shot had, with a few exceptions, fallen overboard, and been lost. Now they were enabled to procure some stormy petrels—a white-breasted petrel, somewhat like a lapwing; also a young albatross measuring nine feet from tip to tip of the wings, three feet from head to tail, and the bill five and a half inches long. Colour, dark brown.

December 18.—Again becalmed; the boat again let down to take up an albatross; larger, and broader in the wings than the other three inches. The poor bird had only a wing broken, and was put down upon the deck unhurt in other respects. It was a sad sight to see it maintain a stately silence, sitting motionless, surrounded by numerous eager lookers-on, to see it take the offered food and throw it aside disdainfully,—

"Tranquil in suffering,
Great amidst its pain,"

so sadly out of its own element—the free, the flowing sea, and boundless air—so fallen, and so unhappy.

December 19.—We are reminded by wind and wave of our whereabout; and that the Cape of Good Hope had once another name, the Cape of Storms.

STANZAS.

The waves subsided to a calm;
The playful winds were hushed to rest;
The main, as by some powerful charm,
Heaved softly as a human breast.

Our bark upon the waters slept,
And the waves lulled her through the night,
The moon fair watch above us kept,
The air was soft, the stars were bright.

Now clouds tempestuous o'er us drift;
The moon upon our staggering bark
Gleams faintly through a partial rift,
Then struggles onward through the dark.

A dreary and a billowy night,
Of howling wind, and dashing spray;
Rude waves that toss us in their might,
Wild winds that speed us on our way.

A vehement, yet friendly scourge;
A kindness not to be withstood:
To toss, to torture, and to urge,
With serious yet vexatious good.

To make us feel just where we are;
To prove the elements have power;
That we from such tumultuous war
May learn to prize a tranquil hour.

Just called out to see some immense whales, of the black kind. One by the ship at least 70 feet long. Huge monsters heaving their enormous bulk out of the ocean, and spouting their watery vapours high into the air. S. lat. 36° 58', E. long. 20° 33'.

December 20.—This day, as m others, the earth still turning upon its axis, we have the sun bright, then obscure; a day whatever its import to us that will have only its customary hours —and those are now of no use to us. Time might as well cast his scythe into the sea, tear olf that one lock of-hair, and go for ever to sleep, as we be in our present position with the wind a-head, heavily upon us pressing the consciousness that this, amongst others, is a day wherein we can do no good. Better to have gone in to the Cape, than to be tacking about under the least possible sail. The foresail, the foretopsail, and the maintopsail are close reefed: the mainsail is stowed away, and there is a reef in the mizen; and the contrary wind blows as though "earth and heaven it would together mell."

December 21.—All night, how tempestuous! the vessel, though under light sail, leaping, plunging, and rolling tremendously. Yesterday, one of the ladies was in hysterics; nor do I wonder at it in such a sea. The spray has dashed over the ship wildly for more than thirty hours; and there is yet little appearance of any abatement. This in England is the shortest day—here the longest. We have little, if any, real night.

A THOUGHT.

The Nautilus sails by at will—
The fish on agile wings:
How wondrous is His power and skill
Who framed all living things!

The eagle on his mountain height—
The albatross at sea—
How graceful in their forms, in flight
How beautiful and free!

December 22.—The sunset last night, how glorious! the sunrise this morning, sweet and pure dove-footed in the stainless ether. At eight o'clock last night—or, as the seamen say, eight bells—the wind abated, and the ship was turned about to east by north. We began to congratulate ourselves on a quiet night; but the wind had only taken breath for a harder blast. At four o'clock the gale mighty be heard coming with the steady regular march of a flood: on it came; there was the hurrying tread of the whole crew on deck, and a cry of "reef the topsails!" The wind thrashed the canvas as with a flail, and the vessel leapt about like a cork. We have thus been again for three nights reminded, by fierce and contrary winds, that we are yet in the neighbourhood of the "Cape of Storms." Lat. 29° 32' S., long. 22° 30' E. Here again, a singular circumstance in this sea, we saw several flying-fish.

December 23.—Wind blowing us on steadily in the right direction. Not a day lost to us.

Many birds about us: the albatross; the nelly-bird, much resembling the albatross, only much smaller; and a slate-coloured bird now numerous, half the size of the nelly-bird; all evidently of one genus. In Edward Stanley's little work on Birds there is an incorrect statement with regard to the first of these—the albatross. It is said never to rest on the water. We have seen it repeatedly swimming as leisurely and stately as the swan. When it descends to the water to take up food, it does not, as it is described, tread upon the water, not even apparently; it swims on the water—not closing its wings, but waving them gracefully in the air; and when it has accomplished its object it rises again without attempting to close them. Two of these we passed this afternoon—fine birds—and most beautifully, with closed wings, most superbly did they float up and down over the waters. The nephew of Professor Buckland shot at one of them, but it seemed, and I hope it was, unhurt. Lat. 39° S., long. 28° 50' E. Whales and other large fish seen.

December 24.—Quite a sensation amongst us: a ship is following us, just in sight. Many are our conjectures with regard to it, as to what and whence it may be, and bound for what port. Idle speculations these of a necessarily idle race of sea-prisoners. We watched its progress most of the day, and decided from near observation (for to be only a mile off is near at sea), that it was a goodly, well-built East India-trading Dutch ship, going, most likely, to Java. We could see her men in the rigging very distinctly, and also on deck. None but long-seafaring folk can know how intensely interesting is such neighbourhood!

There being rather a roughish sea on at the time, she rocked very much from side to side, nearly touching the water with her stunsail-hooms; whilst ours, though in comparison nothing as a ship or as a sailer, being more heavily laden, moved more steadily and erect through the water. If she was the most beautiful object—the noblest in aspect and fleetness—ours was dry and the most comfortable. Nq sooner had she passed us than there came down upon us most unexpectedly a white squall. We had at the time twenty-six sails set; had been going briskly, at least nine knots per hour, now we cut through the water like an arrow, fearfully. These sudden blows in the Eastern ocean are very dangerous, as vessels are often dismasted by them. It being Christmas-eve, we had, like Job's sons and daughters, been drinking wine, not certainly in a house that was blown down, but in a sea-dome that we feared would be blown over. We had thus a sudden transition from merriment to sober sadness. No evil consequences did then result to us, the good progress we had made being found in the next day's reckoning.

December 25.—Filled are land hearts, full, for us, with pity! It is Christmas-day: a festival

"Through all the kingdoms which acknowledge Christ."

And how can it be enjoyed at sea? Why, truly, we try to make the best of it, though there be but little manifestation of hilarity, yet even here it is kept as a holiday. A fat pig and a sheep have been killed. There is sea-pie, plum-pudding, roasted pork, wine, porter, and ale. These there are, and something better. The Past is ours as well as the Present. We have lived in England. Our inward ear is busied with the chimes of bells ringing sonorously in the vast cities and towns, and pleasantly in the rural villages, of our native land. We see a graceful, orderly, and intelligent people, stirred by one impulse, flocking to innumerable churches. We see a world of cheerful firesides, circled by relations and friends. The darker, the colder it may be without, the brighter and warmer it will be within. We think of, and are thought of. We see simple rural dwellings, and enter into the festivities, heart and hand, of the homely in their hearty homeliness, and their sincere hospitalities. Nor are we unenlivened by the seasonable gratulations of the refined and the elegant. There is much good feeling and good cheer. Thus are annually united links too much and too long kept asunder. Thankful I am to Providence that I was born and grew to manhood in England. Many of its most living pictures of life and manners thus become to us an ennobling and perpetual property. What is more refreshing than the recollection of many a peasant's cottage, especially at Christmas time? The breeziness, the sunshine cold but bright on the white-sanded floor; the windows, green and vermilion, with mistletoe and shining holly berries; the joy of shouting children; the clock ticking in silent intervals: whilst the redbreast hops in and out, turning his wild timid bright black eye sidelong up at you. God's blessing on the clean, sweet, rural cottage of the British peasant! Nor do I forget homes where our glorious national literature entering makes them Paradise. Nay, Literature will enter where Fortune will not; and Song having birth there, will imparadise the humblest dwelling. There are, and I hope always will be, Burns's and Bloomfields in homely, healthful-hearted, Old England!

THE FAIREST AND THE BEST.

From childhood I have lived with one
That had a homely air;
A creature of a sober mood,
Yet excellently fair.

With her in pleasant hannts I dwelt,
Though in a various clime:
And unto me abundant good
Was dealt in that sweet time.

What to her kindness owe I not?
How infinite the debt!
For all this wealth of heart and mind,
I loved and love her yet.

A mother was she unto me!
On her maternal breast
I knew such sleep! no other land
May e'er afford such rest.

A sister was she too! O, more!
An angel doth she seem!
And I with her for years have walked
As in a blessed dream.

The moonlight of her beauty plays
Around me far away:
Her sunshine in this distant clime
Yet mingles with the day.

Well is she to the nations known,
And has for ages been,
For her munificence and power,
And is of them—the Queen.

Dear England! o'er all lands, the land
To glorify, to bless;
To thee I feel my heart expand,
Thou isle of happiness!

Lat. 39° 4' S., long. 32° 58' E.

The early dawn was greeted with a very homely antique Christmas carol, by our youngest sailor; a rude, reckless, good-natured lad. The old words—

"The first great joy that Mary had,"

sounded strangely of thirty years ago; whilst the pronunciation of eternity, "atarnatee," was quite of the country village order.

December 26.—The sea calmer than we expected in this vast and generally tempestuous ocean. When crossing the soundings off the Cape, near the South African shore, we had short chopping seas, and the vessel pitched and rolled disagreeably. Here, however, undulations, like the ocean, are on a moreliberal scale; they rise and fall immensely, and have far-reaching swells.

December 27.—A day—it passed over. Lat. 39° 40' S., long. 38° 45' E.

December 28.—Tempestuous—very: a miserable day.

December 29.—The last and most disagreeable Sabbath of 1839. The winds blowing fiercely: moving on the sea under close-reefed topsails. Some of the yards are also taken down, causing the ship to have a naked, death-like, and hopeless appearance. Day after day, night after night, the gale continues. The sea dashed over the bulwarks. The dogs whine piteously. The very rats terrified. The nights dark, with occasional lightning.

December 30.—The gale has subsided: the ship yet tumbling from side to side unpleasantly. The thermometer has fallen from 66° to 60°; it is therefore colder. The rain has fallen, and it is uncomfortably wet. The sea has fallen a little; but is very wild and heavy. The pots and kettles, and everything else at liberty, keep falling. Our expectations of reaching so soon the desired haven have also fallen. Leslie has fallen down the hatchway steps. Some others have also fallen. The only reason that all of us have not partaken of this fallen condition, this original sin, is, that we have used our feet well, and our hands a good deal better.

December 31.—I hope the winds and waves will permit the venerable Present, shortly to become the Past, a happy end, and quiet burial. He must be sewed up in his hammock, and have a sailor's grave. Other honours, here, we can pay him none.

Last year I graced the annual demise with "Away with thee, old year;" now, as then, I think of the distant, if not of the dead, and have penned—

A DREAM OF LAND.

Whence comes this dream, my mind
Deliciously to fill,
With vernal wood, smooth inland flood,
Broad valley, and green hill?

Vast ocean heaves around—
The drear, the dull:
Yet was the vision I even now beheld
Most beautiful!

To a green isle we came,
Where staid our prow;
Where, to the ocean from the sloping shore,
Drooped branch and bough.

Ambrosial fruits, all-hued, to tempt the taste,
Around us hung:
Bees in the clover hummed—in trees
The wild birds sung.

Rich was the gleam of corn-fields, golden brown;—
The scattered hamlets fair:
A land of rural plenty, overflowed
With gladness everywhere.

A pastoral scene it was, of rarest sweets,
Wherein I went exultingly about;
I heard the bleat of flocks—the reaper's song—-
I heard the harvest shout.

O, well was it remembered—well I knew
The wood, the stream, the valley, and the hill;
There was nought wanting, with supremest joy
My mind to fill.

All old friends were around me—life's first friends,
With those of after years;
The many with regret resigned—the few
With holiest tears.

Awake—the booming billows on us dash—
Upwards and downwards, o'er the brine we go;
There is strange dimness in the heavens above—
Gloom on the deep below.

January 1, 1840.—When eight-bells was struck, twelve o'clock, on the ship's bell, the old year was rung out, and the new one in —a strange sound in the hearing of only sixty-six souls—on the solitary sea. Many compliments of the season, mutual good wishes, have passed sincere or polite lips, yet it is not the less an unhappy new year. The winds are against us. When will the elements be propitious? When will favouring gales waft us onwards to Australia?

In the evening the sailors had grog abundantly, and sang vigorously in the forecastle: the wind sung as loudly; it seemed a contention which rough voice should drown the other. Lat. 41° 52' S., long. 54° 10' E.

January 2.—Our chief mate, who had crossed the equator nearly eighty times, and other old seamen, well acquainted with this ocean, say they never knew such a continuance of wild stormy weather as we have had in it. Still our old friends, the various marine birds, do not forsake us. Here, they are old companions and new, and do their best, and do make the voyage less wearisome.

January 3.—Lat. 41° 38' S., long. 59° 59' E. The winds are strong; the sea is getting up. The fore-stay sail is blown to rags: all is preparation for nailing down the hatches, and putting in the dead-lights. The only set are close-reefed; only sufficient canvas carried to steady the vessel in the tempest. The sun is about to set, and what a sunset! What a wild sublimity of dark and bright—of misty yellow rays through masses of black clouds; the sea coining on in ridges of vast bulk. Everywhere the tops of the waves are blown into a misty spray, filling the air. The albatrosses and grey petrels, like ancient sea-farers, are, in the midst of all this uproar, quite at home; sometimes dimly discerned in the twilight, and then lost behind the billows. The rise and fall of the ship; the roll and rush of everything moveable is dreary and awful. The sound of the waves as they dash against and over the deck, is dread and heavy; but the moan, the sweep and wailing of the winds in every dark pause of other sound, is, above everything, sad and wild. To see a wave coming after us so much above the ship, you feel sure must overwhelm her; but over it she rises, and is borne onwards by it as on giant's shoulders. It is night—densely dark it is—only the storm is a phosphoric light to itself—a paly light in the pitchy gloom. The hatchways are closed and nailed up; the dead-lights are in; and our good ship rolls blindly on through the wild and mountainous ocean, like a compact shell, holding within her, subject to elemental influences, much uncertain life. None of our oldest sea-faring people remembered anything like the weather in these seas, that we have had in them. Blown onwards by this storm in one day 260 miles.

January 4.—Most anxiously has the first faint glimpse of light been looked for; it has dawned, and though the gale is yet strong, how beautifully tranquil, smiling on the darkness dim and the troubled ocean, is Venus, the morning star.

There was little sleep for any one last night: hut the day, though wild and stormy, has made up for it. There is more confidence in the bright, than in the dark side of a gale. We sleep in the open daylight: in the too apprehensive night we are all wakeful, aware of

"—The conflicts and the sounds
That live in darkness."

Still, at night, the gale continues. Lat. 40° 16' S., long. 64° 25' E.

January 5.—The storm has somewhat subsided. After the ship, westward, is a broad space of blue sky, with masses of clouds arising Underneath. Eastward, above the horizon, heavy storm-clouds are fast disappearing; the sun's rays streaming in lined breadths, through breaks in them, widely over the sky. Venus, the morning star, was silverly indistinct. Oh the sublime spectacle presented by the sea! Wave after wave, perpetual in succession! Now the ship ascends what seems the upland slopes; and a little way behind, coming after her, is another wave of vast altitude—up it raises her, as on Atlantean shoulders, and runs on with her for some time—then downward she descends again into the valley, again to arise incessantly. There is more of majestic grace, in what the sailors term "a long sea," than in anything I have yet witnessed: more of the awful power of the ocean—a grand blending of beauty and terror. Lat. 39° 10' S., long. 64° 22' E.

January 6.—A delightful change, for the ship is reclothed, and we are thankful to be once more going comfortably along in a more reasonable sea.

Expecting to see, if these winds continue, St. Paul's, and perhaps Amsterdam, the two small islands barricaded evermore in a most immense solitude of sky and ocean, by one monotonous eternity of wind and wave. God help the unfortunate Crusoe of such uninhabited islands! What must his thoughts be of reaching the mainland—the mainland anywhere being 3000 miles off? Yet solitary mariners have been cast upon those islands, and will be again. Lat. 38° 43' S., long. 70° 40' E.

There is no intermission, day after day, in the blind twilight and clear noon—in calm and storm: everywhere, and in all seasons, innumerable sea-birds voyage with us on wing and wave. Cheerful pursuivants, thanks to them!

January 7.—In cheerful sunshine how delightfully are we progressing! Escaped as from the hell of the late tempest, wherein our poor ship groaned and struggled, wrestling desperately for life, we seem wafted as on angel wings over the seas of Paradise. We are going by the last log ten and a half knots the hour. Lat. 39° 08' S., long. 75° 30' E.

All the conversation is about St. Paul's. Some intend to go on shore to fish and shoot; to see what is to be seen; to kill seals; to take albatrosses' eggs; visit the hot-water spring: these and other wonders are to be done. Much canvas taken in, that we may not run against St. Paul's in the night. In the evening anxious look-out kept, but no St. Paul's seen.

January 8.—All the past night, with little sail out, we still kept on seven knots an hour. Dark, with rain-clouds; the wind strong; a dreary dismal night. Here, veiling itself in impenetrable darkness, the island was, our captain supposed, not two miles off, and that we had passed it by. Good-bye to it, if it is passed, and to our expectations.

Our beautiful friends, the whale-birds, are again, after a long absence, with us. Other birds, almost innumerable, attend us, and more tame than usual. It is palpable that we are in the vicinity of land. Here are albatrosses in scores, moving over us with a soft dream-like motion; or floating, a score at a time, on the quiet water, like so many swans on a Canadian lake—a pure and beautiful sight. Our reckless people could not look on this scene with any pleasure; to shoot at them was, as before, irresistible. One albatross, when wounded, rose a little into the air, then flew right on before us. This circumstance, and the arriving out of the east of various kinds of birds during the day, brought to my recollection the impression made by the flight of birds on the mind of Columbus, and confirmed me in the opinion that land lay somewhere not far on before us. This conviction I mentioned to many. Three fine albatrosses have been caught, as fish are caught, by angling, this afternoon. Their plumage is marked very beautifully. It is a saddening sight to see him taken from sea and sky, from his illimitable freedom, a forlorn prisoner. No disparagement to the bird of Jupiter and his regality. Let him keep the cerulean dominion of the everlasting hills, Alpine or Caucasian: let him sport with lightning on Olympus! still a most magnificent creature is the albatross— lord of the world of waters. In the night of tempests is his sovereignty; maintained where the lightning's flash darts amongst mountain billows, and when are bared to his glance, instantaneously, the dread foundations of the mighty deep. In its tranquillity he glides, like Time to Eternity, over the ocean's shipless solitudes.

I shall retire to bed restlessly; perhaps to dream of St. Paul's. Lat. 38° 18' S., long. 78o 53' E.

January 9.—By half-past three in the morning I was on deck, looking forward and around in the misty dawn for land; but not seeing it I went, and again crept, into my berth. My nephew ten minutes afterwards (for he too could not rest), being on deck, saw the island. It was behind us; the ship, on its being first seen, was quickly turned about, and thus I was misled. Right onward for it direct, in the night, through wind, rain, and darkness, had we been going; when, but for God's most especial providence and goodness, by the intervention of day-light, we should have been dashed to atoms amongst its rocks and breakers. Though boldly palpable when seen, and very near us, it had a strange wild appearance. Fortunately we had it in the offing, the wind blowing in strong gusts from its hills upon us. After we had sailed nearly two-thirds of the island's circumference to and fro, touting ship, we saw apart from the land a conical dome-shaped rock. This rock stands like a sentinel at the entrance of a small inland cove, where schooners go and ride safely at anchor. Here we are at St. Paul's, the only land we have seen since the Cape Verd isles; and to see land is something after nine thousand miles of sea. The base of the island has a very square and formal look, having been undermined by the perpetual workings of that day-and-night labourer, the ocean. It is rather precipitous, breaking off above evenly, as it is washed away, age after age, below. High and wildly is dashed the spray, beautifully mimicking white ostrich feathers—veiling momentarily the many-coloured strata, traceable plainly in the shore's elevated frontage. Mists at times hid the hill-tops, and came scattering over us in rain, accompanied by fitful gusts of wind. Although the day cleared up and was bright, it was too rough to permit us to approach the island on its accessible side. Still we could see the island—very closely too—so near as to be able to trace, in its green sward, seams made by the heavy rains coming down the steep sides of its hills. Some of our party, too, took a boat, and going closer into the shore, caught fish, very fine and large—nearly the boat full. what a fishing excursion! They will remember that day; for such another, unless there, can they never have. Fish from four pounds to sixteen—not less, the whole of it, than five hundredweight.

Before we sail away from St. Paul's, I must mention that it is volcanic, some of its craters being observable; one particularly, half washed away by the sea, or perhaps only a third of the cylinder is left. There are three large ocean caves not far from this volcanic hill, in which the billows welter, dash, and foam eternally.

This island is the home of vast flocks of sea-birds, circling and skimming over the solitary waste of waters thousands of miles hence; hither they come, to this central point, and here they build and rear their young in the rocks. Seals are also abundant: as one poor mariner, shipwrecked, Crusoe-like, in this uninhabited island, found, to his satisfaction; killing vast numbers of them, he was, by disposing of their skins when he was at length liberated, amply compensated for what privations he had here endured. Some whalers made a summer and winter's abode here, and spoke praisingly of its summer qualities, but did not relish so well the storms and whirlwinds of the other portion of the year.

When bidding St. Paul's good-bye, as the last land-mark on our way to Australia, I wrote the annexed verses:—

ON VISITING ST. PAUL'S ISLAND, IN THE INDIAN OCEAN.

Day after day our ship made way
Through endless seas the same:
Away, away, through foam and spray,
Till to an isle we came,
Whose rocky coast could little boast
Except its sacred name.

We sped along, the breeze was strong,
Thick mist obscured the main;
Nor gleamed a light upon the night,
The tempest, and the rain:
Till like a giant the lone isle
Stood up before us plain.

In the dim dawn did we behold
The stern and rocky shore,
And turned, as in the gulf of death,
Destruction yawned before;
We started from the sunken rocks—
Wc heard the breakers roar.

Another hour, no mortal power
Had aught availed to save,
Amid the dark our wandering bark,
From rock and whelming wave;
And we, and our brave mariners,
Had found an ocean-grave.

We gazed with wonder on the isle,
With thankfulness and fear:
As black and grey, it widely lay,
In mist and gloom austere:
And to ourselves did we exclaim,
"The hand of God was here!"

Alas, for him! who from that steep
Once looked, most wretched he,
Who there attained with sinews strained,
In sorest agony;
And saw his wreck, in many a speck,
Float o'er the mighty sea.

How oft those summits did he pace,
His sorrows pondering o'er;
He only to dread life redeemed
Upon that fatal shore:
And with what eyes did he behold—
His kind approach once more.

His dwelling is abandoned now,
To silence and decay:
The dead leaves dance about the hearth,
Where sleep the ashes grey.
There comes the mariner—to gaze;
More pleased pursues his way.

Yet with delight, those summits bright,
Through mists, with golden beams,
I saw,—where also touched the sun
With joy the inland streams,
For freshly came back through my heart
Youth's early morning dreams:

When in my mind, I could not find
Aught pleasanter to do,
Than round a small Hesperian isle
To guide my small canoe:
A lonely king—my little bark,
Not large enough for two.

O, enviable time! the heart
Had gladness then to spare;
And with its own abundant wealth,
Could make the barren fair:
Like Prospero, could fancy-build
An Eden anywhere.

I could not envy Crusoe now,
His kingdom—if alone:
No longer blind, I of my kind,
Am more a lover grown:
Nor would I, as in boyliood, have
An island all my own.

Yet well it were, even here, to shun
The servile and the dull:

If what we prize of fair and wise
We from the world might cull,
How might we make our island-home
The blest, the beautiful!

How still it is—and lone—the home
Of solitary things:
How wearily the moaning sea
And wind about it sings:
And sea-birds cry, whilst round it flit
Innumerable wings!

Adieu to it! we see it now
With liking more than fear,
For in us it has summoned up
Old recollections dear—
And with regret do we perceive
It fade, and disappear!

January 10.—At day-break, a full-rigged handsome ship came alongside; then, without displaying her colours, or exchanging a word, passed on just before us, and sailed for the north-west. It appeared by its build and the golden eagle on its stern to be French; but the taciturnity of its people caused us to consider it American. We are going briskly. Lat. 38° 40' S., Ion. 81° 36' E.

January 11.—The night squally. Slow progress; then swift. A little after midnight it came on to blow fiercely; and as though all the canvas would be carried away. "Come along!" shouted the chief mate; all was bustle; there was running, bawling, and the heavy fall of ropes on the deck: then, by the time the studding sails were all in, how provoking! all was still. With the dawn all clouds disperse: the days are warmer, and have steadier breezes. No sooner, however, has the sun declined, even before his setting, clouds in black masses gather in the horizon; an intimation of what we may expect. The night enfolds us, rain falls, and the winds blow upon us in tremendous gusts every half hour. They are like Falstaff's belt—"Out of all compass, out of all compass, Sir John." Sore wear and tear for the ship's canvas. She will want new rigging for the next voyage. Lat. 38° 19' S., long. 85° 12' E.

January 12.—Night and day like the preceding. Lat. 37° 45' S., long. 88° 35' E.

January 13.—About ten o'clock the captain went silently to the forecastle, and called up all the seamen, charging them not to disturb the passengers, as he wished to have as. few persons in the way as possible, telling them that the ship was on fire. He charged them to have their buckets ready immediately. Many of the cabins were already filled with smoke. There proved, however, to be more smoke than fire; more terror than danger. Certainly the ship would have been on fire had the circumstance occurred later, and when all were gone or going to bed. One of the passengers had thoughtlessly put his pipe into his coat pocket, and the unextinguished tobacco had been smouldering and smoking for some time, when it was fortunately perceived, and the cause of alarm removed. By the suppression of this fire, another of our threatened sea-calamities was prevented. To have had the ship on fire would have put a climax to our disasters. Our poor unfortunate wooden Bastile ought surely now to be exempt from other casualties. After storms, collision with another ship, and narrowly escaping destruction with a second, then to have been so near running upon the rocks of St. Paul's and there suffering shipwreck—there seemed nothing wanting but fire to complete her catalogue of perils.

January 14.—Wind and rain; miserable. Thanks to Southey! his Poems made the day pleasanter.

January 15.— Instead of Medusæ, which abundantly floated alongside, various species in various latitudes, we have now barnacles in clusters. The sameness of the sky and ocean is wearisome. The days are clouded, with only casual gleams of sunshine. Very seldom do we see the moon, though nearly at the full. We are also grown strangers to the stars, and should see as a novelty a moonlight or a starlight night. There is as little variety in the nights as in the days. To-night, as on other nights, the wind died down to a most passive gentleness, then all at once out they rushed,

"Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell!"

Endued, they seem, with a tremendous determination of will, and with a most immeasurable capacity for mischief. You fancy nothing can satisfy them but the dismasting of the ship, or the total loss of its canvas; then, in a few minutes, they die away to a more reasonable compass. Lat. 38° 41' S., long. 99° 30' E.

January 16.—The wind from the south; very cold: alternately dark and moonlight; hailstones, lunar rainbows, then ntter darkness. This in the night. The day rather warmer: the season summer, same as July in England: the wind cold and rude as an English March: the sun as a summer-sun, hot. A bitter blending of extremes—our faces and hands smart with the heat and parching dryness of the air, and the dryness of the cold winter's wind. Altogether it is a strange medley, and very uncomfortable.

January 17.—To-day the sea is smoother than we have known it in the Austral ocean. Indeed, so have we been puffed about, so tossed on its stormy water, we could not think there was in its nature any tranquillity. Very few birds seen. One albatross, two nelly-birds, four large petrels, and three Mother-Carey's, are all that accompany us to-day. A dead whale floating far to leeward. Lat. 38° 40' S., long. 106° 56' E.

January 18.—Many begin to be the speculations about land; and the time we may reach it. Wagers are laid; and there are high and low spirits, modulated by gentle or brisk winds. Some allow us only six more days for the completion of the voyage; others are more liberal, allowing us ten. Heaven speed us on! for there is nothing new to be seen, nothing new to be done, and consequently nothing new to be enjoyed.

January 19.—'Tis as bright as a sabbath should be! yet there is as little of sabbath feeling as of summer in it. What a lively old charm there is in the chime of village bells, sonorously rising and falling with the breeze, heard from hamlet to hamlet,, in solitary fields as you loiter on stiles and bridges, or lie down by rippling streams! On the wearisome world of waters, with a refreshing sense, come the memories of those seasons. Those bells are chiming yet; and yet lie on the thymy turf, loiterers, other listeners, unconscious of death and distance, perpetually going on in the midst of all that holiday sunshine and pleasure. Many, who strolled with me through the sweet summer sabbath fields of our native land, lie under the green sward there, or in alien lands, and I am on the Austral Ocean, thence seventeen thousand miles. Death there has been and dispersal; nor can we tell when will take place the general and final reunion. Lat. 38° 42' S., long. 113° 25' E.

January 20.—A day like many of its predecessors.

January 21.—Very delightful weather; more delightful still, every day brings us nearer Australia. Lat. 38° 40' S., long. 119° E.

January 22.—Visited to-day by porpoises, an immense shoal.

January 23.—Tropical-like weather. Sky covered over with a soft net-work of clouds, through which glimmers the purest azure. The air soft and luxurious; such must be the effect of the Australian atmosphere. Lat. 39° 20' S., long. 123° 32' E.

January 24.—Such sunrises, summer noons, twilights, and sunsets, goldenly gorgeous! never have we had since we left the equator. The winds are too gentle, and our progress too slow. Every day gets more anxious and interesting in queries about the land. Everlastingly we hear, "How far have we to go?"— "How far is it to King's Island?"—"Are we not yet opposite Kangaroo Island, and Adelaide?"

January 25.—The sea is gone to sleep; a most delicious sleep! soft and deep as the slumber of childhood. There is not even a breath of air to waft the sails against the masts: the ship is quiet as a house:—

"As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean."

It is a fearful calm! "And the provisions are getting short," says one: "and they have opened to-day the last cask of water," says another: cries a third, "there are but two sheep and two pigs left; the rice is nearly out, the peas and the sugar; there is no white biscuit; and of the flour, of which one cask per week is used, there are only two casks remaining:" "and," murmurs a fourth, "so near the land; and so long as we have been at sea; and every day for the last two weeks talking and expecting, and ardently desiring, and all in vain, to be soon in Launceston. It is really too bad!" Much of this murmuring disposition had cause enough in the long sea-weariness; but as it regarded provisions and water, was not perfectly correct. The ship is under-, going some repairs, and the seamen are busy day after day painting her, so that we expect to go into Launceston (we do not exactly know when,) rather smart. On Wednesday we had left Portsmouth sixteen weeks: and on this day twenty-one weeks ago we set sail from Gravesend.

Very unpleasant and dispiriting! at noon the wind freshened in the worst quarter for us, and we are going southward, which is little better than not going at all.

January 26.—Sunday. Another week, and our old ship lingers on the ocean as though she loved it,—which we do not. A most comfortable sea-home this ship would be to any person more in love with wind and waves than we are. 1 do not find, however, amongst our seamen any who prefer the sea to the land. Not one of them is "where he would ever be." At sea, every trip, they determine that it shall be "the last voyage." Yet, on land, after a few days passed amongst old acquaintances and relatives, and after a most reckless expenditure of money, they feel themselves useless, aimless, and hopeless; and they again, urged by long habit, and as a last resource, embrace their old enemy the sea, their tormentor and their grave. Lat. 40° 23' S., long. 128° 44' E.

January 27.—For many days the wind has been driving us to the southward! and our captain expects that we shall have to sail south of the island, round by Hobart Town, for Launceston. We are now nearly in the latitude of that town, and if the wind keeps as it is, there will be no alternative. The prevailing winds in this part of the southern hemisphere in Jan. and Feb., are easterly. The breeze has strengthened, and towards evening has blown hard: and here we are tossing about, after a passage of one hundred and fifty-two days, on the billowy sea, in this miserable acorn. Oh! the wearisome old piece of wood. Lat. 42° 13' S., long. 131° 21' E.

January 28.- All night blowing contrarily a gale; but, thanks to Providence! the wind has changed, and we are going east. Surely it will continue.

Sea-weed seen, and some new kind of birds: palpable indications of land!

January 29—Delusive was the favourable wind,—we were soon becalmed. All night the ship slept on the water. Gentle breezes every now and then spring up: now it is light; and the sea presents the most singular appearance. Everywhere, most oddly mingled, are bright, mirror-like breadths of ocean, ruffled to a file-like roughness at intervals. It seems like sedgy meadows, with a flood amongst the sedge. More sea-weed seen; and a branch with green leaves upon it. To be going so slowly, how tantalising, with these intimations of very near land-neighbourhood! Lat. 42° 43' S., long. 136° 27' E.

January 30.—Wearisome, most wearisome, are these calms; they make us feel peevish. A dead whale is seen, to windward unfortunately. It is nearly hidden from observation by the multitude of birds resting upon, to gorge themselves with it. When we passed it the smell was horrible.

January 31.—The last day of another month, and surely nearly the last day of our voyage. We are kept in perpetual excitement with the expectation of seeing land, and are daily, nay hourly, keeping a silent look-out for it. Only going five knots per hour in the forenoon; now rather more cheerfully in the afternoon, seven or eight knots. Lat. 41° 43' S., long. 138° 80' E.

February 1.—Very generous wind blowing all night; surely ten knots; to make up for lost time. Now rather too liberal: we did not desire to take in sail, but have been compelled to do. What a contrast does the sea now present, from what it was a few days ago! Now urged into mountain-waves, and dread abysses; the wild winds like lions rampant; the oeean all billowy agitation. How strange, whilst this gale is howling, does it seem that the wind can fold itself up like a lamb, and sleep glassily on the mirror-like deeps.

Outward indications of land to-day, the same as yesterday-birds and sea-weed. Internal evidence of its neighbourhood:— the windlass has been cleared; the anchors slung at the bows ready for dropping; and the chain-cable got out and fitted. The very clinking of the chains had music in them. I thought of the prisoner whose chains were about to be knocked off:

"—Chains of the deep,
That clank not, yet are seen."

Nothing thought of, nothing talked of, nothing done, but with reference to our place of destination. A kind of ever-wakeful animation and cheering activity everywhere.

February 2.—Masses of seaweed, large masses. A ship near us, holding on evidently for the same point, Bass' Straits. We have just exchanged intelligence. It is the Delhi of Liverpool, out from that port 127 days, to Adelaide. She left the latter place ten days ago. The Branken Moor, which came alongside in the Downs, and left Portsmouth a few days before us, had not yet arrived, but was daily expected. To meet with an English ship, and talk with our country-people, after such a voyage, in such a far-away part of the watery world, is very delightful. A large flock of birds has just gone by us; we suppose, from King's Island to the Australian coast.

Still anxiously looking onward for the first glimpse of land. Many a cloud will be called King's Island as we gaze at them, when they rise above the deep, and tinge darkly the horizon.

Eleven o'clock, Sunday noon. Land seen from the cross-trees by a sailor, supposed to be Cape Otway!

King's Island is just on before us, and is now in sight! It is dim, yet clearly land. The first Australian land seen by us generally. Ten minutes to two o'clock. All afternoon and evening the island has been near us, not more than ten or twelve miles off. The wind from the south blowing us briskly on. The steep yellowish-white sandy shores somewhat resembling, only not so very precipitous, the chalky cliffs of England. The mountain slopes and heights are well-wooded. The summits covered with immense trees—gigantic—resting in clear relief against the open sky.

February 3.—This very delicious morning we are becalmed. Towards noon the wind has freshened; and on we speed. It is four o'clock: and one of the sailors on the look-out announces, "Land on the lee-bow!" There it is, clearly defined, to the south-west. It proved to be Three Hummock Island, one of Hunter's Group. On, on we went, seven knots an hour: the island on our lee enlarging: then, as it grew dusk, lessening towards the west, near the paly light lingering on the sky after the sunset.

February 4.—At two in the morning we made the first point of Van Diemen's Land: which, at day-break, proved to be Circular Head. Other land stretched on along the sea, south-eastward: Rocky Cape, with its white cliffy-base; and the Heatly Hills, brown and black, beyond: the brown, barren moorlands, and the black woodland.

Further on lay in sight distinctly, coming into the sea with a bold sweep, Table Cape. Beyond, and above, there were two vast hills, one over Rocky Cape inland: and the other receding far betwixt Rocky Cape and Table Cape.

All forenoon the sun had glowed more burningly than in the tropics, for there is not sufficient wind to cool the fiery atmosphere. Now, near noon, the breeze is cool and refreshing, and as we speed on, with the wind in the right quarter for us, reach after reach of the country grows upon us. Near and nearer we approach the round, or the sharp, promontories: see many capacious bays: the land appearing one endless succession of hills, wooded from the summits to the water's edge: all the country one vast wood.

Leaving on our lee House-top-range, a vast mountain inland, another hill like Snowdon, as seen from Capel Kerrig: Emu Bay and River, one of the settlements belonging to the Van Diemen's Land Agricultural Company: Port Sorrel, Prince Frederick's Bay, and in the dusk approaching the lighthouse of Port Dalrymple; "our harbour," but not "our ultimate repose."

All day long did we look unweariedly on the novel region; seeing woods and wooded mountains endlessly. A little after noon there was a cry of a steamer coming from the land, from betwixt Circular Head and Rocky Cape, a long line of smoke steadily stretching on towards us. All was expectation. We talked, much elated, of the time when these thickly-timbered shores would be cultivated fields, savagery giving way to civilisation—of the now wilderness thickly covered then, built over with busy towns—of agriculture, manufactures and commerce progressing rapidly; and when these seldom-traversed seas would be covered over with vessels innumerable, like another English Channel, and with steamers not a few. We looked again and again—there was smoke, but no steamer. It was plainly enough, at length, only from some immense inland fire: where convicts were busy clearing, and burning off the timber. Other fires we soon knew there must be, for other masses of smoke came, mimicking steamers, from the land. Soon, indeed, we saw cloud after cloud glimmering in the sun over the country. As we went coasting along during a forty-five miles' sail, many a sad eye would l est upon our ship, as we attracted the attention of the convicts, busily, employed at their bush-fires, burning off and clearing the land. "Perhaps," they would say, "it is a miserable company of wretches like ourselves—outcasts from their homes, and native country."

Mow delightful it was once more to see the sun go down over the land, after seeing it dip into the ocean only, for eighteen weeks—how sweet to inhale the land-breeze strongly impregnated with the warm fresh aromatic odour of burning wood! And how beautiful and rich a spectacle was there presented by the sunset sky, the dense dark masses of woods resting in strong relief against the ruddy and saffron heavens—all the west bathed in the warmest tone of colouring. We looked on the land untiringly, hour after hour, till the shadows of night darkened down upon it, till the first stars appeared above it like glittering points of pale silver, till the woodlands were partly lost in haze, and the whole land in the half-darkness of a fine Australian night. I never felt so completely absorbed by any situation or scene.

At seven o'clock, our captain saw, what he supposed to be, a sail in the distance before us; but our chief-mate having seen the same object years before, knew it for Port Dalrymple Lighthouse. Soon the beacon-fire blazed in it cheerfully, and, like P. M. James, the poet—

"As I gazed on the waves' playful motion,
Methought that the Beacon looked lovely as Hope,
That star of Eternity's ocean."

When we approached it more nearly, perhaps seven miles off our light and flag were displayed for a pilot: the ship's guns were fired, and rockets sent up to announce our arrival. We looked and listened long and vainly for any answering signal. When we had approached the shore as closely as was compatible with safety, the ship was turned about,—the captain intending to beat-to and again until morning, or the coming of the pilot. All night long we were compelled to sail backward and forward at a convenient distance from the coast—firing guns at intervals, like a ship in distress, the winds strong and wailing through the rigging. By way of pastime, the seamen talked how the vessels Tam O'Shanter, and the Portland, besides others, had been wrecked here. Here a long reef stretches out far into the sea, and the noise of breakers being heard by the captain, walking the quarter-deck—he calls out to the men who have the watch—what it was, and what they were about that they did not report it? He expecting them to give the alarm— and they concluding that he knew where he was, and was a spectator as well as themselves. There was loud upbraiding—a sudden bustle—the ship was turned about—all in good time—and the noise of the breakers was soon left behind. With daylight we again made for the port, guns were again fired; and about six o'clock the pilot, rowed by four convicts, common-looking fellows, came on board.

February 5.—We were much pleased with the well-wooded country round about the graceful entrance of the river Tamar. The day was bright; the country inland similar to what we had seen along-shore—all wooded. The small castellated lighthouse is well situated, and it, and the pilot's house, are well built.

How pleasant, yet diminutive, seemed the cottages, and the patches of cleared land! diminished, no doubt, by the immense seas we had been accustomed so long to look upon, and by the vast woods in which they were situated. Yet pleasant were they to the eye, and everything we saw. A fine capacious river is the Tamar, winding voluminously in many a vast reach. Lakes they seemed, as we turned to and again, now in the middle, and now sweeping the sides; in some places more than a mile in width, some four or six in length, the entrance and onward course hidden by the maziness of the stream amongst the woodlands.

It is forty-four miles from Port Dalrymple to Launceston; its navigation requiring great care, being navigable only for small craft, except with the tide; and then, winding as the river is, infinitely more circuitous is the vessel's course, to avoid the islands and more numerous shallows of its stream.

All the birds we saw were new to us, except the crow. Of crows, we saw a very friendly congregation; and their cawing, though a hoarser discord than that of the British carrion-crow, was, in its sound, familiar and agreeably homely. The swallows, too, attracted our notice. These, and we saw martins also, both of them were smaller, though the same in flight and twitter.

We saw cormorants, or shags, and "convict-parsons"—a bird dressed in priestly sable, with a cravat of white feathers—whence the odd name: sea-poys, many gulls, and a larger species of the whale-bird, more like a common pigeon, all very new and quite Australian. As we went further inland, I was reminded of the Westmoreland and Cumberland lake scenery; only the different character and olive-green tone of colouring of the woods gave the new spectacle greater novelty. The banks were wooded, slopingly, into the water; in some places dipping the low hanging tresses of the trees into the mirroring stream. Every now and then the silvery gleam of gum-tree boles, reminding us of birch-trees in the woods of Newstead, as their whiteness was imprinted on the rocky dark-water shadows.

Very delightful were the many half-cultivated openings in the dense woods; here, a very small hut, the home most likely of a small hard-working settler, surrounded by little fields indeed; the black stumps standing thickly among the brown stubble; there, a snug panneled wooden-house, the work of those Australian-London house-builders, Manning or Thompson; and brought hither by some wealthy British emigrant; for not only is the house elegant, but the grounds are lawn-like, trees being left in groups quite park-like, and the very air of the place wafts you impressions of ease and affluence. Then, as you get on farther, there are quite farms—fields after fields of cultivated land. You see substantial farm-houses and out-buildings; horses and cattle look out from clearings in the woods, here and there; there are gardens, too, and trees loaded with fruit. Nearer to the river corn-fields, partly reaped, and standing corn, are observed; there are also—we can, notwithstanding the breadth of the river and the distance, discern them—reapers at work; corn is set up in stooks. Away from several fields they are carrying the corn on drays, to which are yoked four, six, and eight oxen. So they did in thickly-wooded England, when their conquerors, and agriculture, civilised the aboriginal Britons. Here they have a vast advantage over those ancients in our improved agricultural science and implements. As scene after scene moved, with all its lively and novel imagery before the eye, whilst the wind and tide were carrying us rapidly up the river, all was delightful excitement. Then everything seemed— farm-houses, cottages, fields, and the cattle—all so very small; our eyes having, as I said before, been so familiarised with immensity.

Such another day we can never have, unless it be our destiny to sail up some of the mighty and famous North American rivers. Yet, in the midst of all this novelty and delight, came over the mind, painfully, the horrible visitation the arrival of European settlers had proved to the aboriginal island-people. Naboth had been killed, and here was his vineyard. There is no pleasant land on the face of the earth, or isle in the sea's bosom, that we are not ready to take possession of—and to kill Naboth. Of a large population, once the undisputed occupiers of this country, not more now than a dozen of its swarthy islanders veil themselves from their merciless pursuers, in their yet impenetrable forests. These have melted away more swiftly from European contact, than the vanishing from the American woods of the more intelligent Indians. The few remaining aboriginal Tasmanians have been transferred hence to Flinders' Island; where, like prisoners after a mortal conflict and direful victory, they drop, one by one, childless there, into the grave.*

Our pilot did his office very skilfully; not so the harbour-master, as we neared the place of anchorage, into whose hands the vessel had been, by the pilot, surrendered. He, bustling everywhere about the ship, and stammering, looking at the same time half-eagerness, half-timidity, managed, as if very young in such matters, instead of quietly conducting us to a safe place, to guide our poor devoted ship right into the solid bank of the river. Here we were fast enough; and there was great labour to get the vessel out of the bank, there being little time to be lost, the tide falling here eight or ten feet. We were in due time, however—after our forty-five miles' up-river progress, after seeing George's Town, near Port Dalrymple, with its neat church, pretty and convenient harbour, its black old weather-beaten windmills, and after catching many a lovely glimpse of river scenery, after passing in safety through Whirlpool Reach, and past the Devil's Elbow—safely anchored, with the shipping round about us, before us, embosomed amidst gently sloping fields, the whole almost of its scattered and congregated dwellings spread out before us in clear prospect, of one of the two principal Tasmanian towns, its secondary port. — Reader, we are at Launceston.

The town is a strange medley of stone, and brick, and wood. Its streets wide enough, but ill-paved. Yet, though many are its blank and half-blank streets and squares, it has many substantial dwellings. Still you are perpetually reminded of its unequal and fitful growth, by the strange mingling of genteel stone-and-brick with tumble-down wooden houses. It has one very respectable Episcopalian edifice, and another is talked of. The Catholics, too, have their church; and many are the goodly and roomy chapels of the Dissenters.

February.—I find, oil closer observation, the town more extensive, a more thriving and important place, than I imagined. Many and commodious are its public buildings; its Exchange especially. St. John's Church is filled so full, as to leave no room for strangers; it is well that another and larger one is to be built. The Wesleyans have a large congregation. Then there are Independents and Presbyterians. However numerous and eloquent may be the ministers of religion, however zealous and pious they may be, their numbers will need augmenting; their zeal, eloquence, and piety, to be no less, but more. And, in addition to this, there must be no lack of schoolmasters abroad, if they are to counteract the evil leaven, whose tendency is but too generally to leaven the whole lump. The ratio of the population, is one free man to two and a half convicts; and of the free how many have been convicts! It is said that there is less actual crime committed in this country than in England. Perhaps it is that the police-force is more on the alert and more effective here. And this new country may have another advantage; no hungry generations have been treading down each other, consequently the pressure of destitution is in a great measure taken off. Were not this the case, few people would, where there are now many, go to bed commonly with unlocked doors.

The religions of this disreputable region are many, and of many denominations.

Many of the Launceston shops are handsomely fitted up. Some of them would do no discredit to our country towns. The prices asked for articles are enormous; in this respect you are instantly reminded that you are not in England.

The people are certainly well-to-do. If they do condescend to work, they will be well paid for it. There is no poverty but what is the result of improvidence or indiscretion. (1840.)

Apples lie under the trees rotting; the owners will not be at the trouble to gather them for less than two dollars the bushel. Thus the high price is not the result of scarcity.

February 16.—Our second Sunday in Tasmania. The day is very warm and bright. The Tasmanian climate is certainly delicious. If the country has a brown, sunburnt appearance, the air is remarkably pure and healthful.

We have wandered about the Bush, and have seen and heard many sights and sounds novel to us. The sharp cry of parrots, the scream of cockatoos, the loud talk of the wattle-birds, whilst multitudinous was the clatter and whirl of bush-crickets—the din resembling some ten thousand bird-boys' clappers heard at a distance. Perhaps the dissonance was not a little aided by cicadas, with their spinning-jenny monotony. The kangaroos startled us, starting up with a sudden leap and away, away through the bushes and over the prostrate trees.

Abundance of the bush kangaroo and the wallaby, the middle sized and smaller species of the genera, are found in the grounds of a Mr. Beveridge, up to the very town of Launceston. Every thing you see reminds you of something similar in one's native country; shapes and tints, but nothing exactly the same. The fern very much resembles the common fern of the British isles. The bramble, too, with a red berry instead of a black, called here the wild raspberry, yet the fruit neither tasting like the one nor the other. Very beautiful are some of the smaller trees and shrubs; and what a charm would the wild cherry and the younger mimosas add to the English parks and lawns, to say nothing of the stateliness and strange beauty the Australian white and blue gum-trees, cedar, peppermint, and sassafras trees, if interspersed among shrubberies and English woods; how grand and graceful they would be, and how fascinating to tasteful eves!

Of grasshoppers there were myriads, jumping up everywhere before us; not only jumping, but flying everywhere on beautiful yellow wings, striped with black; this sight was as delightful as it was new. Snakes are abundant, and their bite is death. We have killed several of the most deadly kind, the black and the diamond snakes. Let us turn from the snakes to other—I was going to say vermin—but at present the convicts must satisfy us: the lowest species of the human genus.

Of the first five persons we saw in Van Diemen's Land, four were convicts, and perhaps the fifth. These were the assigned servants of the pilot. Instantly they approached our vessel, the sight of them rapt me in a reverie of criminal trials, of convicts, grey-wigs, black caps, reprieves, transportation; and lo! here they were. The very commonest shapes of debased, kind-of-man-animals ever seen. One of these fellows had been transported from the neighbourhood of Nottingham ten years before. He heard that on board our ship there were some Nottingham people, and he lost no time in making inquiries about his parents, of whom, however, I could give him no intelligence. About a person of the name of Brown, whose mother came to me in Nottingham, begging that I would make inquiries after her son, a fellow-transport, I obtained some information. At the mention of Brown's name, his countenance darkened. "Ay," said he; "we were fellows—old companions, and came out together; his sentence expires in a few months, but mine is for life!" Then talking about his native place, he grew abstracted, and taking an old broken penknife from his pocket, he pared his finger-nails unconsciously to the quick. Like Peter Bell's—

"His mind was sinking deep
Through years that had been long asleep."

He had not ceased to feel, to reflect, it was evident. He, after a long pause, declared that the one desire ever uppermost, was to undo much of the miseiy he had done,—to see his native place and kindred once more. That, to effect this, he had once smuggled himself on board of a homeward-bound ship, but was discovered before the ship sailed, and taken back and flogged for the attempt. He was not, however, faint-hearted; life he cared little about, but for freedom much, and he would, the first opportunity, try to escape again.

I have seen now the convict cham-gangs at work, on the highways, in the suburbs, and also in the town of Launceston; and now feel sure that there is more in the science of phrenology than I could before believe; and in physiology, too. The shapes of their heads are so all-alike. Their very countenances cut, as Lord Byron said,

"Such a convict figure!"

To one's thinking, you might hew at random, with a hatchet, out of a block of wood, many a better head than you see here amongst the wooden, heavy human blocks. Yet, deep commiseration is your feeling for them, as you gaze, softened, conscious that it is man looking on man, however fallen and miserable. Once here, it is difficult for them to regain their liberty, even at the expiration of their sentence. For very slight transgressions, additional years of servitude and penance are awarded them. This they say; but perhaps their old predatory habits are never entirely eradicated. Still, many will be, in spite of evil associations, amended. Yet of these not a few, after dreaming, year after year, of returning again to their native land, find when they reach it, after painfully wearing away the glow of youth, the prime of manhood, and all the promise of maturer years, that the England which they had left, and the England to which they had returned, were not the same. I have heard of such, who, misled by early impressions, and who, not allowing time, death, and change, the large empire they had claimed, bitterly repented ever returning at all.

March 10.—The Tamar is a fine expanse of water, when the tide is up, but at low water, half of it is a mud flat; at high water, the width of the Thames. The town, although of forty years' growth, has not that accommodation for the shipping resorting to it which there ought to be. A bar at the head of the Tamar, where the North Esk joins it, approaching the town, has only three feet of water, when the tide is out; and prevents vessels that draw more than twelve feet from passing it at high-tide. 'Midst many a vessel, ship, barque, and brig, that surround us, lie the Sovereign, from Liverpool, and the Chalydra, from Bristol. Yes, here they are; people from Liverpool and from Bristol and the sight of them is pleasant, if we do not converse. To know that they have undergone the same dangers, have come through the same immense ocean, have perhaps been frequently near us, blown about by the same winds, or lulled to inactivity by the same calms, often perhaps in sight of each other, especially in the neighbourhood of the Line; and now here, calmly at anchor in the Tamar, may-be with like emotions gazing on these surrounding novelties, saddened by like remembrances, clouded by the same doubts, or animated by as cheering, or brighter expectations; these circumstances give them, from fellow-feeling, a strong claim on our sympathies. Success to them!

This country seems to me a different rendering, a new translation, of the old and familiar world. Here are many things that seem, but prove not to be, the same. Amongst other novelties, is that of a fern-tree, rising commonly five or six feet high, the trunk thick as a man's middle; and ornamented with plumy leaves, like the osmunda-royal. To see many of these, as in a glen of the South Esk, is a wonderful and delightful scene.

The river Tamar, salt water, terminates at Launceston, and there empty themselves into it two small fresh water streams, the North Esk and the South Esk. The South Esk is remarkable for its scenery, its basins, and its cataract—heard for miles in calm weather. No one should visit Launceston and leave it unseen. We went up as far as the river was fordable with our boat; our course under the shadow of the rocks and shrubs, seen far above us towards heaven. The rocks of basalt are massive, and in columns like those of Fingal's Cave, in Staffa, rising up almost perpendicularly, interspersed with the most beautiful evergreen trees and shrubs. Perhaps the scenery gives the name of Esk to the river: certainly for wild and stately beauty, there is nothing of its compass to surpass it in Dovedale, at Matlock, or in Borrowdale.

We have now been at anchor in the Tamar nearly a month— a sad waste of time; day after day, and week after week, spent in the expectation of continuing our voyage: yet pleasures we have reaped abundantly, whilst making excursions into the neighbouring country, or sailing about the river, oftentimes the bland full moon and multitudinous stars reflecting themselves tranquilly in the ebbing and flowing water about us.

Once we made a party rather disagreeably. We left the ship in the passengers' boat, to land near the place most noted for kangaroos, but we had delayed our jaunt a little too long: the tide was running out fast, and in many places the bare mud revealed itself; so that when we were half-way betwixt the ship and the land, we were fixed fast in the mud. There we were: efforts were unavailing; nothing could stir the boat: and thus situated, we had to wait for the returning tide. Five hours —that was the time we had to wait. We looked upon the woods and upon the ship. Very merry at our expense were the ship-people; and we, notwithstanding our vexation, tried to be merry also. We were stuck in the mud: so were our comrades in the ship, only they had more room, and the commonness of the situation considerably lessened its ludicrousness. Some of our company smoked cigars; others amused themselves with shooting; others lay down to sleep.

Many kangaroos have been killed by our people. Pies and soups, made of the flesh, are excellent. One kangaroo, only, did I kill in the valley of Fern Trees, near one of the basins of the Esk. I killed it, and in return it nearly killed me. It was no joke to cany the dead carcase, nearly as large as that of a sheep, over dead trees, and through the dense forest scrub, for three miles. Many times I thought to abandon it, but the trouble and perspiration already endured caused me to persevere. I never attempted to kill another kangaroo.

Five weeks, and now we are preparing to go down the river to Georgetown, where we tike in cattle and sheep, completing our cargo for Port Phillip. The aspect of this country, and that of its convict inhabitants, are forbidding: both of them seem as dry as the "remainder biscuit." Still, all the necessaries, and many of the luxuries of life, are obtainable, lying on palpably before the eyes of persevering industry. (1840.)

Many are the pleasant breaks and openings in the matted woods, sprinkled over with substantial farmhouses and cottages of gentility, by fresh rivers, with their neat and comfortable surrounding lawns, parks, and farmsteads; picturesque places enough, where the guilty and miserable have toiled and suffered; and where not a few fortunate adventurers, who got land for nothing, and labour for little, are wealthy, iook on their herds and flocks feeding in safety; perhaps enjoying their existence, feeling themselves powerful, and like princes of the country.

Go wherever you will, there are bullock-teams; these do the labour of the land—plough, carry wood and water. The horses, consequently, are only bred for the saddle, racing, &c.; very fine boned and light.

March 17.—We are in the condition of Sterne's starling, "We can't get out." Nine months out of the twelve the wind blows up the Tamar. We sailed pleasantly up in one day, and we have now been three days coming a mile and a half; and not without much labour have we accomplished this little. There has been endless weighing and casting anchor. On Friday next we shall have been on board this endless vessel twenty-nine weeks. Ships are frequently five and six weeks in getting out of this perfect trap—this shallow, mud-flatted river Tamar.

When any emigrant from England to these colonies has an offer of going in any vessel not direct for his port, and there is another for his port direct in one or more months, let him, if time hangs heavy on his hands, get a place on the treadwheel, for one or more months, rather than not go direct for his intended haven. Independently of the time thrown away—and the Australian voyage is long enough in all conscience—the uncomfortableness of being on board of a loading and unloading ship, and amongst a set of passengers of whom—or some of them—you have rationally grown weary; and amongst a reckless, selfish, and swinish crew of seamen, the unpleasantness is past calculation. God help the emigrant who does not make the best of a bad bargain, and go direct for his port!

March 29.—0, the wonder! the wind blows gently down the river. It is the sabbath, a calm bright day. Four boats are manned, and all the crew are busy towing the ship down the Tamar to George Town. There at length we are.

Fourteen days we have been, sometimes taking in ballast, but mostly hindered by adverse winds, lingering betwixt Launceston and this place.

We have been long enough at Swan Point and Spring Bay. Have passed again safely through Whirlpool Reach and by the Devil's Elbow, places sometimes fatal to small vessels. At Swan Point I first saw, in their own free element, black swans; and made the discovery, often discovered before, that they are not entirely black, the breast and under the wings being white. Here also I was gratified with the sight of a pelican of the wilderness, (the word wilderness seeming to me very appropriate, as I looked at the tall, large, erect, solitary creature,) the broad river and the immense surrounding woods.

Here I shot a kangaroo-rat, large as a rabbit; the first seen by any of our passengers. It is said to be delicious eating; I had their word for it, and satisfied myself with that.

Near Swan Point is Egg Island, once famous for its nests of black swans. Nearer to us, betwixt the island and the surrounding woods, lay Spring Bay. Over Spring Bay amongst the high grounds, seen at intervals through the trees, were immense piles of stones, like those of Stonehenge; or rather resembling some old castle in ruins.

Our companions in their bush-excursions met with many instances of simple hearty hospitality. A few of them, when lost far in the forest, came unexpectedly on a saw-pit with its two solitary workmen, most likely the only residents for ten miles round; cut off from society, though convicts, they were men, and immediately directed the hungry party to their hut, empty of residents but not of food, telling them to help themselves to what was there eatable. All recompence is in such cases strenuously refused.

Oftentimes when you enter an out-of-the-way cottage, where the goodman and his wife happen to be at home, your company is quite a godsend to them. The motherly body no sooner sees you enter than she puts on the kettle; no matter what time of the day it is, you must have tea, the universal beverage. The husband meanwhile sets you a three-legged stool, seating himself at the same time on a chest—an old sea-weary chest, the commonest piece of furniture in Australian huts and cottages. Then whilst she is busy preparing the eatables, he is busy also with interesting queries about England; for they at once know intuitively as it were, perhaps by the cut of your clothes, that you are newly arrived. If you happen to come from their part of the old country, or near, what a brightening of countenances there is! you seem at once old friends and neighbours—

"— you appear
Peculiar people—distance makes you dear."

There is no end of talk. Then the meal is ready; the universal woodland meal, tea, damper, mutton, or salt pork.

Wherever you see a Woman in the hut, there's also comfort. Yet it generally happens that sawyers and woodmen generally are by two and three in a place, located without a woman at all. Then, they have no way of expending what money they receive except in drunkenness or debauchery; thus it happens, wages being high and money easily earned, it is spent as recklessly. Two sawyers or wood-splitters will often, after toiling on solitarily, month after month, go into the town with 50l. or 60l.; this is gone in a few days of extravagant folly; then, in an utter state of destitution they sling at their backs the old kangarooskin knapsack, and away they go again far into the forest to toil and save for another such outbreak.

This country is as much infested as New South Wales with robbers, runaway convicts, or, as they are termed, Bush-rangers. One gentleman said that his residence, looking very pleasantly on the river Tamar, was not so delightfully situated as it seemed to be; for there were Beard and Fisher, the Robin Hoods and Little Johns of the country, in his neighbourhood; famous kangaroo-hunters, men of renown. They had paid him one visit and he lived in fear of another. Two hundred pounds reward, we were told, had been offered for each of the heads of these notorious freebooters.

Like our ancient dwellers in "the green, green wood," they are celebrated for their gentle courtesy to the fair sex.

April 1.—In George-town harbour; preparing to set sail. Here we have had many very pleasant rambles, one to the northeast coast. Here I first saw the Australian lark, very similar to our skylark in size, plumage and motion, but silent. At night, in the dark, a bat very similar to the English one, was circling about the ship. This day we gathered abundance of mushrooms, good; but—perhaps it was prejudice—I fancied some that I had tasted, years ago, superior.

We leave George Town Harbour, after the ship has been searched for convicts and our names called over: sail a mile or two, then again cast anchor near Port Dalrymple Light-house.

April 2.—A favourable wind; but we are prevented from taking advantage of it through the non-appearance on board of the Inspecting-officer of this part of Van Diemen's Land. The ship has again to be searched thoroughly, for expected-to-be-hidden convicts; the poor wretches being apt to conceal themselves in outward-bound vessels, especially in Bast Indiamen and American traders.

How vexations! the breeze is fair and strong; the ship's gun has been fired seven or eight times; it is now noon; and now, how deliberately rowed in state by convict slaves, does the smooth tall gentleman come to liberate us. Two constables attend him; one of them, God save the mark! armed with a rusty old sword. These latter gentlemen, not satisfied with looking all over last night, have again thrust their noses into every hole and corner of the ship, during our absence, tumbling about everything in our berths. Alas for Mr. Massey! his watch, a valuable one, disappeared during this scrutiny; either pocketed by these ex-robbers or others who, as passengers, went on with us to Port Phillip.

We now set sail. Adieu to Tasmania!

April 3.—Out in Bass' Straits, renewing acquaintance with the roll and swell of the sea. Before us is a ship, we think, bearing on with us for Port Phillip; after long observation it proves to be stationary. It is evidently waylaying us. Now it is noon, and we draw near it. Our captain has been with his telescope looking for a long time steadfastly. What can it be? With backed yards it awaits our approach. Now a boat is lowered, and is filled with men. They come towards us. All is expectation. After all it is the Helen, out from England more than two years; now trading between Australia and China; the crew are on short allowance of provisions; they have only three pieces of beef left; the scurvy as well as starvation has made its appearance amongst them; they are expecting to reach Sydney in a few days. Our captain has supplied them with fresh meat and vegetables—a great relief to them.

In the evening we looked on before us, to catch the first glimpse of New Holland. No land however appeared.

Watch was kept on the forecastle. I and my nephew in the dim darkness pointed out first one, and then another vessel, holding out, as we thought, from Port Phillip. So indeed, it proved. By this, Mr. Archibald Tom, an Australian settler who had resided in Van Diemen's Land, and had often gone this trip, knew and said that the captain was holding too far westward. Had we been going in the right direction, with our favourable wind, we must have seen, this very evening, the Australian shore.

April 4.—All eyes are incessantly watching for the faintest glimpse of the long-voyaged for—long and most ardently expected land. Many have been up all night; others have satisfied themselves with occasionally quitting their berths, to make inquiries, to see the Southern Cross, and Venus shining resplendently—to look on the old and familiar sea rocking and rolling in the half-darkness; to hear the new welcome wild cries of shore-haunting sea-fowl, and to watch phosphoric flashings all about the vessel, supposed to be caused by barracoota darting like lightning after their prey.

Not until nine o'clock this morning, was it certain that the coast of Australia was dimly discernible: and that like a thick interminable ridge of mountainous cloud. It grew however more distinct, and all hearts were cheered with the certainty of being in full prospect of land! the bold, high, and far-stretching shore of Australia. Unfortunately for us, this whole day—and a finer one for us there could not have been—was lost through our captain's want of knowledge about these seas, never having traversed them before. Thus we had to tack about all day in sight of land, to win, out of the wind's teeth, the fifty miles lost by going that distance too far westward. Towards evening, we neared the heads of Port Phillip. All night lying to, becalmed, we were within the perpetual roar of breakers on the Australian coast.

April 5—Dawned upon us, and upon the sea a perfect mirror. There lay Cape Schank, running out into the sea, eastward; Arthur's Seat, a stately mountain overlooked Port Phillip Bay, beyond Point Nepean. Station Peak, in the neighbourhood of Geelong, was a noble object. There we slept in the sun, the sea brilliantly undulating, the same murmur coming continuously from the shore. This was our last Sabbath on the ocean. At noon a breeze sprang up: when taking immediate advantage of it, we fetched about, made many short tacks, and entered the Heads of Port Phillip, amidst such a wild and stormy mass of agitated water as we had never seen. Nor is this to be wondered at, though in itself astonishing, when we reflect that through the narrow space of one mile, the enormous bulk of tide-water must pass; twenty-five miles in breadth, and sixty in length, impelled onward by the all-at-once moving tide. Well may the narrow passage of this tide-flood look horribly convulsed, and like a witches cauldron.

We were twice aground: the bay in some places not being more than two fathoms deep. The last time we were too fast to be easily liberated. The remainder of Sunday, and all day on Monday, unavailing efforts were made to get off.

On Tuesday forenoon, a party of us took a boat and went to the nearest shore, and there, several miles from the ship, we first set foot upon the terra firma of Australasia. The appearance of things would have been much more striking had we not, before touching here, familiarised ourselves with what there was novel in the character of Australian seenery, by an eight weeks' residence in Van Diemen's Land.

It was a great change and delightful, however, from the matted woods, from the vast and endless ranges of wooded mountains, to look upon a more level, more pastoral, and thinlywooded region.

In the afternoon, we had now a pilot, or a person calling himself such. The vessel being got off the sand-bank, we sailed up the bay with a fine breeze—and, blessings on the good old ship! we beg her pardon for finding fault with her so often! we cast anchor (in Hobson's Bay) opposite the pretty little embryo town called William's Town.

Thanks! infinite thanks to the kind Providence who thus brought our voyage to a safe and pleasant termination!

* Vainly. The "Visitor of Remarkable Places "led us away, from our ship and port, to visit Winchester and other famous localities.

* This she actually did before we left the Channel.

* A year or two after this was written, of nine natives that were observed in the neighbourhood of Circular Head, seven were captured, taken by sea to Launceston, and thence to their final living grave, Flinders' Island.

TENT-LIFE AND DISPERSAL.

What a change was this! From the old world to the new,— from civilisation with old habits, customs, and conventional usages, to the simplest mode of life, new scenes, and an entirely new situation. Our good and substantial brick houses we had abandoned for canvas ones—our new carpets were cut out of nature's, just the size of our tents—there was no waste of material—and our servants were ourselves. We had left the good old ship too not without regret: a feeling of regard will grow out of long companionship, and that was our first dispersal.

Yet at the tents were still bound together a goodly company of us. There was Mr. Hall, a most gentlemanly and facetious person, full of anecdote, with his large family. His tent was splendid,—the very best. Then there were the Messrs. Greeves's with their families, and a tent each. The Bakewells and my brother with two tents, in the latter of which I was located. Then every tent had its one or two tea-tree huts. Altogether our settlement, Tentville, as we called it, was a very snug and picturesque little village. The site of it was a long and broad flat on the south side of the River Yarra, opposite Melbourne. On the river, our boat was ready whenever we had errands into the town, or excursions up or down the Yarra, many of which we pleasantly made. Nothing could be more delightful than our exploring expeditions by land and by water. We had guns with us, and were always seeing and killing some, to us, new kind of bird or animal. Nor was it alone the creatures we shot or saw; there was the bland feeling of sociality, a fine breezy, delicious atmosphere, new scenery, health and good animal spirits to give these effect; novelty mingling with everything for new excitement.

Often we had to take the boat down the river several miles, to cut reeds amongst the tea-tree marshes, to thatch our houses with. These beds of reeds had exactly the appearance of fields of ripe corn: and like genuine reapers we made bands, cut the reeds with sickles, and bound them up in sheaves. I have often thought how that reaping was a prototype of our colonial success—our fortune-reaping. Had we been more careful about the seed we sowed and the field we cultivated, the harvest might; have been otherwise; that which looked like corn and proved reeds, might have looked like reeds and proved corn.

We had no little toil and trouble at first,—tent-pitching, hutmaking, and the bringing up of our luggage from the vessel. On one occasion, whilst we oared our boat up the River Yarra full of boxes, it rained heavily, and heavier the nearer we approached Melbourne, now looking as though a thunder-cloud had burst upon us. Then we had always to present ourselves, and make our bow to the custom-house officers, before we had permission to land the boat with our luggage. There was vexation! and in the rain too. Then at the tents the fire was out, and we had no change of dress come-at-able. Fireless and dripping wet, nothing could be more comfortless. But that was only once.

Our first night at the tent who can ever forget? The wool mattress laid on a few boards placed on the bare ground, all our clothes and blankets wet. The wind and rain beating upon the tent; whilst the splashing and pattering sounds were wearisomely monotonous, and a fine spray danced through the canvas roof, fell drizzlingly upon us hour after hour. At length we could endure it no longer; so starting up, we suspended over our head an umbrella. There! our head was now comfortable; only that myriads of insects, apprehensive of another Noah's flood, came pouring in as though our tent were the ark:

"But such things you know must be
In every new colony."

When the village was complete, we were tolerably comfortable. Our kind of government was purely republican at first. We had but one fire, to which in our commonwealth every one contributed his proper quota of fuel. This was the focus of general attraction—here victuals were cooked, wit and anecdote flashed or sparkled for the good of all. Here the fire of the soul, as well as of wood, often blazed out brilliantly. Alas! good things are not everlasting. Our national fire at length went out: and instead of our large ox-roasting fire of the commonwealth, spiang up some five small fires, petty sovereignties. Our great councilfire did not, however, die away without regret: their lamentations being loudest who had done the least towards its maintenance.

Yet if our particular fire was less, it was more retired and domestic; and oftentimes in an evening first one and then another would join our fireside party: we had thus many a delightful evening. There was Mr. Hall, the soul of the party, with some always new droll anecdote; spirits circulated—good animal spirits—others substituting some brandy; and Mr. Hall had his unvaried pot of tea. There was quiet smoking, friendly chat, laughter, and always sober enjoyment. With these, time glided over us on golden pinions.

We had also serious occupation. A vast country lay around us, with its new interests. This we had to examine for our future location.

Our visitors were many, some of them very intelligent people. Others were mere speculators, on the look-out for other flats beside that on which we were located. Soon we had at our fire the singular, wild, red-and-white-earth-smeared-dirt-and-whalegrease-pomatumed aborigines. It was odd enough in this strange land to hear such creatures singing the beautiful songs of Burns —correctly too—with a grand rich voice; contrasted too with their outlandish dresses, and rude head ornaments—feathers of their country birds, and a profusion of kangaroo teeth.

Here we were tent-fixers, house-builders, wood-cutters; and this latter vocation was near getting us into trouble. Dead wood there was scattered about us in every direction abundantly, and large fires we made of it; nor were we satisfied with dead boughs and prostrate trunks; we had all of us axes, and of hewing down the old gum-trees we were never weary, it was so new and pleasant an employment. People located near us, however, did not look on all our wood-burning and wood-felling activity with much composure. We filled them with grievous apprehensions of a great scarcity of fuel: so they just hinted to us that to the felling of live timber without a license there was attached a penalty of ten pounds. True enough there was; but we had never heard or thought of such a thing: all we thought of was very innocently to enjoy ourselves to the utmost. We were, notwithstanding these intimations, sturdy tree-spoilers to the last, often trying very much the patient endurance of our rather choleric near neighbour, who would have informed against us only that one important man in the colony, his friend, was ours also. How easily some offenders escape!

Here it was that our hearty and most companionable shipmate, Mr. S—, rejoined us from Van Diemen's Land, adding new interest to our party. With him he brought over one-andtwenty Merino rams, and, located with us, commenced sheepkeeping on a small scale, waiting along with us for more improved times and measures.

Accompanied by this gentleman, I went a day's walk to the River Warrabee, thirty miles into a wild region.

A more delightful May morning could not possibly be than the one on which we started. The dawn had been cloudless, and as the sun clomb the heavens, the day was breezy, and there was brightness everywhere. As we left behind us Batman's Hill, and held our way over the uplands between Melbourne and the Saltwater river, and beyond it we saw shepherds with their flocks, heard the sweet tinkle of silver-toned sheep bells, and saw many a fleece golden in the rich sunshine. After us the morning sun "sowed all the eastern clime with orient pearl" —all was pearl—gold and azure—the Yarra, with its silvery reaches; the sun-briglitened earth; and overhead universally the soft cerulean of the atmosphere. I had breathed the animating breath of a spring morning in England: none like this; it was indeed

"The bridal of the earth and sky."

And then, where else but in Australia eould I find such a parklike Arcady?—mile after mile of the smoothest greensward, unbroken by any kind of fences; a sweet undulating land of knoll and slope and glen, studded over, not too thickly, but in a most picturesque manner, with she-oaks, trees of the softest and richest character imaginable? and under them were real shepherds! and sheep worthy of Colchos and Jason's theft. Nor did our eyes rest only on these sweet knolls and slopes; on shepherds and their sheep; on the windings of the bright Yarra. A turn backward showed us, distant and dim, the Australian Alps; before us Station Park; and nearer, the blue rolling water of the Port Phillip Bay, with its shipping. The scene and the season were alike delicious. Nothing about us, far or near, escaped our observation; and our walk was one of too much inward enjoyment for much talk. We were yet new enough to the country not to overpass anything that could minister to our pleasure. We had read and enjoyed many a fanciful picture of pastoral life; but here, for the first time, with many a pleasant accompaniment, was the reality. It was a morning never to be forgotten.

After we left the Saltwater-river, about two miles from Melbourne, and a creek about two miles further, containing only sweet water, sweet as if sugared, of which a taste is perfectly satisfying—after passing this creek, we had before us an immense trackless plain, lifeless and solitary as the ocean. Our guidingstar, Mount Ripon, twenty-five miles off, with nothing to diversify the way, only that we had what Wordsworth calls "the music of our own sad steps." In the midst of the plain, we came to a place where an emu had been killed; abundance of its feathers being strewn about. We saw also a bustard or two, here called turkeys, very large birds, and appearing larger, being the only objects betwixt us and the horizon. Except ourselves and these, we saw no trace of human or animal existence. A wonderfully wild region it was, with ranges of faint-blue mountains in the distance. Behind us also were mountainous ranges— and a portion of the inland sea of Port Phillip in full prospect, silverly bright. We did but just reach the river in the dusk. Rivers are easily discovered here, in the daylight, even far-off— the tones of the bell-bird falling pleasantly upon the traveller's ear. When we reached the Warrabee, these were still. We had to spend the night in the bush. Here we made our fire in a deep glen, boiled our tea, and made a comfortable, and you may depend upon it, a most palatable meal. Wrapped in a large opossum-skin rug, the fire blazing up cheerfully before us as we slept by fits; we were now and then startled by a splash in the river by perhaps a platypus, or the stamp of a kangaroo-rat, or a wombat angry at our intrusion, entertained by the harsh grating voice of the flying squirrel or the shriek of a night-hawk, or owl. Mount Ripon in our progress showed itself to us crowned with a crescent-wood from various aspects beautifully. I retain, and long shall do, a pleasant feeling of the two days' jaunt, owing in some measure to the pleasing society of cheerful, honest, and companionable Mr. S—. Success attend him! at his sauattine station on the Saltwater-river.

Whilst at the tents, we attended the most celebrated of the land sales of Port Philip—that of June 10th, 1840. There it was that the land mania was the most rabid. How far it seemed adapted to suit our preconceived notions or necessities, may be gathered from the fact, that out of 20,000l. intended by our shipmates to have been invested in land, only 608l. was so invested. Still the land sale was gratifying to us for three especial reasons. Mr. La Trobe, superintendent, of the province, was permitted by the Sydney authorities to select twenty acres from the government reserve, subject to its being put up by auction. Thus the price he must pay depended on the good or ill will of the people. At all events he was then popular, for there was no opposition, and at the fall of the hammer, loud was the gratulatory voice, amid the waving of hats and caps.

On one of the lots to be sold was the cottage of a widow, who had several children. One person only had the want of feeling to bid against her, when, I think it was Captain Lonsdale who exclaimed loudly, "7l. per acre for the widow!" and there was no further opposition. The allotment was sixty acres. The sections on each side of it sold, one of them for more than 30l. per acre, and the other for 40l. or more.

Mr. Archibald Tom, one of the three first settlers of Australia Felix, had a famous sheep-run, and when it was offered for sale, some person of the name of Murray, who had a spite against him, ran up the price of it from 12s. per acre to betwixt 4l, or 5l. Ten per cent, on the purchase had to be paid immediately on the fall of the hammer; but to the surprise of Mr. T., when he offered payment, the sum, more than 300l., had already been subscribed by his friends of the Melbourne club, and paid. These were pleasant instances of the good feeling and gentlemanliness of the Austral Felicians.

With this sale the fate of our temporary settlement of Tentville was decided. One after one the tents were struck, and the fires sadly died out. Over the new country we were widely scattered; some to sheep-stations, some to their new houses in Melbourne and the suburbs, others to their purchases at secondhand, not being able to purchase of the Crown; widely were we scattered, and inclusively settled down, to contend with the rugged elements of a new land in the solitude of the wilderness, adapting ourselves to novel modes of existence, and exchanging old customs and habits for new.

Our tent stood to the last; and for awhile we lingered on alone. To feel at the final breaking up of our long-associated and friendly little community, as though we had severed the last link of English society; as though there was nothing immutable, nothing substantial in the nature of things. We had, to use a sea-phrase, "cast off the painter," and were out at sea in the world; and there fell upon us a deep sadness, and sense of desolation.

SETTLERS' LIFE AND EXPERIENCE IN AUSTRALIA.

"After seeing a great deal of very bad land, my brother wished us to locate ourselves on the south side of the River Yarra. This I attempted to do, but was out-bid by the colonial speculators, who merely buy land to re-sell it. Yet so it happened, after these disappointments, that I bought the allotment of ninety-five acres, where I now reside, at the Government sale, June 10th, 1840. It was said by many to be one of the most lucky purchases of the whole sale. The situation is delicious; the soil tolerably rich; the slopes most graceful. The windings of the Yarra in full prospect, both near and far off, are beautiful. Some twenty or thirty bell-birds are ringing a merry peal within hearing. White cockatoos are sitting on the old gum-trees, and parrots are flitting about gorgeously numerous."

So I wrote on the 2nd February, 1841. But previously something had to be done. It was on the 2nd of October, 1840, that we took possession, and began to reside on our newly-purchased location. At that time Melbourne and the district were at the very acmé of their prosperity; all was activity: all the drays and the workmen were fully employed. A drayman, with a horse and dray, considered it poor work to get only six pounds per week. Our weather-boarded cottage had been prepared by my nephew in Melbourne, ready for putting up on the farm, when we could get it conveyed there. To engage a drayman and dray for that purpose, we had canvassed the town and its suburbs days and days in vain. At length, after a fortnight's incessant search, we found a person from the country willing to cart up the house, four miles, four loads of it, for six pounds: this he did with his drav and oxen in four davs.

When we reached the location—and the roads are none of the best, to say nothing of the Merri creek, the bed of a torrent, full of rough stones, then partially flooded—we found ourselves in a wild open country, our cottage to be the only one for miles. To get our house materials to their intended site, was a task of no small difficulty, the face of the land being covered with growing trees, or with partly-burnt timber, boughs, and with rank kangaroo-grass. After many pauses, grave considerings, turnings and backings, with considerable skill and patience in the driver, and aided by especial good fortune, load after load was conveyed to the spot safely. Only we had one accident on the way, and small accidents become great privations under some circumstances; what the sea, that remorseless element, had spared to us of glass and tea-things, were, by one unfeeling jolt of the dray amongst the rocks, thrown, and the basket holding them, to the ground in pitiable ruin. The fragments lie to this day under a monstrous gum-tree by the road-side.

Here we had employment enough before us in the wilderness. Our house was in about a week erected. The first night that we slept in it, it was but partially roofed, and the bats made free to flit about over our heads, and the moon and stars to peep in; the one with bland smiles, the others apparently regarding us with prying eyes.

When our wood-work was completed, there also wanted brickwork—a chimney to make our abode convenient and comfortable. Here again was a new difficulty. I ran here and there to persuade people for good money to bring us the required number of bricks. It was worth nobody's while: nobody would do it. Well, we had been woodmen, house-carpenters; we grew weary of begging to have that done, for which we must also pay handsomely. We set ourselves industriously to find clay, and found it too; yes, and made a brick-mould and bricks. Yes, and we burnt them too. Pretty figures we were, both during the making and the burning of the bricks; and many a hearty laugh we had at ourselves, saying, "What would our English friends say if they saw us." But the bricks were good bricks; and my nephew, one of the most ingenious as well as industrious men in the world—and considerate too—had not neglected to bring a bricklayer's trowel with him; and, like a good Jack-of-all-trades, he built the chimney, and did it so cleverly, that it passed muster with the world's other chimneys.

This carpentering and brick-making, this house-building, was done after all somewhat grudgingly, for the gardening season was passing by. Nevertheless, we dug up the ground for a garden between whiles, planting fruit-trees, setting potatoes, peas, &c. Then and after we made a large and useful garden, only it was not fenced in, for we had no time to do that. We trusted that our vigilance and that of our two faithful dogs, would be a fence for it until we could make one. Then we had to begin land-clearing. The steep fronting the Yarra had many large stones in it, and to get out these, and also in many parts of the garden, was the labour of weeks. Then to cut down the timber, gum, box, she-oak, and wattle-trees, was an Herculean task.

Whilst this was progressing wearily, day after day, at pleasant leisurely intervals, we saw with delight the rapid and plentiful growth of garden vegetables. These fully answered our expectations.

Day after day it was no slight army of trees against which we had to do battle; we had to fight hard with them to gain possession of the soil, for the trees in those days were giants. I then felt thankful, knowing well how to appreciate my advantages, that having been born and brought up on an English farm, all kinds of tools, agricultural and others, were at home in my hands. There was a world of work, digging to lay bare the roots, felling, and then cutting the boles and boughs up with the saw and axe. Such of the boles as were good for anything we cut into proper lengths for posts; splitting and mortising them for that purpose. Rails also we had to get when there were any boughs straight enough. Some of the trees were of unconscionable girth, six or eight yards in circumference. Immense was the space of ground that had to be dug away to lay bare the roots. And then, what roots! they were too large to be cut through with the axe; we were compelled to saw them in two with the cross-cut saw. One of these monsters of the wild was fifteen days burning; burning night and day, and was a regular ox-roasting fire all the time. We entirely routed the quiet of that old primaeval forest solitude, rousing the echo of ages on the other side of the river, that shouted back to us the stroke of the axe, and the groan and crash of falling gum-trees. Night never came too soon, and we slept without rocking. Then what curious and novel creatures,—bandicoots, flying squirrels, opossums, bats, snakes, guanas, and lizards—we disturbed, bringing down with dust and thunder their old domiciles about their ears. Sometimes, also, we found nests of young birds and of young wild cats; pretty black creatures, spotted with white. The wild denizens looked at us wildly, thinking, probably, that we were rough reformers, desperate radicals, and had no respect for immemorial and vested rights. It was unnatural work, and cruel; especially when, pile after pile, we added to our other ravages, the torment and innovation of vast fires. The horrid gaps and blank openings in the grand old woods seemed, I felt at times, to reproach us. It was reckless waste, in a coalless country, to commit so much fuel to the flames. Timber, too, hard in its grain as iron almost, yet ruddy, and more beautiful than mahogany. No matter, we could not eat wood; we must do violence to our sense of the beautiful, and to Nature's sanctities; we must have corn-land, and we, with immense labour, cleared seventeen acres. On one occasion I was laid up for a fortnight, keeping my bed part of the time, having been struck by a falling tree. I had to change almost immediately my linen; wringing wet with the perspiration of that blow's agony. Still the most vexatious circumstance of that misery was the lost time. I got over it at length, and then came other troubles. Our garden now began to look beautiful, and promised abundance. Cattle which had at first approached and annoyed us, had for some time past kept aloof, all but one incorrigible, immense, ugly, raw-boned, death-poor bullock. This monster-bare-bones had the largest horns ever seen, and was, we judged, turned out into the wilderness to die. Die, however, he would not. He took a fancy to us and our garden, and haunted us perpetually. Day and night he kept us apprehensive. We drove him away for miles; a little time elapsed, and he was with us again. We tried to make him cross the river, but in vain; for we thought, once on the other side and we should have done with him. Many times we determined to kill him, but the thought of his being some one's property deterred us. He was an everlasting annoyance to us, and we found to others also. One day I was giving him a chasing, making the old bones rattle in his hide, when an Irishman, miles from our place, accosted us with, "Blood o' life, sir, don't dhrive the likes of him. Hither away; its the little sleep we gets for the thought of him! it's sure it is. He'll drop his dead carkiss at weere door some of these days, with a coorse to him. and bother us out of house and home, with the stink of him!" Sure enough it was that we were indebted to this man's dread, for his quick recurrence to our whereabout. We drove him to them and they to us: at last he disappeared, as he came, altogether. Another bugbear, or, as Sir Walter Scott would say, "bubbly-jock," shortly after took his place. Here we had not old age and ugliness to contend with; our new enemy was a large, square, heavy, slow, shorthorned Durham bull. Our gaunt apparition had done us little mischief; not so our ponderous new-comer. Early one morning, on our issuing from the back-door, there lay a few paces off our ill angel of a Manningtree beast, digesting threescore of our fullgrown cabbages. There lay the solid rascal, ruminating about the few that he had left, and his look was at once innocence and self-satisfaction. I could have stabbed him! But then he was a famous imported animal—a gentleman of a beast; the palmbearer away, and prize honoured, of cattle shows. Maybe he was carried away bodily by that taste of cabbage in the wilderness—the air feeling "unusual weight"—to his old English haunts, the stall of some Duke of Portland or other wealthy cattlebreeder. We showed him no respect, however; but with a long hay-fork, filed sharp for the purpose, gored him to a great distance. How he did make the earth shake beneath him, and Ms fat shake too! As we urged him on, low bellowings, like distant thunder, breathing on with him through the quiet bush. Again, after a while, he cautiously approached us, but not from the higher lands. We caught occasional glimpses of him, looking with a very inquiring face from amongst the bushes on the river's flat. If he caught a glimpse of us, he fell seriously to his grazing, as though our place and us were the last in his thoughts. He was a very meditative beast, and fond of moonlight nights. On these how stealthily he would come! At midnight we heard the chewing of cabbage, and, dressing hastily, had to chase him. At length he grew so wary, that he came on rainy nights only, when we could hear nothing for the pattering rain. He had not only the carcase but the sagacity of an elephant, and did us great mischief. We once were so out of patience that we shot at him.

We had now to begin fencing: the commencement of other sorrows. I had to hire a bullock-driver, to buy bullocks and a cart; and to employ a splitter in the stringy bark forest. These things, after a little inquiry, I was enabled to do. The bullockdriver was an original; and we shall have something to say about him by and by. I bought four bullocks, and a dray, &c., the team as I thought complete. But it was soon found necessary that something should be done to strengthen the vehicle, it not being strong enough for our heavy work. Days and days went by, whilst this work was doing at the blacksmith'; and as soon as the cart was done, there was a new hindrance. Our working cattle had had a holiday, grazing in the open bush; and, now they were wanted, one of them was missing. A whole week of the finest weather did we look for, and inquire after this beast. We searched, as we thought, everywhere. The weather all the while so beautiful, and so soon as the wet must set in! At last by the merest accident we heard of him. He had been re-sold, through mistake it was said, by a former owner of him. Here again was perplexity. The man in whose hands the bullock was, I knew veiy well by nam; and by another circumstance, having met with an ugly likeness of him in wood, slouch-hatted and spectacled, in a LauncestonVY. D. L. newspaper, with this worthy letter-press W. B. the arcmethodist Swindler." There was trouble enough to get this horrid business rectified. The person of whom the beast was said to be bought by our wood-cut acquaintance, was out of the way, some scores of miles in the country. I never rested till I, by threats of action, &c., got possession of what I could prove to be our property. We had him, however, and the wet season together.

But first, over the Yarra, forty yards wide, we had to fasten a rope, and to construct a punt. This we made of three casks bunged up tight, set in a square frame of wood-work. This was allowed by all, to be a new and an ingenious contrivance. This we did to pass over, from the south to the north side of the river, our post and rail for fencing: the forest in which it was split being ten miles higher up on the south side of our river. So by keeping the bullocks on the south side, we could cross and recross any time, without going miles below or above to get over. A great convenience this, and temporarily for us, and for others: until it grew so much of a thoroughfare as to annoy us. The bullocks were sure to be lost on that side, and we must hunt them.

Wet as the weather was, we commenced bringing down our fencing materials. And through what a kind of country we had to bring them! Along the sides of sloping hills, and through marshes, and deep break-neck ravines. Our first attempt was unfortunate: something about the pole of the cart broke, and off the bullocks set in a gallop—crash went the wheels against a tree, and the cart was broken, the team all at liberty. The bullock-driver declared it to be useless trying again, for not one of the four bullocks were leaders. Two more bullocks were bought, after nearly a week's inquiry, and a dray was borrowed. Again, and again, when the weather would permit us, a load was got down. I walked up the ten miles and home again, that if any accident happened, I might be at hand to render any assistance. Day after day I went: for if I did not go, I had no rest at home through apprehension. Sometimes at the gullies or ravines we had to unload the cart for it to get over, and when over to re-load it. On some occasions we had the bullocks down; and then there was danger of their necks being broken: it was a time of great uneasiness, and great anxiety. Once we had decided for John, with the team, to go up one day, stay all night with the splitter, and so return the next. Days passed over, and no John returned to allay our anxiety: the bullocks in the forest got constantly lost; again we had recurrence to our old plan; again there was delay, the splitter was ordered to shift from his place to another, the land there being sold. This done, and the weather still finer, I began to think fortune would favour us now, and that we should progress more satisfactorily. So thinking, John and I went up with the team towards the new splitting location. Before we reached it, a man came running nearly breathless, exclaiming, "Thank God you're come; poor Ellen, Mrs. Smith's companion, is burnt to death!" So it proved, at least partly so. The poor young woman was burnt dreadfully; standing by the out-door fire, the breeze had blown her apron into the flames, and running in her fright she had helped it on most fatally. In our cart, leaving our post and rail, she had to be taken into the town, where she died. This lost us three more days. Wearied out, we hired the carriage of the rest, and had 9l. to pay for their conveyance.

So days, and weeks, and months had passed away vexatiously. Then when all the materials were carefully got over the river, came a flood and swept a great portion of them into it.

This we called feelingly the flood-year.

May, June, July, and August—never can I forget those months of anxiety. Our land wanted ploughing and fencing, and the season for getting in our corn was, whilst we were occupied in the forest getting down the fencing materials, fast going by. What was the result? our land was not sown until it was too late, and the crops were consequently worthless. Thus one year's labour, outlay, and seed, were thrown away.

Still there remained to us hope: we did not relax our endeavours. Other seasons there would be, and, by fencing and clearing other portions of the farm, we prepared ourselves to take advantage of them.

All the time we had occupied ourselves on the farm, we were in clear prospect of the Heidelburg road; on which daily went to and fro, and a very animating sight it was, carriages open and close, filled with the gay families of the wealthy settlers located on the rich banks, far and near, of the River Yarra. Gentlemen and ladies, too, we saw evermore on horseback, in their gay riding dresses; there was a perpetual gleam of rich beavers, ostrich plumes, veils streaming in the air, and parasols showing their rich silkiness to the sun. The bush was alive most days with pleasant and picturesque groups. Then the horses, full of blood and in highest condition, fleet and beautiful coursers were they, and the sight of them did our hearts good. Although we were toiling, it was with hope, and it was good that there seemed so much enjoyment in the land. It was true, after the loss of the first season, we continued our work steadily but more soberly; a little of the brightness was worn off, and doubts mingled with our expectation, once so confident, of the future. Others too—or did our own feeling tinge others'?—seemed as if the world had not kept pace with the brilliancy of their expectations. Others had lost crops of one kind or other as well as ourselves. The Uniform Price system, that daughter of Lord John Russell's brain, had, since the previous bland holiday season, diffused amongst them the misery of its intelligence. Deep sadness had fallen upon the land; the very aspect of the people, the personal neglect, and the leanness of the horses, bore witness to it. It seemed indeed, so great and palpable was the change, quite another country.

On still we progressed, field after field was cleared and enclosed. Land every day and produce came down in value; we were toiling against hope: "We were not at rest and trouble came." It was now time to plough again: but three of our bullocks had strayed away, and were nowhere to be found; to buy others would have been madness, in the every-day depreciation of all kinds of property. Search everywhere, and offered rewards of 11. each in the newspapers, were tried in vain. A year and a half elapsed before anything was heard of them, and then only of two. The second season was lost or nearly so. Our garden was tolerably productive, and on the land, without any seed or labour, there was an immense though coarse crop of oaten-hay. These second, and even third crops, there being no winter to kill them, are under some circumstances advantageous; they also prove a curse, growing where and when they are not wanted. Three, four, or five times the land must be ploughed to get rid of the old plants of com, potatoes, &c.

OUR NEIGHBOURS.

We will now take a glance at our neighbours. Our nearest was Mr. T. Wills, one of the most intelligent gentlemen of the colony, a magistrate, a native of the middle district; what we must call an Anglo-Australian. He had bought his estate, the next allotment but one to ours, of the Crown, on June 10, 1840; he paid for it 3,784l. His house and other premises cost as much more. For land-clearing he paid, in some instances, 16l. per acre. His estate, 173 acres, is a valuable one: his house, with its pillared and balconied front, is of graceful architecture: delightfully situated on pleasant knolls and slopes. Seen from the south of the river, with the garden, like an English one, with the windings of the Yarra, at a distance before it, and the gleam of natural ponds near it, partly hidden in trees too, the landscape is picturesque enough. Walking in the garden, amongst sedges and reeds, for a natural lake encircles it, you see, nearly tame, so well are they protected by their tasteful owner, ducks, divers, and widgeons, natives of the country, and most likely of the locality, and added to these, what is very rare, the Australian coot, with its sky-blue body, crimson bill and legs, a most beautiful bird. To see all these creatures so nicely located, and to find the garden in its character so very English, inspired you with regard for the owner.

Iii conversation with this gentleman, he confessed to me that the colonial land-system, in spite of his colonial birth and experience, had cheated him out of 12,000l.

Turn we to a neighbour of another description. There came out amongst the bounty Irish emigrants some three or four persons of the name of, I think, O'Shanassy. One of these people rented a small place not many miles from us. He and his wife were indefatigable earth-worms. One day my brother, Dr. Howitt, of Melbourne, had ridden up to our farm, and we were talking together, when our Irish neighbour came to us, to make inquiry after some stray cattle. His dress was of the coarse grey homespun Irish cloth. He was bare-footed, bare-legged, carrying his shoes and stockings under his arm that he might not damage them with the dew. "There!" observed the Doctor, "you may do your best, but you cannot stand against that. A sheep will bite so near the ground, that it will starve an ox to death; and a goose, by biting still nearer, will famish both. Scotchman, nor Englishman, can contend with that." The observation was just. He and his family came out at a time, coming at this country's cost, when labour was dear. All of them were workers, and they laid by nearly all their earnings. They then bought a few cattle; land there was in our neighbourhood that had been bought up by Sydney speculators, on which, as it lay unoccupied and unclaimed, they made free to depasture their cattle. Milk they took into the town, where it sold well. They had nothing to pay for—neither rent nor taxes—for at least a thousand acres of land. They soon bought a horse, and then four working bullocks; and now and then they added to their stock a cow or two. So thoroughly did their God-send estate seem their own, that after they had grazed it without interruption for a year or two, they began to cut down and cart into Melbourne all its best fire-wood. Regularly with a horse-cart, and with four bullocks in a dray, these people, besides taking in two churns full of milk tied together with a rope, and slung over the horse's back, before breakfast, took two loads of wood into the town, four miles off. This they did six days every week, clearing, besides the milk, three pounds per week. Their clothing and food cost little; there was no license to pay the government for, the land not belonging to the Crown: all was nearly clear. When people are so very prosperous, it is a pity they cannot live for ever. One day, as our neighbour was walking by the side of his bullocks, his shoe-string came untied, and it was the death of him. He stooped down to tie it—the bullocks went on, caught the off-wheel against a stump, turned over the dray upon him, and killed him on the spot.

His widow, assisted by her husband's brother, carried on the concern. They had continued increasing their number of cattle, and could not in all have less than a hundred head. Ten of these cost originally one hundred pounds, and the horse eighty, a few years before. Had there been no depreciation in stock, she would have been worth nearly fifteen hundred pounds; as it is, she is worth several hundreds. Her money or good properties got her another husband, much like the former, and on they kept plodding in the same track.

Another of our neighbours, on the other side of the Yarra, was a Scotchman of the name of Connell. He had, only he did not pay so dearly for it, a larger estate considerably than Mr. Wills. He had three or four square miles of land; this he rented of the Crown, it being what is called a squatting station, and paid for it, annually, ten pounds. He had not contributed anything to the Land Fund, as we and Mr. Wills had done, by purchasing land. Yet when the immigrants arrived, brought out by our money, he could have them on the same terms. He could keep, by virtue of his license (which we could not,) as many cattle, horses and sheep as he pleased; and could cultivate as much land for the market too. Clearing he need do none: he had only to select open spaces, having plenty to choose out of. Ours was small, and had in it but little cultivatable land. One season he grew one hundred pounds worth of oaten-hay. Of wheat he had 400 bushels, worth 130?. Besides this, he let off some of his land to an under-tenant for 23l. per annum. Here are but three items, and he had other produce; yet these three cleared him 253l. In three seasons the land would be worn out, and he must select other portions or throw up the concern. He talked of doing the latter. Certainly his best plan would be to take one of the government allotments, advertised to be let by auction at 51. per annum the square mile. It was true that the square miles bounding these five-pound sections had been sold to the owners of them for at least 640l. each, and possibly much more, by the same government. If the government chose to run down the price of land by making investments of 640l. worth only 51. per annum, he need not care for that; that was the look-out of silly land-buyers, and faith-keeping, judicious governors. All the squatter had to do, was to take advantage of the temporary impolicy, to sow, reap, and beggar the land; to under-sell all the land-buying fools, and thereby to glut the market. If the government could sell no more land, and the landed proprietors were insolvent, he might do well, leaving the first, leisure to open their eves, and the latter trying to shut them on the coming ruin.

Had Connell been as sober and economical as he was industrious, he must, like our Irish neighbour, have got on in the world; but of all drunkards he was the most drunken. He could sell loads of hay and corn, when the sober steady man could not, for he would take out half the value of his produce in drink. Melbourne innkeepers were always his, if not the ready customers of others. Whilst the man who had bought his land, and steadily cultivated and reaped it, was hawking his produce about the streets, and begging as a great favour to get rid of it, Connell and his bullock-driver, who had immediately disposed of theirs, were sitting and singing drunken songs in the alehouse corner. Often, when returning home drunk, master and man, they have lost themselves in the bush. In the morning they have waked up, the master in one place, the man in another; and having in their half-consciousness loosened the bullocks from the dray, the dray has been discovered in a third place; and the bullocks, after many days' search, (for they keep ranging about if not unyoked,) in a fourth. On one occasion, amidst these jolly doings, the dray was upset, their only daughter's arm broken, and the mother's leg dreadfully bruised. If they managed to land home safely, be sure they had plenty of rum with them; and at midnight would be turning out, too warm for the inside of their house, to quarrel, to fight, or to disturb the quiet country with their maudlin mirth.

Once Connell came over in our punt on his way to the town, with a ploughshare to be sharpened. He said he should return at night, and would thank us to again put him over the river. He did attempt to keep his word—but only got half way from Melbourne to our place; to an old huge gum-tree in a snug nook by the Merri Creek. There, for he had two gay young sportsmen with him on their way for a week's shooting in the forest, they kindled a fire and set in for a good night's drinking. In the morning, the three boon companions came to cross in the punt. My nephew was somewhere near the river, and to him I directed them. Shortly after, I said to myself, "Surely Tom will not attempt to take these three drunken fellows over at once?" and I set off after them, but was too late. All of them had at once leapt into the punt; Connell, as he was sure to do, had reeled to one side; Tom,seeing the peril, jumped to the bank, and the three were in a moment overhead in the Yarra, with the punt inverted upon them. The river is there dreadfully deep; and our thoughts were at once of death, and a coroner's inquest. It was not quite so bad as that. Connell emerged the first, walked deliberately up out of the water like a sea-cow: having left behind him the ploughshare, but grasping safely the rum-bottle in his hand. First one had emerged and then the other; and the sportsmen, to our great satisfaction, sprawled out upon the dry land. Some losses they had sustained—loss of powder-flasks, &c.; their mirth had evaporated, and they swore soberly. Not so Connell—he had saved what was more precious than powder-flasks or ploughshares: he had saved his life in that of the rum-bottle, and waving it round his head, exclaimed joyously, "Never mind, lads, never mind, worse accidents than this happen at sea."

So much for our neighbours.

It was about the commencement of 1842, or very late in 1841, that seeing no prospect of any great profit from the cultivation of the farm, or being rather undecided what plan to adopt regarding it; my nephew, being at liberty to employ himself as he thought most likely to conduce to his advantage, joined a friend'of his recently from England at cow-keeping. They purchased three cows and calves with them, and a few dairy articles, for £30.

My nephew and his partner kept their cattle in the open bush sometimes, and sometimes in our paddocks. Part of the milk they sold at home to the labourers employed by Government oil the Heidelburg road, and the rest in Melbourne. This, after a fair trial, they found like most other colonial undertakings. It seemed well to realise twenty pounds in about six months; but the cattle began to give less milk; squatters nearer Melbourne began to undersell them; and cows daily lessened in value. There was nothing so certain as that every week would add to their loss. At length, after keeping them a year, the concern was disposed of—for, cattle and all, £16; leaving a few shillings per week net profit. So much for Australian cow-keeping.

About the commencement of this milk-speculation, I kept a four-day journal, as follows:—

December 6,1841.—It is Sunday morning; a dim misty prelude to a very hot summer's day. I got up at half-past four o'clock; the laughing jackass, the Australian jay, or settler's clock as it is called, making merry with the first glimpse of daylight; and the bell-birds, along the river, tinkling in unison. We get breakfast, and after the milking is over, set off with the milk to Melbourne, five miles. The bush is very silent, the cicadas not yet feeling their vivifier, the sun. The Merri Creek is nearly dried up. Beyond it tile natives have their village. What a scene! naked savages, shaggy dogs, bark-and-hough dwellings; the simplest, the rudest ever constructed by the creature man. The howl, growl, and yelp of cars and mongrels, which follow at our heels, and the sight of the natives, young and old, is no bad substitute for Inferno. Go to New Town with J. C., and return home to a second breakfast of beef, coffee, bread and butter.

A few days ago, I saw that which filled poor Robinson Crusoe with such surprise and horror, the well-defined print of a savage's naked foot in the sand. But here how different the sensation! rather pleasurable than otherwise. For we have what Crusoe had not, a sense of safety, and knowledge of the kind of being to whom the footmark belonged. The impression we behold is the trace left by a cannibal, but we know his power and our own. We are not solitary. There is nothing vague, large and mistily undefined: there is nothing startling and hair-bristling.

What are we to do till dinner? The iron kettle is on the fire, and preparations are making for that meal. Meanwhile I commence this journal, and then stroll down to the Yarra. There the kingfisher, a beautiful creature, is skimming to and fro over the surface of the river. The mosquitoes are, confound them! keen as death. Look at the bell-bird's nest, admire the two spotted salmon-coloured eggs. Wonder that, as the nest is so flimsy and gauze-like, the old bird does not, hung as it is so lightly in the tea-tree, press it from its place and entirely ruin it.

Noon.—Burningly hot. The thermometer 100° at least. Everything Australian in extremes; the weather at least, wet or dry.

Get peas for dinner. Even about so simple a thing as gathering and shelling peas, what household associations are awakened! Link after link, the mind passes unconsciously through the vicissitudes of many years, and the period to tfiese reflections is, a sigh.

Beef, peas, suet-pudding with raisins in it, for dinner; homely food, yet healthful, and to the temperate, sufficient.

Read the beautiful History of the Patriarchal ages; how Rebecca and Rachel watered their fathers' flocks in the Arcady of Palestine. "And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice and wept." Nothing equal in poetry or romance to the story of Jacob, Joseph, Ruth, and of David too, the minstrel shepherd, the outlaw in the fastnesses and caves of Engedi; then the king and the sweet Psalmist of Israel. The poetry of the Bible is the highest order of poetry. The characters are of the truest Epic dignity. No imagination could have given them existence. Based on the most homely simplicity, yon find all the sublimity that human nature and action are capable of. The pastoral portions of the Bible seem to engage our attention most naturally, perhaps because of the pastoral sympathy betwixt the Holy Land and Australia.

Spend part of the afternoon and evening in partly reading Southey's Poems, walking, and after tea or supper, our third and last meal, off to bed.

December 7.—Up at the usual time. Go to Melbourne; leave my brother a quantity of peas on the premises before they are up, and return home.

Longing ardently for rain; not able to do anything in the garden, owing to its dry-as-dust condition.

Hot winds blowing steadily from the north, from some inland sandy desert no doubt. We feel dusty all over. So intensely dry is the atmosphere that wood shrinks, and books have their covers curled up as if you had been reading by a hot fire; whilst the butter, hard in the morning, is melted to the transparent resemblance of olive oil before noon. Out in the sun all vegetation droops and withers, as though it would never revive. In fact some of it never does, but turns black and dies as though it had been seared with a hot iron.

December 8.—No rain. Nothing to be done. Go again to Melbourne. Much amused to-day by the ceremonious politeness of a native woman. There she stood in a perfect state of nudity, a little way from the road, by her miam, smiling, or rather grimacing; for there is nothing of heart or intellect in that movement of the black countenance. She waved her hand and head to me, not ungracefully: the trick imitated from some Melbournite. The blacks are admirable mimics, catching up to the life civilised speech and action. "Good morning, sir!" say the piccaninies with the utmost gravity. "Where you go?" asks another. There is something inexpressibly ludicrous in the circumstance that these ugliest pieces of human nature are heard singing in Melbourne "I'd be a butterfly."

To-day, soon after my return home, being alone in the house, I heard the most melancholy noise in the bush, not far off: I thought some one had met with a serious accident, and ran out terrified. It proved to be the fore-running announcement of three coming black fellows. Two women, one with a piccaniny at her back, had turned down to the ford below. Three men came forward. One of them had on a short white sailor's frock, and common black-wool hat. The others had brown blankets wrapped round them loosely. Their hair was ornamented with white cockatoo feathers, and profusely with kangaroo teeth. Their object was to beg white money. When I turned one of my pockets out to show them I had nothing, they laughed in their loud manner, and felt at the other. So away they went, dissatisfied; and they, with the women and child, busied themselves in crossing the ford. Soon they disappeared in the bush on the other side of the river. The men were armed with spears and waddies.

December 9.—Rise at four o'clock; the Australian jay laughing away the darkness, and the magpies with their rich warblings welcoming the light.

No rain. Nothing to be done. The same day after day. The sun intensely hot. The cicadas in millions, making the very air dizzy with their dissonance. Ten thousand spinning-jennies could not match them. The noise is the most wearisome imaginable. This is the cicada year. Last summer there were, owing to what cause I know not, very few of them.

Picked up half of an old Weekly Dispatch, containing extracts from two letters, each from Sydney or its district, giving miserable accounts of that part of Australia. There is a great deal of truth in the statements, though many in England, whose minds are quite of a glow when they think of these warm pastoral latitudes, would fain disbelieve them. I daily hear worse and worse accounts of these colonies, and do honestly think (God help us!) Port Phillip is infinitely best off, both in its natural position and climate; being warmer than Van Diemen's Land, freer from fogs and frosts in winter; free, too, from Van Diemenian summer frosts: and better watered by rain—scattering westerly winds, than Sydney. Soil of equal if not of better quality, and a finer pastoral country than either.

Still all advantages of all lands will not bear comparison, with England: for this simple reason, we were born there; our minds are full to overflowing with everything English. All our thoughts, feelings, habits, customs, and all our associations, are English. Thither we return mentally, and must do bodily.

Still what we may return to, must give us pause. Shuffling off colonial coils, we return to coils at home—to tax-gatherers, to poor-rate collectors, dearer provisions, a cold and wet climate, and to what one does not see here, the old common home pictures of degradation and wretchedness, nakedness, and want. It is surprising in the colony of Australia Felix, owing to its recent colonisation, what a newness and youth everything has. New buildings everywhere, young people, young cattle, no deformity, no old age, no decay. This is very striking; and, aided by the purity of the Australian atmosphere, tends very much to cheerfulness.

Many aching hearts, nevertheless, there will be in all new colonies. Some ruined by misconduct, others by wild speculations, or duped by wary colonial sharpers: old chums, picking up the new.

Wilford Grange, 1841.

About the commencement of 1842 we began to clear the best portion, as it regarded soil, of land on our farm—about three acres of meadow. This we had been afraid of doing from the first, so serious a labour it seemed. Overgrown it was with quantities of the largest red gum-trees, burthened with dead prostrate trunks, full of stumps, and covered with tea-tree scrub. This task, after several months' incessant toil, my nephew and myself accomplished. If ever a bit of ground was earned by the labour bestowed upon it, that was. The rising sun found us felling trees, severing with our saw the trunks, and grubbing up roots; under the burning noon-day sun we were often roasting ourselves by huge fires: and the sun dipped down in the western waves, leaving us, thankful for the short cool twilight, still at our labour.

What was the result? We made the plot of land like a garden: fenced it with the post and rail split by ourselves out of the timber we had felled; planted it with potatoes; and, just as the rows were looking green and beautiful, there came a flood, destroyed the crop, and we had to plant it again. Nor was that the only loss: there were two splitters located near us, and these men I had engaged to get for me, as they had a license to split timber on the crown lands, a quantity of posts on the opposite side of the river; these, for which I had paid nearly six pounds, were carried awav also.

O the flood! A pretty condition the splitters were in too. These two men had been convicts. Their hands were horny with toil; their faces tanned and tawny; their bodies seemed compounds of iron and leather. Hard workers they were, and hard drinkers. Their two huts, made of slabs and bark, were in the flat in one of the farthest bends of the river. One of them kept as housekeeper a female friend, and this friend had then another with her on a visit from Melbourne. They were at this time left alone, for their woodmen were trying to quench their drought in the town. Heavy rains there must have been on the eastern alps, or rather a sudden thaw of snow which does sometimes take place in summer, for the flood rose rapidly. At midnight, instead of our forty yards of river, the moonlight glittered on a plain of water two miles in width. There stood the huts; we could see them in the rising flood, not yet swept away, and the women were in them. There was a scream in that direction. The flood had been noticed in Melbourne, and the drinkers thought accidentally about the women, and were come. The waters were out everywhere: after taking a long circuit, they managed to wade to the huts; and the scream we had heard had escaped one of the women when, in a deeper current, she had gone, in their retreat, over-head; and they must have been drowned, had the men not arrived just as they did, and led them through the flood carefully by the hand. Soon the huts, the beds, the bedding, clothes, hats, and bonnets, went, in one ruinous sweep, down the broad current.

All the poetry of Australian farming had now evaporated. It was universally acknowledged that at the rate produce could be supplied from the squatting stations, if it would cover the expense of its production, that was all. When wages were paid, there was nothing left for rent. At a merely nominal rent our farm was, therefore, let to our nephew, who could nearly cultivate it himself. We still continued the fencing, and in the autumn of 1843 the whole ninety-five acres were inclosed, with other considerable internal fencing into the bargain.

A year after this, the farm was let in February, 1843, I was in Australia, residing with my nephew. I occupied myself variously, not unobservant of the condition of the province; and assisting my nephew all I could. Ingenious, intelligent, and industrious, I felt deeply interested in his success. Sober; not a penny did he throw away on any luxury, except that he purchased a few books for Sunday reading. With the light he was at his work; not a bit of ground was there, not the merest strip of cultivatable land, but he committed to its bosom some kind of seed, corn, or garden vegetable. Nor did it appear that he had laboured in vain; it seemed that God and Nature would reward such devoted and persevering industry. Wheat, oats, barley, potatoes, cabbages, turnips, onions, all, in their rich luxuriant greenness, how well they looked!

I will give the result, from my note-book:—

"Heigho for farming in Australia! The first set crop of potatoes have been, as they were last year, destroyed by a flood. Again they have been set; and again the uprising green and goodly rows have shown themselves, to be eaten by flies in myriads; and what escapes the fly is devoured by clouds of grasshoppers, very locusts in voracity. Everything green disappears before them. Rows of full-grown cabbages have vanished, leaving the stalks hollowed out like egg-cups. Everything is devoured, or dies partly eaten.

"All things in this country seem to work together for the farmer's ruin. Were there no floods, no flies, no grasshoppers, the market is perfectly glutted, independently of the regular farmer or landed proprietor, from the Crown lands. How is the town of Melbourne supplied with milk? From the unsold Crown lands. In the first place, a vast herd of cows are kept by the town's people; every man who can purchase them keeping his cow or cows, for which he pays to the general herdsman 9d. or 1s. per week. They are driven out in the morning and brought home again at night. The town herdsman has a license to keep cattle, for which he pays the Government £10 per annum. On this tread-mill cattle-keeping system, where they have to walk sometimes ten miles a day, of the cows, and the calves too, many die by gradual starvation. The other milk-supply is from squatters on the south of the Yarra, opposite Melbourne. Butter, eggs, cheese, hay, corn, bacon, beef, mutton, veal, pork, poultry, all are supplied by the squatters, the £10 per annum men.

"Thou poor, pitiful, care-worn, fly-bitten, flood-persecuted, grass-hopper-devoured Australian farmer, what doest thou in this country? Thou art neither sanctioned by Government, nor heaven-permitted! Away with thee from the land."

"Wilford Grange, Nov. 30, 1843."

In justice to Australia Felix, I must say that this was only a partial visitation, the range of country in which the grasshopperand-fly-curse of Egypt, fell, was not far extended beyond the Yarra district.

This was the grand consummation; the fly, flood, and grasshopper year! About this time I met casually in a newspaper a pound-keeper's advertisement, from which I learnt that two of the bullocks which had strayed away from us nearly two years before, were offered, and most likely sold, by auction, to pay the pounding expenses, just the day before. Thither I walked— twenty-four miles it was from our farm to Kalkallo pound—to learn the result. It rained dreadfully, and the wind and rain faced me; I had a miserable walk thither, to learn that there was out of £30 which the three stray cattle had originally cost us, coming to us, over and above expenses, £4 4s. A good colonial dividend, only we did not get it. My brother, finding the pound-keeper was about to be discharged for roguery in his office, and seeing there was no possibility, without much trouble, of obtaining the cash, accepted what the fellow offered instead, a good mahogany chest of drawers.

This journey had its delights as well as vexations. I saw a great deal of very delightful country; when on my return I could look about me and enjoy it. I was about ten or twelve miles from Mount Macedon, and a more picturesque and beautiful region was never looked upon. Water there was none; and the trees were all of one kind: but the whole country had a deliriously smooth, lawn-like surface, without scrub or stones. Around me spread a spacious plain, the she-oaks, a rich silky brown, scattered thinly and in chimps; further off, bounding the plain, knolls, slopes, and glens, all of the smoothest outline, crowned or sprinkled with the same trees; and beyond mountains and mountain ranges, on which rested deliciously the blue of the summer heavens. Some of these mountains were wooded to the summits; others revealed through openings immeasurable plains, where sheep were whitely dotting the landscape; the golden sunshine seen at intervals betwixt the long shadows of the she-oaks. There only wanted a good stately river, American or English, to make the scene magnificent. I have seen some of the loveliest, richest, English scenery, its northern lake panoramas, its Bolton Abbey splendours, and romantic Dove-dales and Barrow-dales, and I am thankful that I have looked around me in the grand wilderness on Australian landscapes.

I did not reach home that night; it would have been fortyeight miles; for about eight miles from our farm I came, led by a breeze-brightened mass of burning charcoal, to a peasant's nice little weather-boarded cottage, where, asking my way, not knowing it well in the dark, he declared it impossible for him to do so, or me to find it, until day-break. So at once he pressed me to come in and pass the night with him. I did so. He was a decent-looking, intelligent Irishman, and hospitable withal. He was by himself, being that night left alone by two people who had resided with him. The room was clean: over the chimneypiece were stuck some pictures from Miss Edgworth's "Helen and on a table were a few religious, and I thought Catholic, books. He mended his fire, made me tea, and furnished me with a piece of damper to eat to it. I did there what I never did before in my life, drank my tea out of a square saucer. Good china it was, though of so singular a shape, antique in its glaze and painted figures; perhaps it had belonged ages ago to some of the four kings of Ireland. He was a kind, though not a rich host, and read and discussed the various topics of the newspaper I carried with me, whilst I discussed his tea and damper.

Then he laid for me on the boarded floor a good mattress, brought me out warm new blankets, and sheets white as snow. I had walked nearly forty miles that day, and, with thanks to Providence, and my friendly entertainer, slept soundly. At the termination of this year, February, 1844, my nephew gave up the farm, and we re-let it. I need not say that from first to last our colonial life and farming experience had been one series of unpropitious and calamitous circumstances. These, whether sufficient in themselves or not, decided us to quit the country.

FIRST APPROACH OFCIVILISATION TO AUSTRALIA FELIX.

"Gorgeous as night, star-crowned—around her waving
Luxuriant jettiest hair, in amplest curls,
With sweetest native wild-flowers interwoven,
Supreme, upon Mount Macedon, reclined
The Genius of the country; and with eyes,
Whose power of vision time had not impaired,
Contemplative, before her spread, beheld
And with calm joy, as heretofore, the scene:
Its bays, its lakes, its rivers far apart,
Fair land, smooth sea, and bright far-scattered isles.
And, with a watchful spirit of quick love,
Into her heart of hearts, embraced the whole:
And with a soul of brooding tenderness,
Saw, as she from creation ever saw,
The old primeval forest solitudes;
The mountains and the valleys of the land;
Not uninhabited—not desolate—
Age after age the same; from age to age,
Tracked only by its native dusky tribes,
In arts, in arms, in manners, and in mind,
The same."

All countries, if we are to put any faith in poets, have had their tutelary genius—the one fair guardian spirit, whose careful beneficence has showered blessings on the region peculiarly under its domination. Greece had its Gods and Goddesses: every mountain had its Deity—the woods their Fauns and Sylvans— the trees their Dryads—the rivers their Nymphs: the very rocks of the ocean were brightened with the light of song—they were peopled with Sirens—femininely beautiful, blooming in immortal youth; whose music of harp and voice lured, deliciously, the unwary mariner to death.

So bodied forth the venerable antique poets in fables, no shadows, but substantial truth. So subdivided they, to suit earthly necessities, the universal attributes of the one eternal, omnipotent, and omniscient Guardian, Creator, Vivifier, and Sustainer of the world—and worlds.

Thanks to the Homers of mankind for their beautiful fables— their earthly enshrining and localising of heavenly essences. They who write the History of the World may follow Moses up to the One-Supreme: we, who write only about a Province, Australia Felix, must satisfy ourselves with a more subordinate ethereality, like the Greeks.

Like them, we have Mount Macedon, and have already, therefore, a right to Mercury or Minerva, at least to preside over our New Land, until some of its native poets, yet unborn or in their infancy, shall, of themselves, with their own creations, endow its woods, and streams, and mountains, with fitting divinities.

Imagine the Genius of Australia, on the arrival of the first ship, thus communing with herself, not unnaturally. "I perceive, on the bosom of our inland waters, a small white speck, gradually enlarging itself—a ship, doubtless, the floating sea-home of the white man; that which has made accessible to him lands near and remote, and has given to him the utmost corners of the earth for a possession. He who has appropriated to himself the eastern portion of this Continent, and the Island of Tasmania, comes hither also. For the first time the white sails fling their shadows along the dancing brine, and rapidly across the old grey rocks. For the first time the unbroken stillness of the waters gives place to the familiar sounds of civilised life. The rocks echo strangely and unwontedly the lively accents of alien voices: the jocund cheer of merry mariners. Soon will our inland waters be peopled with novel shapes, with pleasant sights and sounds, with the quick gliding to and fro of sails, scattering the ancient sleep before them: the bays, the lakes, the rivers thronged with a new and active race. On all hands will be perceived the bustle, the healthful and exhilarating stir, of commercial life.

"Our dark people of the woods are not without some intimation of the approaching change; the very wind breathes of innova tion—the war-whoop is silent—the coroboree is at an end— they are silent and restless by their solitary fires."

Still the enlightened spirit—

"The prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come"—

is glad and thankful: for, of the ensuing evil and good, the evil will be transient, and the good perpetual. "I rejoice although the new-comer brings in the one hand disease and death—in the other an inestimable blessing: and in his train follow the arts, the delights and refinements, of a more enlightened mode of existence. It will seem to us, as we behold the manly forms and dignified bearing of the European strangers—to use the words of one of their own poets—that

'Gods walk the earth, or beings more than men.'

The very sward on which they tread will give back the sound of their footsteps happily: and, in the language of a greater poet than theirs, 'The desert shall be glad for them, and the wilderness blossom as the rose.'

Away with the old vacuity, the unoccupied dimness and solitariness of the land! The air breathes more softly: the sward laughs forth its flowers, preparative to the sports, the merry rompings; in anticipation of the brighter creatures of a more lieart-stirring, laughter-loving human childhood: beings in whose forms the light of heaven, and the flowers of the earth, seem mingled.

"For the war-whoop, will be heard the peasant whistling at the plough—for the corroboree, the music of a diviner land. Already the valleys seem hoary with innumerable flocks of sheep, and the low of kine is loud upon a thousand hills.

"A fair and populous city rises before me; and as bees throng with merry march, honey-laden to the hive, so man's active spirit and commercial industry bring into its bosom no mean portion of the wealth of the whole world."

AUSTRALIA FELIX.

What a stately and dignified lady is History, whose backward sceptre stretches over the dead past! The very things which she disdains and rejects, are the food, the life-blood of imagination, of fancy, and the heart. She gives us in didactic language the showy outside of events; what is to her the small cloud no bigger than the human hand? she regards it not. She dips the scallop-shell in the full stream, regardless of the fountain. She is the recorder of ruined empires; her sceptre rests upon fallen columns; her brows are wreathed with the wall-flowers and sigh-grass of deserted cities. With sages she seems to have had some ancient fellowship; and has snatched a sprig of laurel from the brows of mighty poets; still she rejects them as dreamers, and marks down Humour and Conjecture as children of the immutable Verity.

Time, of whom she is the secretary, brings against her graver accusations. He declares that Nature is oftentimes the more faithful recorder. That the volumes of written record are not "the truth and the whole truth." That History is but a collector of fragments which form a ludicrous representation of the grand whole. That she has weakly condescended to be a trainbearer to Pomp and Power. That, misled by the blandishments of Royalty, she has forsaken her sublime vocation to be the wearer of a robe of many colours!

Our infant colony is yet beneath the notice of so grand a lady; still a few flowers which she might not disregard are scattered incidentally through this volume. In fact, what is the history of a new colony? the arrival and departure of ships; its accumulating wealth; its few extraordinary political changes; the arrival of a superintendent, and of a judge; its one visit of a governor; its moral and intellectual advancement, of which, alas! there is little: these, with a few other particulars, are the sum-total.

The province was first traversed by Major, now Sir Thomas Mitchell; he visited arid nam^d Mount Macedon and Mount Ripon; and he named also the country generally, through admiration of its luxuriant pasturage and its abundant floweriness, Australia Felix. This designation comprehends the Port Phillip district, Port Fairy, Portland Bay, Geelong, Western Port, and the newly-discovered region of Gipps Land, with its rich and immense pastures, its fresh-water lakes, and six or seven fine streams.

The Port Phillip Bay was first discovered and entered in January, 1802, by Lieutenant John Murray, in the colonial brig Lady Nelson; and it was soon after visited by Captain Flinders in the Investigator. The bay impressed a strong sense of its importance on the latter; for, in speaking of it he remarked, that it was capable of holding a larger fleet of ships than ever went to sea, being from north to south ten leagues in length, and in breadth from east to west five or six. This it must be admitted is a grand sheet of water, though too shallow in some places for shipping to pass to and fro safely.

At the entrance is Point Nepean, the Eastern Head; its lat. 38° 16' S., and long. 144° 38' E.

About the year 1834, three Tasmanian gentlemen visited it; landed on Indented Head, and succeeded in locating themselves with their flocks and herds in the district, finding what previous visitors, many of them, had failed to do, fresh water.

Batman eventually settled himself down at the foot of the hill now bearing his name; and his house, which is now the Treasury, was finally purchased by the government.

It was evident that these adventurous shepherds did not take possession of the soil in the name of any earthly sovereign, for one of them, Batman, proceeded to purchase the ground on which the city of Melbourne now stands, of the aborigines, comprehending in the purchase, for hatchets, blankets, &c., an ample range of the most valuable land in the province. Little seemed those early settlers to care for any worldly regalities, they were regal enough themselves; and for divinities, if they recognised any, it must have been Pan, the god of the shepherds. It is certain that they had a glorious land before them in all its newness; nor were they loath to appropriate immediately to themselves what spread itself out luxuriantly around them; they pounced upon the pastures near, and eagerly made excursions into the more distant. Some

"Like Ajut, never to return."

Amongst these were Mr. Gillibrand, a Tasmanian barrister, and a Mr. Hesse. These gentlemen found a final location earlier than they expected. From their prominent standing in society, these adventurous persons, by the uncertainty of their fate, and the long and mysterious circumstances connected with their total disappearance, caused for a long time a sad feeling, a deep and melancholy interest in the public mind. Nothing satisfactory was ever elicited regarding them, and the mode and whereabout of their deaths is yet a matter of conjecture.*

It was soon after the location of the province that a party of people belonging to Mr. Gillibrand's establishment were astonished by a novel apparition: amongst the natives they found a white man; he was dressed in the ordinary costume of the blacks, was roving about with them from place to place; and like them carried the common implements of savage warfare.

On inquiry it was found that he was a run-away convict. About thirty year before Batman effected a permanent station as sheep and cattle keeper, there was an attempt to form a penal settlement at Port Phillip, by the English Government, two vessels from England entering the Bay for that purpose; but the intention was abandoned, for it was thought that the search for freshwater would prove ineffectual. Whilst the Ocean and the Calcutta were at anchor, three convicts made their escape into the bush: Gibson, afterwards a successful settler in Van Diemen's Land, a man of wealth and consequence; Buckley, destined for the space of thirty years to a strange and wild career in the new country, becoming naturalised among the aborigines; and the third convict it is supposed died, not willing to return like Gibson to the ship, or, like Buckley, to join himself to the hordes of naked and uncouth savages, tracking restlessly the mountains and wildernesses of a novel, and to them, mysterious region.

In temporary dwellings of bark and boughs, shed-shaped, by fresh streams, in picturesque villages raised instantaneously, and at will, and left untenanted as carelessly; seeking their food in rivers and lakes, and woods without bound; fish in the waters, opossums and flying squirrels, or tuans, in hollow gum-trees, and kangaroos and emus in woods and on the plains; amongst a wild and dusky people whose language, hearing hourly, he did not understand, and into whose mode of existence and customs he was uninitiated; silent amongst the talkative—lonely in society; how strange and mysterious must have been their relative positions! The aspect of the white man to them a source of amazement and curiosity; and to Buckley, recently from civilised life, with old habits and customs, and old appearances of things fastened to him like a coat of mail; to them he would seem the creature of another world, as though, as was believed of the Incas of Peru, he had descended from the sun; whilst to him, the novelty and freedom of such a situation would by degrees reconcile him to it, softening down insensibly what there was rude in their manners or disgusting in their culinary operations.

If the supposed absence of water only prevented Port Phillip from becoming a penal settlement, the Yarra on its first discovery, and the delightful tracts of country in its neighbourhood, would cause the intelligence to fly trumpet-tongued through Van Diemen's Land, only severed from it by a narrow channel, and through the more distant regions of New South Wales. What stories would be spread of endless locations of the richest pasturage; and how eagerly anxiously welcome to the Tasmanians pent up in narrow limits, and to people in the older portions of the continent wearied with their torrid climate, and longing thirstily for a land of rivers, and springs of water, and of rain! It is a well-known fact that in the Sydney district there is often a season of excessive drought, sometimes for twelve and eighteen months; whilst in Australia Felix there is if either only too much rain, the westerly winds bringing it up over the land abundantly; and that if in summer the country is a month without it, the intense heat of the sun burns up the herbage universally. It will easily therefore be imagined how wretchedly off must be the eastern portion of the land, hotter too by several degrees.

A more splendid and extensive country there is not in the world for sheep and cattle than Australia Felix: how fat and sleek are its immense herds! I speak not here of the immediate neighbourhood of the town, but of the country generally.

When we arrived in the province, it had been located several years; yet how much more wild and new it seemed then than now! Wood up to the very town of Melbourne was abundant, both living and dead; the latter has now disappeared for miles; and most of the former have a singular look, having been by the natives shorn of their honoured heads, for hire of bread, &c. for the new-comers; and are now covered again with green bushy crowns. The land has been thus cleared of slovenly dead boles and boughs, and is pleasanter-looking; pleasant enough in winter when the country is better watered, and is more park-like, smooth and green.

PORT PHILLIP.

The emigrant, on his arrival in Hobson's Bay, where the ships anchor, sees right on before him the northern beach, with its two hotels—the Pier—and the Marine hotel, &c. On his left hand William's-town, a small town yet: and on the right, only far lower down, Brighton; its neat and elegant residences on a natural terrace, one of the most delightful situations, if we except St. Kilda that is to be, for country villas, in the whole country. St. Kilda is indeed a remarkably green and beautiful knoll, covered pleasantly with she-oaks. A most conspicuous situation it is, and to persons who have been long at sea, a very agreeable object, where the ocean-weaiy eyes love to fix and repose themselves. Yes, that is the only green spot in the landscape; all the country besides is a dingy olive-brown, it has a kind of faded ancientness about it. Stranger, look intently along the white sandy beach, past the hotels, past the red headlands, on down to Brighton. That is a most delightful range of coast, which, if you are at all like me, you will return to again and again for a day's stroll. Often have I paced that alone, not for the observation of its every-day sights and sounds, although

"There is society where none intrude,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar;"

but to see that pleasantest of all sights, a ship holding on steadily up the bay. These are like angel visits yet. If it is an English vessel, you see it in imagination set sail from the Downs, and here she is resting like the eagle after a long flight, anchored tranquilly, brooding over her own shadow. She brings you letters: and the present is, and the past, swallowed up in one all-absorbing unconsciousness: time and space, sea and land, are in that mood of mind annihilated, and for aught you know to the contrary, you are in England!

Two miles it is from the anchorage to the beach: where stood, when we first landed, one poor but: and now, besides two hotels, there are two wooden piers stretching out into the deeper waters of the bay. Thence it is two miles to the Yarra, if you choose to go by land: and by water, the circuitous course of the river is nine, if not ten miles, to the Basin, where brigs, and other small vessels, can be admitted comfortably. When you look at this ample and convenient sheet of water, you perceive that Nature, or the Genius of Australia Felix, intended Melbourne to be just where it is. Or you may fancy that it has been scooped out for the purpose to which it is applied, a very natural error. On our first setting foot there, it was in the mud; now, there is a noble wharf: and this, and the new custom-house, are great improvements. Still the neighbourhood is like a bog in the wet season, and now the town has overgrown its first infancy, ought not to be so; only let

"Bright improvement, on the car of Time,"

effect a glorious revolution in the favour of Port Phillip, its separation from Sydney, and it will rise up out of other "Sloughs of Despond" besides this.

MELBOURNE.

Looking on the metropolitan city from either of its goodly eminences, the eastern or western hill, we can hardly persuade ourselves that a few years ago it was only—the ground on which it stands—traversed by dusky paint-smeared savages, and a few kangaroos; for now, running parallel with the river Yarra, it is a mile in length and half a one in breadth; a lusty, stately, bantling of a city it is; vigorous in its growth, of a cheerful aspect, and graceful in its proportions. Fronting the river is Flinders' Street, displaying many noble houses, with Englishgrassed lawns, one of them crowned with a graceful dome. Of these streets, running east and west, the principal is Collins Street, containing the most respectable assemblage of shops; in it are the banks, most of the places of worship, and it is indeed the great and well-known thoroughfare. Many other streets there are as large, all of convenient width, none so thronged and respectable. Queen Street, and Elizabeth Street, are the next in importance, running south and north. Bourke Street is the most frequented of any on the arrival of English and Scotch ships, for in it, at the corner of Elizabeth Street, is a convenient and good building—the Post-office; now respectable, for no w it has a respectable post-master. The Mechanics' Institute in Collins Street is very well as a building—not so the debt upon it, 1600l. It has a library, very small; and its secretary, an intelligent man, and as an artist well-known, reflects credit on the establishment. It would reflect as great credit on the Colonial Government if it would liquidate the debt; especially as it is the only Town Hall; therein being held the meeting of the Town Council.

Of the buildings next in importance are the Court House, the Jail, the Custom House: and pre-eminently, will be the best building in Melbourne — a new Bank in Collins Street, of brown stone, and, with its Grecian architecture, graceful exceedingly.

The Market-place is large enough for an infant city, and so are the market dues. Since Melbourne has been incorporated, the streets have improved considerably, good order has increased and been enforced, and so have the town rates.

A change has also taken place in the magistracy much for the better; and in other respects also.

After all, the best and most encouraging object in Melbourne, and in Australia Felix, is not its Court House nor yet its capacious Prison, but its large handsome Bank in Collins Street; for it is a bold announcement that the country will progress, and become prosperous and wealthy.

Te objects which in the town first attract the stranger's notice are the flags—not flag-stones—though of these there are some, but more dirt; flags flying about auction-rooms and the everlasting jingle of auction bells. Some dozen of such rooms there are there is a constant gleam of crimson flags, and distressing is the clang of bells. These auctions serve instead of English pawn-brokers' shops. Here are disposed of whatever almost in the shape of mercliandize can be mentioned, paid for by insolvent-merchant schedules: and therefore, as they cost little, are sold amazingly cheap.

Next to the bell-noise-makers, what strikes us as quite colonial is the immense numbers of drays, many loaded with wood drawn by four, six, and eight bullocks: few drays, drawn by horses in proportion. There is not so much variety in the shops as in old countries, necessity having, whilst there were few, compelled the shopkeepers to deal in almost everything. Thus "General Stores" are common. Another peculiarity: you see many people not to be mistaken; hard-face grim-visaged dry-countenanced workmen—and women too—whom at a glance you recognize to have been convicts. Even amongst the richer folk there are some, not disguised by dress or wealth. The dresses of the people are peculiar too; light colours, and of lighter texture. The houses are roofed with wooden shingles — not inelegant covering—and the heads of the human creatures with straw.

Walking along Collins Street, you see of shops kept by Jews very many,—Levi's, Lazarus's, Nathan's, Soloman's, Simeon's, and Benjamin's. There is no lack of Liverpool, Manchester and London Marts—grand shops (one of them the smartest in Melbourne,) all kept by these people.

Other peculiarities there are, quite Australian. On our first arrival we frequently met walking about on the Eastern Hill— tame of course—two emus. Parrots, the gorgeous native parrots, abound in cages; cockatoos also, but generally at liberty. On lawns and grass-plots, hop about or bask in the sun tame kangaroos. At one of the inns a pelican stalks in and out very leisurely. Nor is it anything extraordinaiy to see tame opossums and other animals of the country, tame exceedingly.

But of all objects the wild, grotesque, painted, feather-ornamented, tea-tree-besom carrying natives, with their singular costumes, war-implements, and their wild gestures, grouped and scattered over the town, and with the shaggy accompaniment of dogs, give its most original feature to Melbourne.

The most delightful circumstance regarding Melbourne is its present position, standing as it does open on every side: your ingress and egress unobstructed by any kind of fences. You have not to enter it by roads, as you do towns in old countries. All the country so smooth, tree-studded, and park-like: with a deal of its old primaeval freedom and gracefulness about it. Much of this land will be sold, some time enclosed, and built upon: but surely Melbourne will not be suifered to become a large overgrown town, in a hot country, without ample provision of spacious parks and squares, being made for its ornament, and for the healthful exercise and recreation of its outpouring wallpent, work-wearied, people.

COLLINGWOOD, OR NEW-TOWN,

is but half a mile from the city, about the size that Melbourne was four years ago. On higher ground, it is, with its many good and more poor buildings, a cleaner and healthier place than Melbourne.

RICHMOND:

Whether called after the Richmond I know not, is a quarter of a mile, or rather more, perhaps twenty minutes' walk, from the Eastern Hill on past the Government domain. It is pleasantly situated on a mount, and the agreeableness of the locality would be much augmented had it the Thames, or a river like it, curving about it. Its houses are those of the richer town's-people— suburban retirements. It is a breezy, elegant, and increasing place. The Cottage-of-Gentility of the sub-governor, Mr. La Trobe, is Swiss-looking—a very tasteful abode—and I do not doubt, a very happy one, for the spirit of the man may be supposed to be the presiding atmosphere of the place, and he is a scholar and a gentleman. This residence, of course, stands solitarily in the Government ground: with the Yarra rather distantly in front.

BURIAL-GROUNDS.

Twenty minutes' walk from Melbourne are the burial-grounds —union in division—of all religious denominations. They are not far from the Telegraph-station, on a commanding eminence, whence you may see the Snowy Mountains eastward—Mount Macedon, north—west, Mount Cotterel—and south-west, Station Peak: but your eyes rest, and your thoughts too, on the Bay of Port Phillip up, over whose blue waters most of the many who lie at your feet have come in hope. From the weary sea voyage —and the rough voyage of life, more than eight hundred persons are here quietly havened. Peace to them! Though the spot is neat, orderly, and contains some graceful monuments, I never visited it without the most melancholy feelings. I felt as though the greater portion of the sleepers were wrecked mariners on desert shores. When we think of it, the place is peculiarly a solsmn one—more so than churchyards generally. They are foreign graves. For those few hundred silent inmates, thousands in Britain, thinking of the long hoped-for, but never-returning, have wept. Yes, and in the colony too. And here are beautiful monuments, that have been sent for to England—most touching records of the purest affections and regrets.

A COLONIAL GOVERNMENT LAND SALE.

As the land sale of April was a disappointment to our nionied men who were shipmates, the sale of the 10th of June following was looked forward to with eagerness and hope. Other persons of property there were in the colony, other emigrants who had been long anxious to locate themselves before our arrival; and they too, with keen land-appetites—whetted evermore by delay, by interested speculators, and newspaper reports—were all anxiety for the government land sale of the 10th of June.

Long before the arrival of the happy day, that blissful and ever-memorable 10th of June, strangers were dropping in from afar as to some great festival. Ships from Sydney, Hobart Town, Launceston, had their cabins crowded by rich people, all eager for a slice of that famous and fortune-making region Australia Felix. The Land-office was daily and hourly besieged by impatient inquirers as to the whereabouts of the multifarious allotments which were to lap in Elysium the land-buyers of the 10th of June. At the inns, too, were signs of the times, loud was the noise, and restless the fret of preparation. Go whereever you would, far and near, in the bush were lively groups on foot, on horseback, and in carriages; there were dancing of plumes, veils and parasols startling the wild creatures, and filling with glimpses of refinement the rude wilderness. Many in imagination were taking possession of future locations. Ladies in pleasant companies were chatting on prostrate gumtrees, eating sandwiches and drinking champagne, whilst their grave and silent lords were considering how much the chosen allotments would fetch, or they would like to give for them; for those very delightful land-portions where they were then enjoying themselves, on the slowly, very slowly approaching 10th of June. The day did at length arrive! A day remarkable in Melbourne for its joyous holiday feeling, and for its sprinklings of blithe company. There, at the auction-room, were assembled, the government auctioneer Mr. Broadie, Captain Lonsdale the treasurer, ever ready with the ever-hungry statepurse; and all the bank-managers of all the banks were in attendance, to afford every facility to the colonists in being disburdened of their money.

Immense was the crowd of people: a goodly and respectable assemblage. There were generally nods and smiles of recognition betwixt old friends and neighbours, formerly located in each other's vicinage, but thence scattered by the restless colonial spirit to the four winds of heaven. Here they met again, from the vineyards and orange-groves of Parramatta; from the banks of the Hunters' River, the Goulbourn, and the Murrambidgee. There were the Walkers, the Ebdens, the Murrays, the Mantons, —Australians and Tasmanians, of wealth and renown. There were also

"Captains, and colonels, and knights in arms."

Settler greeted settler, from the banks of Jordan, from Jericho, Bagdad, and Jerusalem *. Others there were from the Derwent and the Tamar, from the Lake River and the Esk. All cheerfullooking; yea, happy people were they all. They knew nothing of what had been done in the English privy council: they were in blissful ignorance that Lord John Russell had decreed, sanctioned by her Majesty, that those very allotments, for which they were giving twenty-two, thirty-two, and forty-two pounds per acre, were only worth one pound per acre. The ship containing the instructions was blown steadily on at sea, day after day, but months and months must elapse before it could arrive to enlighten the ignorant, and to dash the hopes and expectations of the to-day happy. All was excitement and eagerness; vigorous was the competition, full of energy was the auctioneer, loud was the chink of money, and the thoughts of good fortune seemed to brighten up every countenance. It was par excellence the Australian government land-sale of June the 10th, 1840.

Many a bustling person, with pencil and paper in hand, were noting down the results of the sale, to be felt afterwards. Some had mapped on strips of paper, rudely and at random, locations marked with the sectional number, &c., and especially ennobled with some peculiar remarkable quality:—"Soil, a rich alluvial deposit"—"fine bed of freestone"—"good water-frontage;" and some might have marked upon them "silver" or "gold mine only the selfish Government had reserved all the precious metals to itself. No matter, better times are approaching: for in that very ship at sea, in those famous Instructions, it is decreed that all mines of gold and silver, all wealth of rich gems, shall belong to the purchaser of the soil. Wealth and happiness no doubt, good Port Phillipians! are to be your portion in the rich freight of that ship. Yes! with the arrival of that ship the Government did give away its silver and its cold mines!

Now are not the Austral Felicians a generation determined to be poor, a stupid and perverse people? They bought up land eagerly at enormous prices, when the Government sold the surface only of the soil: now when all beneath is to be their own, and that, too, for one pound per acre, they take the alarm and will have none of it! Not an acre will they purchase, though there is the possibility of the earth being full of gold and silver, of topaz, amethyst, and ruby, sapphire, carbuncle, and onyx-stone, "illumination of all gems." So thoroughly have they been enriched by Government paternity and benediction, that were the Government auctioneer to offer them sovereigns at a penny a piece, nay, were it our most gracious Sovereign herself, they would look very narrowly into the nature of the bargain before they closed hands.

There is land on the Diamond Creek: surely the people would purchase that? a Diamond Creek is not an everyday affair. Let the Government try!

But, "to turn, and to return" to our never-to-be-forgotten day of June 10th.

There had been high-noon, golden sunshine, but sober evening was at hand; and a sadness came over most faces. All morning pleasures weary towards noon. Some were soberly happy in their new purchases; some were doubtful whether they had done good or harm; and others were vexed and mortified because they had done nothing.

"Good times, and bad times, and all times get over:" and so passed away the bankrupt-making, happy-seeming day of June 10th: and from the pockets of the people passed—so stated the newspapers—into the Crown money-bag, one hundred thousand pounds!

Other land there is in the colony, as good, and other 10ths of June there will be, but it is not at all questionable whether even such another 10th of June can occur again!

WALK TOWARDS THE AUSTRALIAN ALPS.

These mountains were about fifty miles from our residence; and to see them more nearly, if not to climb them, had long been a wish of ours. Moreover, residing on the banks of the Yarra, we naturally felt anxious to know something of its upward course, and the nature of the region whence it came.

On the 25th ot October, 1843, we set off. My companion was J. C., a member of the society of Friends. The Alps were in prospect from the first—the lofty and far-seen sterile ranges in which is found the lyre-bird, or Australian pheasant. We thought it possible that we might see that splendid-tailed creature in its native haunts; might also, perhaps, kill it, and enrich ourselves with a tail or two as mementoes of the country. Still it was rather improbable that we should at all be able to reach those dim blue distant mountains, having but little time.

We took each of us a blanket, and, as near as we could calculate, four days' provisions. We were thus prepared to be independent for a few days, it not being our intention to trespass, any more than was absolutely necessary, on the kindness and hospitality of the settlers in that direction. It was also possible that in a thinly-inhabited and mountainous region we might not find their locations, whereas our appetites were sure to find us. No people can be more hospitable than the pastoral Australians; yet as strangers we felt rather diffident of claiming either food or shelter, knowing very well how many, idly and knavishly, roam about the land, from location to location, committing frequently robbery, and sometimes murder. We knew that we were honest, decent kind of people, but how were others to know it? Now, for instance, we walked up one morning to Mr. Thompson's home sheep station, thirty-four miles from Melbourne. We knocked at the cottage-door; called loudly; looked in, not at the window, but at the vacant space its substitute; all was vacuity and silence. We paced on by another cottage, with its small garden and its plot of vegetables; this was deserted also. However, about two hundred yards from us, partly seen amongst clumps of trees, was the hutkeeper, attended by his dogs, busy hurdle-shifting. Here were the sheepcotes. The large dog was savagely loud as we approached. The hutkeeper was alone, and we were armed with a double-barrelled gun. He was a Highlander, a man of odd accent, but of plain good sense; and gave us what directions we needed. Returning as we did in the night to this same location, when the flocks were penned, the heavens starlight, faintly lit by a new moon, and still,—the earth still also,—the hutkeeper in his sleeping-cot by the folds—coming back a day or two earlier than he, or the shepherds whom we had seen afterwards, could expect,—coming thus there again, like thieves in the night, no wonder that when we called out to them, none replied to our calls. Loud was the bleating of sheep and lambs—incessant the barking of dogs, which we had disturbed. Yet still, as the new moon and the stars above us, was the hutkeeper, and as undisturbed by the outward hubbub; still were the two young Scotch shepherds indoors, reading the works of their great national poet, Burns. They were sure to suspect us of some sinister design. At length the hutkeeper responded, and came walking to us ghost-like in his shirt. On learning who we were, he said he did not expect us back so soon. We were it seems quicker in our movements than he or we had calculated, having been where he directed us, and were the same day back again. He had described our track as easily bewildering people, even such as are better acquainted with it than us; yet we had found our way and were here again, most unexpectedly, disturbing simple, quiet pastoral people, giving the dogs and sheep a deal of uneasiness—none of them, men, dogs or sheep, knowing what we would be at. The scene and the sounds—the honest bark of dogs, the bleat of the sheep —all pastoral sounds—the sheep-cotes and the trees seen mistily in the still moonlight, with all the clear and bright constellations above, delighted me. Soon the hutkeeper dressed himself and led us to the hut. The dogs became sociable as soon as the men were so, and were still. By degrees, also, the bleat of the sheep died away to the profoundest quiet: there were 1400 of these, besides lambs, in two pens.

We "stepped ben" at the good people's invitation; heard apologies many and reasonable; saw a bright fire, and a nicely browned, deliriously roasted leg of mutton, of which we partook, although we had taken tea with the river Yarra, at its especial invitation, four miles off; and we also got some tea with them, and damrier.

We talked a little, for the Scotch are not all at once talkative and familiar. Of course Burns was our subject; both the Man and the Book. Their edition was Chambers's reprint of Currie's. We were here made to feel what a blessing is literature. How divine, how beyond all price, seemed in the wilderness the poetical spirit! Burns starved: yet his poetry is the bread of life to the mentally hungry, to the spirit-spent, desert-wearied, of the earth's remotest regions. To us that mutton, tea, and damper, and a roof over our heads at night, were good; but the talk about Burns, both the Man and his Book, soon left behind mere animal sustenance and enjoyment. We ascended from the roots and the stem, unto the leaves, the blossoms, and the fruit; from the earthly to the etherial. They can do nothing for the Poet, no more than man can do for God; yet how much has Burns done for them! The shepherd's life is dull and monotonous; yet Burns and the Bible, for I saw it also on the shelf, fill the Australian shepherd's soul with love, and joy, and thankfulness; with reverence for God and with admiration for Man—for what there is in him, like the divinity, that thrills, vivifies, and elevates.

The natives, we were told, had the day before made their miams on the hills opposite, and were perhaps this very night lying by large fires, or sitting in dusky groups, the men abusing their wives for the scanty supply of bandicoot or opossum, which they would eat up nearly raw. The Bible and Burns have done nothing for them: and if they could really feel and know the difference there is betwixt the one state and the other, they would decide most wisely to drown themselves in the Yarra. So vast and wide is the difference betwixt, Man the mere beast, and Man the cultivated, the God-like!

The day, from its first dawn, had been to us one feast of enjoyment. The valley into which we had descended, and the whole plain, mountain-encircled, reminded me of Dr. Johnson's Abyssinian Valley of Happiness. The hills, however, were not so steep as to be unascendable, though "labour hard it was and weary woe." It was a kind of Swiss Arcady, of mountainous and smooth champagne country; of shepherds and their flocks. Sheep-cotes there were large, square, and neatly made; also comfortable cottages: the sheep from the newly opened folds, scattering whitely over the plains: the mists climbing the hills in pillars of cloud: the morning stillness and sunshine: all, both to eye and ear, were very tranquillising—very delightful.

Here we saw the Native Companion, a large bird of the crane genus: first one and then another we saw, until we counted six of them; all of them were too wary to suifer us to get within gun-shot of them: these birds were five feet high, colour of the body grey, the wings darker, blue or black.

But to begin, after this digression, with the beginning:—

We paced on from our Yarra-cottage towards the river Plentythrough the wild bush, noting particularly how well, to our right, on the river's slopes and flats the land was cultivated, and extensively too: covered with emerald-green crops of corn, contrasting admirably with the dingy colour of the wild interminable woodlands. In two hours we reached the Plenty, a delightful though small tributary of the Yarra; clothed far and near with the fresh beauty of cultivated growths. Over the Plenty is a bridge that a painter would not overlook; nor yet the one at the DiamondCreek: both being picturesquely formed of trees laid across, covered with poles athwart again, and lastly overlaid with large sheets of stringy bark. Overlooking the Plenty Mr. Turnbull had a substantial good-looking country-house; on the opposite side is Mr. Hall's pretty cottage and garden: yet with the exception of the meadow-land, and of that there is little, this part of the country is miserably poor. I proposed to my companion that we should take a small portion of the soil, or rather earth-surface and transmit it to Lord Stanley by way of encouragement, if he still thinks it possible that by taxing their sheep he can compel the squatters to-purchase such land at one pound per acre.

We walked on an hour or two, nor met with anything worth notice until we had passed the Diamond-Creek, and saw Mr. Donaldson's 640 acre estate. This is the only land yet sold so far eastward, but we should think it too far from Melbourne, a market already too well supplied. As land it is excellent; the soil is black, very rich, and the crops upon it look most luxuriant: still it is miles from water, from the Creek or the Yarra. No water near, and a poor and distant market, are great drawbacks. Here a fine kangaroo-dog was pointed out to us, so fond of kangarooing that it goes out alone, kills the game,'and then fetches its master to the dead animals.

A little way further, at what are called the Shepherds' Gardens, there is a fine and extensive prospect of the Yarra valley, and the wooded country; here we saw another instance of animal sagacity: a young lamb had lost itself, having gone a little way out of sight of the flock. To drive it back the shepherd said was impossible, it would be silly enough to run every way but the right one. The only plan was to set his dog to catch it; this the well-educated creature did immediately, taking hold of its neck with the most evident gentleness. The shepherd then took it from the dog's mouth, and showed us how nicely it had been detained without injury; this pastoral incident charmed us. Hence from Mr. Townsend's sheep station we steered across mountain and glen, from creek to creek, by the compass and the sun, there being in our track no trace of human denizenship, no sheep or cattle station for ten miles.

We found it hot and thirsty work, to say nothing of its wearisomeness and sameness, climbing hill after hill, the sun beating hotly upon us, where not one breath of air could penetrate; up hill and down went we everlastingly, to descend as wearisome as to climb; no creek or lagoon that we found but was laid under contribution; all did not cool us; coats and waistcoats, and neckcloths, were stripped off one after one; we lost considerably through perspiration, and had a more grievous loss—that of the compass. My friend John grew very hot bodily, rather warm also in temper. He grew rather snappish and impatient: I reminded him of the patience and equable temperament of quakerism; but the loss of the compass did not add much to my placidity.

The steeps had insensibly turned us, in trying to ascend them in the most accessible places, from our direct course. We decided that we were lost; and our only way in the wilderness of the neverending hills, would be to make south-east by the sun, having gone rather too far north from the Yarra.

We did so, and after an hour's laborious ascending and descending we came to a cattle-track running parallel with the river, although the Yarra was yet unseen.

Hence we descended a ravine full of deep undergrowth, kangaroo-grass, brambles and fern; crossed and recrossed with kangaroo-tracks, although we had only seen one of these animals, a wallaby, not much larger than a hare.

Dead trees bridged the ravine every few yards; then the network of brambles made our progress difficult and slow. Down we went, getting over the trees, tearing through the net-work; but lo, there was pleasure in store for us! there they stood, growing in all their luxuriant and stately beauty—Fern Trees; I had seen them grow more largely in Van Diemen's Land, not more beautifully certainly than here; my companion saw them with pleasure for the first time.

Now also there was a low rushing sugh, as of a wind in the trees—louder and louder grew the rush and the roar as we descended—the wood-wide pervading sound of a stately inarch of waters, caused by rapids in the Yarra. How picturesque was the spot to which we had descended! The river flashed and foamed along like a Derbyshire torrent. It might have been a portion of the Dove or Derwent; whilst the level rocky heights on the one. side reminded me of the scenery at Matlock. In this agreeable and romantic spot we kindled a fire and made ourselves tea.

After our refreshment of body and mind, John declared that, like the lazy character in Sam Slick, "he felt much encouraged;" a passage that we repeated to ourselves on many pleasant occasions afterwards.

On again ascending the hills, on the stringy-bark heights, there broke upon us suddenly, through an opening in the woods, a most delicious prospect. No longer hills interminably, but a rich open plain, many miles in length, and several in breadth; the river Yarra flowing lengthways through it, and dividing it nearly into equal parts. We were delighted.

We paced for three hours along the stringy-bark heights, going not less than ten miles; seeing evermore below us on the right, our land of Goshen, of sheep and cattle. We saw, indeed, cattle beyond the river, and a long line of road, leading from station to station.

When we ascended from the valley of Fern-trees to the summit of the ranges, the evening shadows were lengthening along the hill-tops, and on the sides of the slopes. All the west was ruby and saffron, flushing the air with a mellow light, brightening the earth about and before us, although our backs were turned upon the temporary splendour, fleetly fading away. The bases of the hills westward lay steeped in molten gold, and before us ran on, betwixt tree and tree, lines of the rich sunset light, suggesting the idea of angel visitants; for, when not looked upon stedfastly, such they appeared.

Here, in the dusk, we kindled our watch-fire on one of the highest hills, overlooking the, to us, new and beautiful plain. Thus, with our blazing fire before us, the crescent moon and twinkling stars above us, folded in our blankets, with our provision bags for pillows, we lay down for the night. The ground was dry, the air pleasantly warm, the night beautiful.

Pleasant are the sounds which have a bold relief in the twilight stillness, ceasing at intervals, till all is hushed.

Calm was the moon, and sweet the influence of the multitudinous stars.

Welcome was the bark of a house-dog, marking out to us in the half darkness the whereabout of a human habitation. Day sounds died away, and of night voices few succeeded. The owl with its dual cuckoo notes, was heard at intervals, but the howling of no wild beasts.

Into what strange errors do poets fall—our very greatest! Campbell disturbed the American lakes with the prowling of tigers—

"On Erie's banks, where tigers steal along."

And again, in Australia—

What spacious cities with their spires shall gleam,
Where now the panther laps a lonely stream?

Tigers there are none in North America; and panthers, if there are any in Australia, have yet to be discovered. Southey, again, in his Botany Bay Eclogues—

"— That deep cry
That rings along the forest, seems to sound
My parting knell: it is the midnight howl
Of hungry monsters, prowling for their prey."

The worst wild beasts in Australia are, man, the monster: that fine exotic the convict; and the native.

It is not well to defer fire-making until it is dusk, as we did. There is wood to be collected, ijnder which may lie snakes, and a bite is death. Black ants there were, if no snakes; as I found to my cost, being stung by one of them; and I felt the tingling pain for two hours after. All the placidity of the crescent moon, and the shadow filling its girth; all the stedfastness of the stars, could not persuade me out of the torment.

On occasions like these, a kind of Arab feeling visits us, of the unpoetical nature of in-door life. And we say with Milton, looking upon the glowing and glittering heavens,

"For whom shine these, when sleep has shut all eyes?"

All the wild freedom, scenery, and imagery of nomadic modes of life visit us, and employ the unsleeping mind. We almost resolve to renounce our unnatural and blank in-door denizenship, for the open skies and the bare earth. And it is only towards daybreak that we acknowledge the value, with a cold shiver, of a good artificial roof, square walls, and a soft featherbed.

We talked, before addressing ourselves to sleep, of Jacob, the patriarchal shepherd of Palestine; and how, like him, we "lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, the sun being set:" and how "he took of the stones of that place and put them for his pillows." Rather hardish pillows, those— and ours, too. Still we had the same attendants we decided; the world was still the same world, superintended by the same Intelligence; for now, as then,—

"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep," &c.

Then we slept, woke up, mended our fire, and slept again. In the dim dawn, the laughing-jackass, and the magpies with their rich warblings, awoke us, to find ourselves chill, the fire lying in white ashes, the dew beaded on our blankets, and up we leapt. Soon the sun flamed like a large diamond on the eastern mountain-top, and, how strange! the whole plain was, as if there had arisen a flood in the night, like a sea; the clumps of trees, which had studded it beautifully over-night, showed their tops like islands through the mist.

Led by the low of cattle, we descended into the vale of mist, leaving the sun, expecting to find a hut by the river at some cattle stations; but they proved to be on the other side of the Yarra.

Here we made a fire, and our breakfast; saw a platypus in the water, and thence ascending a fine natural terrace, graceful as the site of some old castle, running parallel with the river, we paced on until we were cheered by the domestic sound of a crowing cock. Sheepfolds were soon pleasantly in sight. Shepherds' cottages, and distantly, flocks of sheep grazing quietlv.

We found the family at breakfast—with mutton, fish, tea, and damper, spread upon the table. They pressed us to join them, but we declined.

Thence we continued our walk eastward four miles; crossed a creek at rather an awkward place, being in jeopardy of coldbathing from one miserable rotten-wooded bridge; paced over knoll and plain to Mr. Thompson's home-station before mentioned. Here we were again invited to take some refreshment. Thence we went forward to the same gentleman's out-station, three miles. This is on a pretty little rapid stream, not more than ten yards wide, called, after one of Mr. Ryrie's servants, who came upon it unexpectedly, Watts' River. This was the last sheep-station eastward. Here we got with the hut-keeper some tea, mutton, and damper. Crossing Watts' River, where an old prostrate tree formed a bridge, we were upon a rich, deepsoiled alluvial flat, covered thickly with brambles and wild mint. Here we were astonished by the vastness and stately beauty of the white gum-trees. Up they rose smoothly, like the white marble pillars of some temple-dome—it was a grand and beautiful sight. In one of them was swung the enormous nest of an eagle or native companion. One of these trees had been cast down by some tempest. There lay the giant. We measured it as it lay. Eight feet it was in diameter, and thirty-two yards to the first branches. We had found one before at Foley's, on the Diamond Creek, seventeen yards. That we thought monstrous; but this was past all imagination.

After crossing Watts' River we sped on tor three tionrs, expecting to ascend a lofty mountain at the base of which we appeared to be. On and on we sped, but in vain. We found that a person might walk himself weary, before he could walk off the dim blue mist from a mountain in whose immediate presence he seemed to be. AVhat puzzled us the most, was, that when we had satisfied ourselves that we should ascend now right on to the summit, we came to a wide interposing valley. Again there was a higher ascent, and another valley; so delusive were in this instance appearances.

Our compass was lost early in the journey: and now that we had outgone the last dwelling of civilisation, and the last herd of half-wild cattle, with but one day's provisions remaining, I thought it best to retrace our steps. We had gone already fortyeight miles direct, and the River Yarra winds about in that distance more than one hundred miles. We were told that the surveying party on the other side, some time ago, did not ascend so high up the river as we. Having conversed with a person attached to that expedition, I learned from him that beyond Mr. Ryrie's they came to a beautiful waterfall, as nearly as they could calculate, about ninety-six miles from Melbourne. No such fall, I was assured, existed in the Yarra as far as it had been traced by persons resident in the neighbourhood: and they expressed little doubt that my informant was mistaken, he having, most likely, during the rush of heavy rains from the hills, taken some water leaping from a ravine for a fall in the river itself. So it might be. I should think a fine waterfall up amongst these rugged hills no unnatural circumstance, and should like much to trace uu the river.

Had I left Australia without visiting Watts' River and its marshy flats, I had been imperfectly acquainted with its most inveterate mosquito possibilities. Such clouds of them as there pertinaciously enveloped us! We kept one hand employed in fighting and brushing them from our faces and hands, and were stung after all dreadfully. When out of the swamps they still followed us, and we were compelled to kindle a fire to smoke them away from us. No person who has cursed the stifling reek of a smoky house, but would have blessed on this occasion the smoky influence, though it only in part relieved us from the tormenting pests.

On our return, instead of sleeping under the bare heavens, we, overcome by old habits, called at Thompson's home-station, and there spent the night. Sleeping out in the open air on the preceding night had been a more comfortable affair. All foot-travellers in the bush should embrace it. After walking in the hot sun, and wet with perspiration, at a good out-door fire we should have dried ourselves. Here in the hut, carried away bodily after Burns, we forgot ourselves, lay down, the fire having gone out through forgetfulness, damp—to awake from our first sleep fuming away like a steam-engine; then as the night wore thin, to feel cold as death. Commend me to the open air, one large beaconfire, and canopy of stars. Continuing our homeward walk the following day, we had no compass, no road, no sun to guide us, it being overcast, and were at times not a little perplexed in the stringy-bark wilderness as to our whereabout. After many hours' uncertain walking; often turning our eyes sunward in vain; sometimes fancying that we had faced about in the forest, and were going east instead of west; mingling thankfulness with our misgivings, that we had thus early attempted at least to return home before our food was exhausted; we came at length to a place where we caught a gleam of water, and soon after heard the lively march of its flow. Afar oif went the rush and the roar, and to it we descended. Multitudinous were the breaks and rapids, and endless the succession of small falls, flashing in foamy agitation. The river, to make better speed, in its impetuosity divided itself into two torrents, forming a long narrow island. Wild was the scene, animating the stir of waters. When here, having refreshed ourselves, we determined, not knowing what part of the Yarra it was, that we would no more quit the sight or neighbourhood of it for that day, or until the sun pleased to become again our guide.

This decision was needless, for we soon after came upon a station, with its homestead and stockyard, with a cottage overlooking a broad enlargement of the Yarra, at the junction of some, to us, nameless creek. It was the most picturesque spot I had met with in the country; and proved to be, on our crossing the creek and visiting it, the cattle-station of our friend and shipmate, Mr. Hall. By two things I knew it especially—at it young Mr. Hall said that the noise of the river prevented him at first from sleeping; then there was the veritable old goat that Mr. H.had on ship-board.

A wild scene it was of wood and water, rock and glen. Around was heard the low of cattle, and the air was filled evermore with the roar of the river. O for such a place of our own, with a small but certain income of money, and books, and constantly in-coming friends. Our earth, alas for it! would then be in danger of seeming heaven. Such a situation, and such concomitants, would do something towards obliterating from our feelings and fancy, the one fair and far-off land, ever "the ocean to the river of our thoughts."

We had not, we concluded on reaching home, gone into the wilderness for nothing. Pleasures we had reaped and pain. It was painful, as we drew near our own locality, to see cottages left tenantless; to see also fields and gardens, which had been but a year before well cultivated, deserted, or horses turned into them to graze. A sad state of things in a new land, where man seems to be attended by a curse, although Nature is far from being niggardly.

During this journey we got a little insight into pastoral matters. We saw the shepherds take charge of the sheep for the day, and hut-keepers busy hurdle-shifting. These persons know and keep to their own departments. The hut-keeper is the headman in the hut; the shepherds in the field. With the day the attention and care of the shepherd close. The hut-keeper kills the household meat, gathers and cuts wood for the fires, mends them, and does the cookery of the establishment. At night the shepherds transfer their charge to the hut-keeper; he sleeps outdoor, by the folds in his ark-like cot, attended by the dogs; meanwhile the shepherds read or chat in-doors by the evening fi re. The hut-keeper was our host, and was liberal of his hospitable attentions.

At the stations they asked if we had with us any newspapers. They seemed very anxious, thus shut out from the busy world, to learn how it was going on. At one of these places was a "Scotsman" newspaper; I examined the date, and found it fifteen months old. That was their latest home intelligence.

On one occasion we took out from our stores a bit of a newspaper that had been wrapped round something, and it was read most eagerly and impatiently. Had the monks of old time, who professed to renounce "the world, the flesh, and the devil," by entering abbeys and monasteries, retired to such unworldly sheep-stations as these, they might have counted their beads and sheep together, and have been useful to the world as well as living religiously to God and to themselves.

It is curious to observe the same laws and customs, with certain modifications, existing in all ages and nations. I have been reminded that pastoral life and laws are now as they were in the earlier days of the earth's history. Australian shepherds have, in many instances, the sheep counted out to them, and are responsible for any loss or diminution of the number. I have heard of careless shepherds who have, at the termination of their servitude, been in debt, instead of receiving wages, through neglect or bad management. Laban, the Syrian, we read in the best of books, knew very well the number of his flock committed to Jacob's keeping, and expected him to render up an exact account. Jacob says to Laban, "that which was torn of beasts I brought not unto thee; I bare the loss of it; of my hand didst thou require it, whether stolen by day or stolen by night."

David makes frequent mention of the lion and the bear as the great troublers of his pastoral quiet—creatures, however, for whom he was a match. A beast more destructive—if not of man, of his flocks—is the native dog, than lions or bears, or even wolves, through savage wantonness, biting indiscriminately the unresisting flock. A wild dog will frequently kill twenty or more sheep in a night. Thus, though there were no "hungry monsters prowling for their prey"—no lions, tigers, panthers, bears, or wolves, it requires great care and watchfulness on the part of the Australian shepherd, to guard his woolly charge against the horrible devastations of the wild dog.

WALK TO WESTERN PORT AND CAPE SCHANCK.

On the 29th of December I left home to visit Western Port, Arthur's Seat, and to see what I could of other localities. My way was through Melbourne, over that evidence of the neglected condition of the province, the Yarra Punt. Seven years have elapsed since the colonisation of the country, during which period several hundred thousand pounds have been realised by the sale of its lands: near it is a handsome and populous town— yet over the Yarra, a stream forty yards wide, and after as much money has been paid to cross it as would have built half a dozen good bridges, there is no bridge. Here I have known a poor man with his four bullocks and dray, after coming seven miles—after cutting and loading his wood overnight—after hawking his load all day in Melbourne, and selling it for three shil lings—after paying at the Punt two shillings and fourpence, return home seven miles in the evening with eightpence in his pocket.

Hence to St. Kilda is three miles—a delightful locality, intended to be a town of suburban sea- beach villas. Land has been recently sold here, and enclosing and building are going on steadily.

To Brighton is four other miles. This, a special survey, is the property of Dendy and Were—both of them, like many others, having paid too dear for their speculation. Two of the elements of this estate are wretched, the soil and water. Yet there are many good, and some elegant houses built upon it; much improvement has been effected against many discouragements; displaying no little perseverance and industry. There are some tolerable crops of wheat, of a sun-burnt golden-brown, the result of good husbandry and of sea-weed as a manure. This kind of sandy soil has one great advantage; it is warm and dry in winter, the season wherein corn must make rapid progress in Australia, that it may ripen before the blowing and blighting effect of the hot winds, and the kill-vegetation-drought.

Both St. Kilda and Brighton have before them in full and fair prospect the open blue and capacious bay of Port Phillip. Their situation in this respect is delightful; the cool sea-breeze fanning them deliriously in the fierce summer heats; and they have always at hand for pleasant and healthful promenades the clean white hard sandy beach.

The whole country is very sandy, though not entirely sterile: unpleasant enough walking for pilgrim feet.

From Brighton to Major Fraser's Squatting Station is eight or nine miles through the sandy bush, thinly wooded with wild cherry, Banksia, she and forest oaks, and with three kinds of eucalyptus trees; two of them exuding and dropping on the pathway abundantly white manna, about the size sometimes of hazelnuts, though generally no larger than peas, or than coriander seeds. Could a troop of English schoolboys be turned loose under these trees, what rampant exultation, what scrambling, and what feasting there would be! They would make, however, a bad exchange of England for Australia, as it regards woodland wild boy luxuries. For instance, it is harvest-time, but there are no hazel-nuts, no beech-nuts, no hedges overhung with blackberries and dewberries.

NOw I approached a blue opening of the bay, and on emerging from the denser to the thinner bush, a few miles before reaching Fraser's location, the roll of some kind of carriage was close behind me. It soon overtook and passed me, light as an American wagon; was drawn by two horses full of holiday-looking people, who, I concluded, were, it being the festival week of Christmas, going to some kind of merry-making at the "Travellers' Home," a rural inn a little further on, kept by David Calderwell; a place fortified within with store of good wine, and without a bold demonstration of inward doings, with empty bottles, the house being almost buried in them, piles upon piles.

Before reaching this place, however, and whilst I trudged along the road cogitating on the influence of good and evil planets—on the lucky people who ride, and the world's poor way-weary foot-travellers, making odious comparisons to my own disparagement—suddenly I caught a glimpse before me, intended by Providence to correct some oblique notions just busy in me: the carriage, left standing in the road attended by one only young lady, the horses and the blithe company having disappeared as if caught away by some hippogriff. Carriages break, and necks too; horses spoil their knees, or are lost, yet, uncaring, unencumbered, independent, and privileged foottravellers are so unreasonable as to forget their "charters and exemptions they are so insensible sometimes as to repine instead of being thankful. Here something had happened to the pole of the vehicle, and the travellers had been compelled, like myself, to depend on that natural mode of progression, —their feet.

I soon overtook and walked by two ladies, one elderly, the other young, most likely mother and daughter. I did not turn a glance upon them as I passed; nor should I know them were we to meet; yet we had, as I learned afterwards, both started on the same day to visit the same localities, with a similar object. Thus had two persons neared each other, and diverged again, without any instinctive feeling that there were betwixt us any community of pursuit, or similarity of purpose. Only there was this difference, they were going to Cape Schanck and Arthur's Seat solely; in addition to these I was just going across Western Port.

On walking towards the inn-yard, a person there looked at me as though he was the very man destined to satisfy any inquiry I might wish to make—for probably he saw that I had an inquiring look. I asked the nearest way to French Island, and whether he knew a person said to be there, and whom I wished to see. He said that there was no person upon French Island. Well, added I, their friends assure me that there are two persons there, and all I wished to know was—which was the nearest way to them, if he would kindly inform me. Whether my giving credence to my prior informants in preference to him, stung the magisterial temper, I know not—for he was a magistrate; but he drew himself up to his full altitude, and swelling out to vast dimensions, exclaimed, "I am the commissioner!" as much as to say that he knew everything and everybody—that he was cognisant of all operations in his vast jurisdiction—he was "the commissioner," and that it was not possible to thrust a spade into the soil of the Crown lands, however distant, but that he felt the vibration of it, or a bird of the air told to him the matter. To remind him that he was only a commissioner, I—knowing Airey by sight, asked if he was Mr. Airey. He answered with his word, "Powlett." I had never met the commissioner before, and wishing to be more civil to him than he was to me, I bade him good-day, and thanked him for his information. He turned on his heel without deigning reply—thinking me, no doubt, for a poor man, a most presumptuous and familiar fellow.

He set me down for nobody, because my dress was not of very new fustian, rough bush clothing, meant for hard wear and tear —not for show: my boots strong as a ploughman's: my hat of homely straw: at my back a carpet-bag, containing a blanket, and six days' provisions: a stronghold of independence as it regarded board and lodging: and thrust through it a tea-tree walking staff that would have joyed, for its stoutness, the heart of an Irishman.

The commissioner is a very good-looking individual, wearing military hair ruddily on his upper lip. There was a greater contrast betwixt us, in many respects, than any one regarding us at that moment would have been aware of. In one circumstance we agreed—yet with a difference. We had, both of us, decidedly a good opinion of ourselves. I, however, was the most self-complacent. The commissioner must lay the burthen of his self-importance continually on somebody—or he was ill at ease.

Good reader, mark what follows—and note, how wide is the difference betwixt man and man.

I had left the country of running water, and its music, the song of the bell-bird. I entered a cottage to furnish myself with a bottle of the scarce element, to make inquiries about my way, &c., and there learnt that the persons whom I had passed on the road, or rather who had, in the first instance, passed me, were Sir John Franklin, his lady, and their party.

I had now, through the simple and homely direction of the cottage folk, to turn back to the bay, and there to wade through a salt-water creek, more readily to be crossed there, as it deepened and spread wider inland. This done, without further hin drance, I paced steadily down the cool white hard-sanded beach: the waves playfully dashing up to my feet, and retreating again momentarily, for the space of ten miles. It was a most delightful pathway; and I thus missed the dry loose sandy road which must be traversed by the carriage-people. The sand which I paced oversaving just been left by the ebb-tide, was level, hard, and cool, inlaid with a beautiful mosaic of many-coloured shells, with abundant gleams of pearl and gold interspersed amongst them.

Five miles only before I saw a creek of fresh-water, was I to walk along the shore. But first, having now walked twenty-four miles since breakfast, I clomb the high sandy ridge running parallel with the beach, and there, under a shady mangrove-tree, sitting me down, kindled a fire, and converting my bottle of water into tea, and with it, damper and cold ham, ate solitarily my Australian dinner.

I did not, however, find the creek of fresh water where I was told I should, for I expected it would empty itself into the Bay, which it did not do for ten miles.

It was in due course of time, five or six o'clock, and I saw "water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink,"—when, now, pleasant indication of human neighbourhood! three bundles of mimosa bark, stood up in a stook by the shore. I toiled up the sandy hillocks, and looked round me to discover the bark-peelers, and their hut, and there saw two persons, one of them an old friend of my brother's, Mr. Barker of Cape Schanck, the other, a much stouter and more elderly gentleman, was Sir John Franklin, ex-Governor of Van Diemen's Land, the endurer of cold and hunger, of toils and privations as an arctic discoverer, for the enlargement of our geographical knowledge.

I addressed myself to Mr. Barker, and soon learnt from him where to find fresh water.

How strange! Had my personal appearance improved, for neither of them knew me? yet Sir John talked to me familiarly, stranger with stranger. He had ridden on with Mr. Barker, leaving the three ladies and the commissioner to drive on at their leisure. He inquired if I had seen them; but I, having kept the shore, had not.

Sir John had remarked me passing them in the morning, and now observed, "You have had a long walk." Nor did Mr. Barker and the ex-governor disdain to drink out of my smokeglazed tin, in which I usually made my tea.

The feeling of a bashful man—for such I am known to be— was, in Sir John's company, ease. This speaks volumes for him.

I was there taught to feel how naturally true benignity of spirit, sincerity, and homeliness of character, impress themselves upon us. I went on my way rejoicing—I had been refreshed at the spring of true greatness. There were fountains in the desert—there no longer seemed dryness in the human soul or in the country. Three weeks before, I had written for my own gratification the annexed poem, here reprinted from the "Melbourne Times," with its appended editorial note:—

TO SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, ON RETURNING FROM HIS TASMANIAN GOVERNMENT.

Your kind have honoured you, Sir John! and yet will grace you more,
Will warmly hail you once again unto your native shore;
From shoals and rocks of government, a perilous way and dim,
The helm obeying well your hand, returned with tackle trim,
Where rage the billows of all strife, where angry factions roar,
Where fair renown is often wrecked, returning never more;
Then for the brisk and favouring gales, the canvas fair expand,
And may "The Rajah" bear you safe unto your native land.

A Briton have you proved yourself, and are to Britons dear,
For your integrity of mind, warm heart, and aspect clear.
Discoverer adventurous! intrepid, wise, and bold,
In storm and calm, through frozen climes, 'midst dangers manifold,
Iu icy silence dread of wastes, and barren human soul,
There man the monster you have braved, and yet are firm and whole;
Then let the ingrate murmur, the vile and envious rail—
Their voice is drowned in blessings which waft your homeward sail!

Your God, Sir John, has blessed you, in fortune not alone;
Not what in form is only well, but inwardly you own;
Your inward consciousness of worth, howe'er misunderstood,
Goodness imbuing all your acts, the source of others' good;
And more than this, he blessed you, in one surpassing prize,
Your loadstone of discovery, your pole-star woman's eyes:
A spirit for all troubles fit, your human lot to share,
A dearest friend, a councillor, intelligent and fair.

How blessed with love, how linked with names ennobled for all time;
They who have dared and suffered in every age and clime;
Of knowledge brave explorers, spread on the kindling page;
The watchwords and the beacons of each succeeding age.
Columbus is an honoured name, and will for ever be—
And Cook's, and yours, and others, less fortunate than he,—
Yet each of you, in just degree, our warm applause command;—
God prosper you and speed you safe back to your native land!

[The above lines are the production of an author well known in the periodical literature of Britain, both North and South; Blackwood's, Fraser's, the Athenaeum, &c., and we heartily concur in the sentiments they express. Whatever errors may have appeared in Sir John Franklin's administration of the government of Van Diemen's Land, we, who had the pleasure of knowing him in early life, fully believe may be attributed to the frank, unsuspicious, confiding disposition of the British sailor; and neither these, nor the calumnious misrepresentations of adverse parties, can ever throw a shade upon the glories of his professional career in the mind and memory of any true Briton.—ED.]

Here my companionship with the bay, and its cheerful dancing waters, ended. Ascending a heathery eminence, I turned my back upon it and the west together. The country through which I now leisurely walked for four miles, was covered deeply with heath, very different from European heaths, with here and there bushes of encalyptus. Then I entered occasional groves of the tree-encalyptus, with here and there broad treeless heathcovered spaces—temples that seemed sacred to silence and seclusion. In one of these grand amphitheatres, through which one cart-track winds its solitary way, two kangaroos came before me, a large and a small one, and, stopping on each side of the road, seemed to await my approach. Then, as I drew near them, they set off with leisurely jumps.

Here, turning from a bare plot of higher land my eyes towards the west, there slept rosily the waters of the bay, in the rich sunset light: the sun going down, all crimson and gold, bevond Geelong.

There is an immense valley running parallel with the Port Phillip Bay, from Major Fraser's to the Kangerong Estate, at least twenty miles—sometimes near the beach, sometimes far off. After crossing this valley, I came in the dusk to a squatting station I had seen long before I reached it, appearing taller and larger through the trees with which it was surrounded, the new weather-boarded house. Cattle were sprinkled over the country— this part of Western Port being too wet in the rainy season for sheep. How pleasantly nestled among trees were the few labourers' cottages—and the one good house—the wide, open, clear valley, seen evermore in glimpses, calm and graceful Here I found the stockmen busy at the large, square, post and railenclosed water-holes, fishing for eels, six of which, large ones, they quickly caught. This valley is knee-deep in water, almost the whole length of it, in the wet season; yet, during the summer, there is no other water than what saturates the deep boggy soil of the tea-tree—at intervals—covered valley. Yet, through the whole dry season these pools are level-full, the water perpetually draining into them. Almost immediately after a pool is cut and filled with water, the eels take possession of it. Nothing can make more evident the great summer scarcity of water than the circumstance, that, whilst tfle men were busy fishing at one pool, wild-ducks settled down boldly on the other. Soon as pools are made, not only wild-ducks, but bronze-winged pigeons, visit them; and there, their most deadly enemy, man, is sure to fix himself with a gun. Here I kindled a fire, made myself tea, independently declining offered entertainment; but, when the people confidently spoke of further progress through the woods as impossible, unless I would satisfy myself with being lost, I entered their hut, and staid there all night.

These men showed me the skin of a wild swan, which one of them had run down and killed in that neighbourhood. When these birds are moulting, they are easily caught, and their down is very beautiful and valuable. Here, also, I learnt that the same person had the last season found, to his surprise, the playhouse, or bower, of the Australian satin-bower bird. He described to me how he was astonished with the bird's ingenuity; and had made inquiries in Melbourne at the bird-stuffers', and had there learnt that the circumstance was well known amongst naturalists. I had seen and shot the satin-bird; but had never been able to meet with the bird's bower.

At day-break I was on my way—a solitary cart-track, leading from station to station. Half a mile from the place I had left, I looked round me, and saw a beautiful spectacle—eleven kangaroos, and, a little further on, two more; in all, thirteen. I moved along, fearful of putting them in motion; for they sat up, and leaped about, very much at their ease. As on the former occasion, they seemed to await my approach; then, suddenly, as if struck by some momentary panic, off they jumped, and in a minute all of them had vanished.

My next resting-place, after a six or eight miles' walk, was Willoughby's Cattle Station; and the whole of the way the country is of one character—covered over with deep heather— thousands, or we might almost say millions, of acres, of worthless forest—the scrub and trees stunted, stringy bark. This next station was originally a sheep station; but proved, as in many other instances, only fit for cattle. Hence to Allen's Station was two miles. Betwixt these stations I met with a new acquaintance—a grey bird, the size of a thrush, or rather larger, with pale yellow bill and legs, flew to meet me, and settled familiarly just before my face, and looked inquiringly as to the reason of my being there. The shrewd look it gave me, made me think of the enchanted birds in "The Arabian Nights." I was surprised at the creature's freedom and boldness, but immediately saw the reason of it—a nest, a little further on, depended in a bough over the road. This I drew down with my stick, and saw in the nest two salmon-coloured spotted eggs. But, the disturbance there was immediately! The whole wood was in one clamour of resentment. My new acquaintance of the "nest commenced the outcry, and I shall never forget how first one, and then another, took it up, and continued it, till all the forest rang with the sound. "Shrill! shrill! shrill! shrill!" was the sharp, quick, iteration everywhere, and all at once.

While I talked to a young woman at Allen's Station, resting an elbow on a rail, the post into which it was inserted being just against my face—I drew back, for on the post settled down, with the coolest self-possession, the familiar of the forest. "How is this?" said I. "You took this bird when a-nestling, and have brought it up tame?" "No, indeed," exclaimed she; "it is only the natural impudence of the thing: it has a nest there." She pointed to a tree in the yard; and sure enough there it was. The top of the tree had been-blown off, and had, near the fracture, again grown bushily; and there, had this bird made its nest, over the house-door. I found that this creature was very appropriately named the soldier-bird. It is the very sentinel of the woods, sending far on before you intelligence of your coming.

At Rutherford's and Blackmore's—a very brotherhood and sisterhood of genteel people—I walked into the yard near the house, and saw, sitting quite at home, on a prostrate tree, peeling onions, a bonnie Scotch lassie, Miss Rutherford. I knew her immediately, but was myself unknown. On the lawn before the house basked, in the sun, her tame kangaroo. Our bullockdriver had lived with them. They and their affairs were familiar to me, and ours to them. But I did not come to be known: I was satisfied to know. The young gentlemen, the lady's brothers, three of them, were busy at the hay-rick, which they had just harvested. The wheat—one portion of it sown early, would prove an abundant crop—the other would, sown later, scantily return the seed. This is a squatting station—a ten-pound per annum government place. The Melbourne market is forty miles off. To take thither the hay which they have this year grown, would cost much more than it is worth. Thus, after the cost and labour, there is the rick, and there it may stand. So also the wheat.

Rutherford and Blackmore's Station; Manton's, which I afterwards visited; and a vast many others; are situated on the rich deep soil, almost interminable thick-grassed meadows of Western Port, a fine cattle-country, that may very appropriately be termed the Lincolnshire of Australia Felix. The coast is low, marshy, and intersected with creeks of salt water, flowing in and out with the tides.

About these inlets, and on the coast, is abundance of mangrove scrub, which is now generally burnt, and barilla made of the ashes, for export.

Manton's Station I found, directed by the friendly Rutherfords; but still more readily by the loud lowing of cattle. These I found were this day, part of them, collected in the vast stockyards, and the stir and clamour was like that of a fair.

Manton's house, with its French windows, its very nicely grass-thatched roof and verandahed front, was quite like Dr. Barker's, at Cape Schanck—a substantial, and, at the same time, an elegant, country residence.

Here I learned that the artist, whom I wished to see on French Island, had vanished thence the day before, and I retraced my steps. I passed Rutherford's, Allen's, and, betwixt it and Willoughby's, following a deceitful cattle-track, lost myself completely in the wild forest. There was the sun shining clearly in the west. I had but little time to lose; so decided that, as the track must run east and west, I must go in one direction steadily to find it. I went south first, and satisfied myself, by coming to a stream running rapidly, that now I must find the road northward. I had come out of my way two miles, but thought that by so doing I had made two discoveries. Here, if the water was fresh and good, was a good place for a new cattlestation: if it was salt, I was on the coast, and the stream was driving in with the tide. Salt it proved; my new cattle-station was at an end; and I made the best of my way northward, with quick steps, and confident. Glad was I at length to be once more on the cart-track, but never saw on my return Willoughby's Station, having passed it whilst I was lost. On the way I recollected seeing where the bark-peelers had built, and thrown down again, a temporary miam, as the natives would call it. There I determined, when I should reach it, to pass the night. On I went, and without any concern saw the sun gradually go down, the dark to gather round me, miles from any habitation, and the moon and stars grow bolder and brighter. Pleased I was when I saw, not far from the road, the old cold ashes, and I soon warmed them with a new fire.

I set up the cast-down poles—one end in a forked tree—the other resting on the ground. These I thatched over with the ready-cut branches of the wild cherry-tree: and had soon a very snug house. My bed I next made of branches of a shrub, very myrtle-like, and of heath. Then, with the fire blazing brightly at my feet, with my carpet-bag for a pillow, wrapped warmly in my blanket, the laughing-jackass merrily bade me good-night, and I slept soundly at intervals—waked sometimes by the melancholy howl of a wild dog, or a rustle amongst the leaves of my house of perhaps a snake or of a kangaroo rat—to hear a little way from me in the trees—plop—plop—the noise of the flying squirrel going from bough to bough: and the sharp guttural noises of opossums. Then what a hush amidst a gentle breeziness would come over the wilderness? Soft as feathers was the dry and balmy atmosphere—the moon hanging how amazingly near me, like a large pearl, and the stars, as near, like intense fiery rubies.

At dawn I was soon on my way: but could not breakfast till I got to Baxter's Station, the nearest fountain in the waste, which was many miles further on. Thence I went to a spring of pure water by the Port Phillip Bay, and had thence many a weary mile to pace—the first part back again, before I reached the location of Captain Reid, at the foot of Mount Martha. That gentleman told me that he had served their Britannic Majesties, several of them, in various climes, twenty-five years, and had then, by way of retirement, tried to serve himself as a settler in Australia. From several intimations, I judged that he had found the last the more deadly warfare of the two. His bush residence was outwardly very rustic, yet agreeable: inwardly, one of the rooms that I entered was a strange medley of military—elegant English—and homely bush furniture. Still everywhere was evidence of taste, only bounded by the circumstances of the bush. The book-case was well furnished with—not always the case in the bush—good substantial old, and elegant modern literature. Below the house, ran along the valley a small creek, and from it, ascended steeply the long range of Mount Martha. There, on the steep mountain sides, fires were gleaming, smoke filling the whole country. The Captain had set fire to the old dead grass purposely—the grass which springs freshly and greenly, after such burnings, proving valuable pasturage for his cattle. He had corn growing near the house: so had watched his opportunity to have the scrub on the hills destroyed when the wind was in the right quarter, to take it from the buildings and the corn. These burnings are a universal blessing to the uncorn-growing squatters, not so to the agriculturists. As I came back I saw how, by a shift in the wind, the Captain's corn had been endangered. All the ground round about him had been in flames, and they would have, no unfrequent occurrence, to turn out, master and servants, to stop the progress of the fire, by beating it out with green branches. Sometimes all the corn —of past and pi'esent seasons—is at one fell swoop thus devoured. Sometimes a road is the only interposing safeguard— sometimes a river.

Western Port is, like Lincolnshire, a region of brackish water.

A few miles after quitting Captain Reid's neighbourhood, I came to the celebrated Kangerong estate: a special survey of 5120 acres. This was originally the property of Hugh Jamieson, a purchase from the Crown of 5000l., the 120 acres being given usually, I understood, for roads. This was resold by Jamieson to Terry Hughes of Sydney, for 10,000l. On the insolvency of the latter, it returned to the former—insolvent also—and was advertised by the creditors for sale.

There must be more than a thousand acres of deep bfack soil, betwixt the higher ground, which is sand, and the Bay of Port Phillip. This rich land is covered over just like a park with fine light-wood trees, called also silvery wattles. When these trees were in blossom, the whole country would be golden, and the whole atmosphere filled deliciously with their sweetness.

Many nice wooden-cottages had been erected, and one good weather-boarded house; and many a field was cleared, waving luxuriously with corn, by persons who expected not to be suddenly disturbed. Their leases, however, were not signed. And whether the houses and the harvests were their own, or they had been throwing away time, labour, cash and hope, depended entirely on the new purchaser. So much for the perpetual fluctuations of a country cursed bitterly by its miserable, inefficient, and distant governments—home and colonial. The men were speculative certainly; a speculation fostered by the government, which continued to net all the money, and to plunge rich and poor into irremediable ruin. In the evening I came to the foot of Arthur's Seat, a bold eminence, high, overlooking, and planting its rocky base broadly in the Bay of Port Phillip: about ten miles from Point Napean, one of the heads of the bay, and fifty from Melbourne. Now, I again found a cast-down gunyia, or bark-peeler's hut, and decided there to pass the night. A few minutes served for house-building, fire-kindling, and bedmaking. From my door, only ten yards, was the white smooth sandy beach; all about me, a little lower than the inland country, were knolls and quiet hollows. In such a hollow, opening a little to the bay, overhung pleasantly with a shady kind of large Banksia, was my house. Near it blazed up brilliantly my large wood-fire. Water I always brought with me from the last creek, lagoon or spring, so that I soon got my tea; and cheerfully addressed myself to sleep. But I did not sleep immediately. The night was too bland and beautiful, the heavens in their rich depths, with the moon and stars, how glorious! There were glowing above me, and seen, all the grand constellations of the southern hemisphere. If I was alone, in a far-away land, the very antipodes to my own, I was surrounded by an atmosphere much more bland—beamed upon by more resplendent heavens— and nowhere in the world could the gentle salt-sea waters die with softer lispings, than those now heard on the moonlight beach. In England, in one's old home, with old habits, to have suddenly made this transition, from the hum of a town, never still, to this complete isolation, how horrible! All, however, had been by gradations, each of which had had its novelty. Darkness does not come upon us suddenly at noon-day, there is the long interposing twilight, and the change is grateful. The dawn brought with it the Sabbath, and ascending Arthur's Seat before breakfast—filling my bottle at a spring by the way—after a long and weary tug up the high hill, I made a fire on the top, and breakfasted in a more gorgeous saloon than many a monarch. Sea-prospect there was wide enough, south, southeast, and southwest: Point Napean below me, and Cape Lonsdale was in sight. The variously coloured waters of the bay, with its beautiful crescent of white smooth beach, circling many a mile from the mountain's base, on the top of which I was—to Mount Martha's: hills—and wooded valleys—wooded mountains inland—Station Peak beyond Geelong, and French, or perhaps it was Phillip Island, westward; these, with sea and bay, made a grand spectacle. Near me, whilst I sat at breakfast, came two fine kangaroos, but soon iumned awav again.

This was the last Sabbath of 1843. A day memorable for its novelty and abundant enjoyment.

Soon after I had breakfasted, and was going to extinguish my fire, that I might not fill with flames the whole country, there arose a dense mass of smoke from Point Napean, that soon wrapped in one cloud the whole prospect.

My next gratification—after that fire, kindled certainly by the devil, on Point Napean—was, and a more real gratification, the first sight, near Merrick's Sheep Station, of the grass-tree of Australia, one of the wonders of the countiy. I gazed at this, as the stockman had done at the bower of the bower-bird, with wonder and delight. Trees, grass-trees, there were a great company of them of various sizes. One of these had a trunk about ten inches in diameter, one of the middle size, blackened all over by fire. Then at the top of the trunk was a circular ruff or fringe, streaming out all round, of the lightest beautiful green grass of a bluish tint, and from the centre a green stem four or five feet high, like a smooth stout walking-stick, whilst several feet more was enlarged, thickened considerably by the seed-cells, with which the stem was enveloped. These trees gave strange novelty to the scenery, else wild and barren. In many places I saw, what I fancied to be, the Australian broom: a shrub with stout stems and lithe drooping yellow-flowery branches. Every now and then the graceful sprinkling of these, with other shrubs, gave the country a delightful aspect. Here I had soon intimation of being in the near neighbourhood of the sea of Bass's Straits. From Arthur's Seat to Cape Schanck, by Merrick's Station, is twelve miles; and all the way you hear the roar of breakers, sometimes faint, then loud, as they dash themselves into foam on the bold rocky shore.

Merrick's sheep pastures are dry-looking and white: whilst Mr. Barter's Station is scrubby, greener, more moist generally, still sandy, covered with tea-tree in many places, and with fern everywhere.

At Mr. Barker's, Aylesbury, I believe they call it, I was rather surprised to find, on crown land, a good house, large and extensive outbuildings, neat and comfortable cottages. Still the barrenness of the country on which, and in which they are located, is sufficient protection: no person would be tempted by the quality of the land to purchase the station: moreover, cattle stations are now, as but too many other kinds of property in the colony are, at a discount. Still the locality is very beautiful. The valley before the house was filled with a kind of tall teatree, white over with blossom. The ascent, and hills southwestward, are partly covered with she oak, intermingled with fantastic-looking antler-shaped dead branches of gum-trees. From the bottom of the valley opens out on each hand a blue and bright expanse of ocean. Altogether the prospect is charming, and the selection of the site of Mr. Barker's house was made in good taste.

Next, descending to the beach, you see bold, prominent, immense blocks of stone, running far into the sea, and rising sheer out of it. Here empties itself into the salt-sea flood, a pretty little stream of the coldest, purest water, called, if I recollect it rightly, the Murwurrarong. Here again I heard the bell-bird, for the first time since leaving the Yarra; and none but the Australian traveller can know the magical charm there lives in its one silvery note. The sound is refreshing exceedingly. Whether it is the force of imagination alone I know not; but that liquid "ting, ting," makes you feel cooler and more lively. You drink the water seemingly before you reach it.

On this beach is the most remarkable natural cavern yet discovered in Australia Felix. From the entrance, the sandy floor gradually rises, and the roof rather descends, until onward progress seems cut off. This, however, is only the effect of the masses and pillars of stalactites, which have been forming for ages. Beyond is another open space. On the floor are rising pillars, formed by the dripping perpetually from above, the hanging and rising stalactite not having yet joined. Altogether, it is a wonderful cave. There is also as singular a tradition about it. As Pungil, the god of the aborigines, say the natives, was one day taking a walk on the sea, suddenly there came on a storm; when coming to the rocky shore, he spoke to it, and immediately, at his word, the rocks rose up, and this cave was fashioned before him. Into it the god stepped, and sheltered until the tempest was over.

Whilst I paced the shore, not far from me, on a pleasant knoll above the Murwurrarong, was a group of holiday people in their holiday dresses, looking lazily on the sea. Not far from them were stacks of dried mimosa bark. Probably these loiterers were the bark-peelers, their wives and children, who were, some couched on the dry grass, and others sauntering about, enjoying the sea-breeziness of a fine cheery Australian Sabbath.

Hence, I retraced my steps homeward. This trip had its lessons and its enjoyments. An incident at Cape Schanck, that had transpired there sometime before my visit, I must mention. In the Bush the settlers are not always good neighbours. I learnt that there had been a quarrel betwixt Barker and Merrick. Bad feeling had been generated betwixt these neighbours about mimosa bark, sharp words and mutual insults had risen in consequence. Both agreed to leave the matter to be decided by Captain Reid. He, of course, gave them a most soldierly decision. "Why, certainly, there was only one way for gentlemen, and that was to fight it out." They met accordingly. Barker fired his bullet into the air—not so Merrick—it whistled past Barker's ear, so the matter terminated.

Again and again I paced the old scenes—again enjoying them. Again I made the earth my bed, and the heavens my canopy. I had gone more than a hundred miles when I slept once more, my fourth night from home, and my third out of doors, at the foot of Arthur's Seat. To the same tent of boughs had I returned; and was lulled by the same lisp of waters to slumber. This evening was a solemn season—it was the eve of the New Year. It was a point of time naturally fruitful of reflection. The distant and the dead were with me. I found that in solitude it was impossible to be wholly deserted. Wrapped in the depth of interminable wood-lands—on a wild and barren coast— in a far and foreign land—English life, old usages—the spirit of Christmas—and New Year's greetings—the English homes—and the forms and familiar faces of friends and kindred, were livingly with me—

"Making the wilderness glad for them,
And the desert blossom as the rose."

What years and scenes crowded themselves into a little space of reflection cannot be described. Then the mind would relieve itself by turning from the solemn to the lively; and I pleased myself with some such profanity as this, parodying one of the most sublime passages of Wordsworth:—

"What taught me, thus, to love the starry sky—
My bed the earth—my curtains such as these?
I have seen bugs in huts where poor men lie—
My other teachers have been ants and fleas."

The only night on which I did not sleep, was the one spent in-doors. I learnt other lore on my journey besides this: that there is as great a difference amongst masters as amongst men. Some of these cottages were neat and comfortable, very: and others the contrary. The food was also infinitely better in some places than in others. At Mr. Barker's, the peasants in their nice cottages seemed like little princes. So also at Manton's. At one station-house the men complained bitterly of bad tea, and the coarsest of sugar. I tasted, and they were execrable. The only waste was to use them at all. The beef, they assured me, had been killed young, and was so lean and tasteless that they could not eat it. Thus their constant food was, three times a day, damper (flour and water, with a little salt worked together, and baked in the wood-ashes), without anything to it— no cheese, no butter—dry damper washed down, meal after meal, with bad tea. Still a deal of bad living amongst the squatters and settlers too, (by settlers I mean land-owners,) is caused by the servants themselves, often liberated convicts, people recklessly wasteful and extravagant. The complaint is also obtaining fast, that the old genuine hospitality of the country is waning away, and everywhere up-starting Bush inns, a mercenary spirit usurping its place. There are many reasons for this: inns have become almost indispensable, as the country has amazingly increased its population. On some of the commoner tracks, squatters, unfortunately located too near them, have found the throng of migratory wayfarers a serious burthen, and have hailed the speculation of a neighbouring place of "Entertainment for Man and Horse," as a real God-send. It is not the less true, that many idle, reckless vagabonds trample on the hospitality of the squatters, living on them perpetually, going evermore from station to station, professing to seek employment, but, by asking enormous wages, determined never to find it. And another reason is, the want of prosperity in the province; where liberality glows in the heart, it has been starved out of the pocket. It is my firm conviction, the result of long observation, that the want of domestic government, that the unholy alliance of Australia Felix with New South Wales, dragged, as it is, like a doomed wretch at that Felon's Cart, that the misgovernment of Sir George Gipps, by draining the colony of its scanty circulating medium, thereby ruining its pastoral and agricultural people generally, has done more than any speculative mania amongst themselves, assisted by the conduct of the home government, who know not its condition, than anything else to lessen, and it is said to be lessened, the homely hearty hospitality of its people.

This walk was concluded in six days, during which time I was gnilty of "lying out in the open air" four nights. I may think myself fortunate that Mr. Commissioner-of-Crown-Lands Powlett did not apprehend me as a vagabond, and require me to give "a good account of myself." He himself has made his bed, like me, out in the homeless woods and forests; and if he had as good a conscience, which he might have, he would sleep as soundly. During this walk, I visited nine cattle, and three sheep stations. On this occasion, as on others, my opinion was strengthened that the squatters, most of them the younger branches of wealthy and respectable English and Scotch families, are on the whole a very intelligent and gentlemanly race.

WALK TO GEELONG AND THE BARRABOUL HILLS.

AGAIN, on the last day of the Geelong races, Feb. 29, 1844, I set off from Melbourne, my walking fit being upon me so strongly, that the kindest and most pressing entreaties of an old friend to take his horse could not prevail with me to ride. My old staff, vigorous health, and good spirits, set all horses at defiance. My course was with the sun westward, and I did not see why one should not be as cheerful as the other. Years before I had passed over the same ground, in the dawn, too, over those fair eminences with their interposing valleys, smooth uplands, and vast flats, through which, indicated circuitously with tea-tree, went the mazy river Yarra. Now no tinkle of silvery sheepbells greeted me; but instead of shepherds and their flocks, herds of cattle were grazing quietly, or were moving on, drove after drove, progressing from one part of the country to another. Still the two days, though distant, were bound together by the same brightness. Any person meeting me would have deemed that I was alone. Thus it is that different persons do not see with the same eyes. Mr. Shaw had accompanied me over this very ground on the former occasion; and mingling, as I always do, the past with the present, we were going, in ray own feeling of the matter, over the same topics of our conversation, just as when the country was new. I might observe to him that the ground was deliciously smooth—freer from old and dead timber; but loss there was as well as gain; years ago, the hills were more pleasantly grouped and sprinkled over with she oaks. Melbourne in the time had doubled its size—and its difficulties. Nay, these latter were increased a hundredfold. Crafts on the river were plying more industriously, and the Bay displayed a much more goodly array of shipping. Instead of a steamer called the Midge or Fire-fly, a small creature troubled from the first with the asthma—pausing every few minutes to take breath —lo, now a very dragon!—tears up and down the Yarra, making the reeds fringing both sides shake their heads, and sigh for the loss of the old quiet times. Nay, there are three of them plying evermore to William's Town, Geelong, and Sydney; one of them, the Sea-horse—fitly so named—pawing, snorting, and plunging through the salt-sea waves gloriously.

Three miles from Melbourne is a punt, or wooden raft, over the Salt-water River. Thus it was when I before went this way, and will be years hence. There is no hope that the twenty thousand pounds of surplus annual revenue, sucked out of Port Phillip by the Sydney vampire government, will be spent in benefiting the colony out of which it arises. In fact, there is no hope that justice will be done to Australia Felix; it will continue to be robbed by its selfish and needy neighbour, and deserted by its people—its rivers unbridged—and its people sloughed in the Despond of miserable roads. A resident government, and the fit application of its own funds, would soon set matters to rights.

On I went, mile after mile, from the Salt-water River, with its good new "Bush Inn," towards the west, crossing a creek once full of sweetish, disagreeable-tasted water, now dry. The day was bright and warm; the level and uninteresting country, lonely. Instead, as we had formerly, held for Mount Ripon, westward, now I turned more to the south-west, nearer to the Port Phillip Bay. This country, for fifteen miles from the Mariburnong to the Exe, is one series of plains, with here and there, every few miles, dry ravines running across the country. To my left, southward, was a thin scattering of trees. Mile after mile I paced along the dusty road, sometimes meeting a settler on horseback, then a drover with a flock of sheep, on the way to the Melbourne boiling establishment.

One man, going by on horseback fleetly as a bird, told me that to the river Exe it was seven miles. "There," said I, "that is good." I seemed to have progressed wonderfully. I stepped on with renewed vigour, and about three miles further met a weary, footsore traveller, who had come nearly that day from Geelong, and he declared that it was yet, at least, eight miles to the river Exe. For a moment I relaxed my onward progress, with a labour-in-vain sort of feeling. I had been walking hard, it seemed, for less than nothing. Surely the globe, every time I lifted up my foot, must have lapsed away from me a little, leaving me nearly in the same position; or it was only a rocking-horse affair, motion without progress. Yet, it was clear enough, that a bird would, if it had been the next intelligencer, have set it down for a verity, that to the river Exe was only a mile, and a short one. I decided that mile-stones, things belonging solely to the macadamised roads of civilised countries, would have been preferable to any of these shifting landmarks of ease or weariness. Momentarily I seated myself on a stone; yet not so much for rest as to look around me a little. I was in the midst of a continuation of plains, north and westward, and had left others successively behind me. These were almost encircled with dim blue distant mountains, only that southward was a level country, in which quietly slept the waters of the Bay of Port Phillip. I had been for more than an hour pacing steadily on without much observation of the aspect of the country. The mind will have its occupation as well as the outward senses of eye and ear; I must have been extraordinarily absorbed in reflection—only regardful, half-mechanically, of the old dusty draytrack—for now, what was my astonishment! The country almost eveiy where—all the hollows and ravines crossing the plains, were smoothed, level-full with water! Rain there had been none; the road was dusty, and the country eveiywhere was brown and sunburnt; yet, most certainly, there was a flood. All the trees, rows of them betwixt me and the Bay, stood knee-deep in water. Mount Ripon, or Cotterel, as it is also called, and the hills in its neighbourhood, looked like islands in the midst of beautiful and expansive lakes. But to look on before me was the most disheartening—there certainly all onward progress was cut off; for one ravine, not far distant, ran through the whole breadth of the plain. I saw the very dray-track enter the water, then rise out of it beyond, and wind up the ascent. Yes, it was evident that I must wade. Was it possible that being new to the country I had held too much southward, and had taken some lower road that might be a nearer cut over creeks and shallows of the Bay, yet passable only for drays and horsemen? This idea for a time deadened and vexed me. If, now, the tide was in, it was a full tide; and how could I know at what times, should I decide to wade, it was safely fordable. Then, if I should cross the creek before me, onward, clearly in prospect, rolled the blue waters of the Bay itself. The very Bay seemed to have thrust itself into my track, spreading on immeasurably before me; and how mortifying! I could see the very road lost in it. All was doubt and perplexity. Yet, how strange that I saw no sandy beach; and, still more strange, that the trees should be standing surrounded by such a flood. That an extraordinarily high tide should rise to the level of the beach, and fill up the creeks, was natural; but how could it overflow them? Never had 1 been so perplexed and bewildered before; I was unexpectedly and unaccountably in a labyrinthine wilderness of waters. I paced on for some time slowly and anxiously—then stood. What was I to do? Here I perceived, with great satisfaction, a foot traveller coming towards me, holding on from the Bay towards the water betwixt us—and on the very road which I had decided was impassable. On he came, and marched through the way-laying creek. How strange it seemed when we met that his shoes were dusty: mist there was none; the air was lustrously pure—the heavens were cloudless and bright. "How have you managed to pass through the water?" said I. "Water! " exclaimed he, —"there is no water—it is only liquid air." My astonishment was greater than ever, but in a moment was at an end. The description of the mirage, in African travels, flashed upon my mind. In Australia I had never heard of them; yet here was one—and how most thoroughly complete had been the illusion! More apparently real water had I never beheld; and which, every now and then, by the breeze was blown quite into bluish waves. Now, all perplexity having vanished, with what exhilaration did I look upon this unusual, and hitherto unseen by me, natural phenomenon.

The Bay was miles off; yet here, as on the plains of the acean, there seemed "water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink." Never was traveller in a more droughty land; and it was probable that the sight of so much apparent water had a tendency to create and increase the thirst which it only mocked. Surely it was by some such situation that the idea of Tantalus was generated. Still, by this illusion, how unconsciously and admirably had a diy, parched, and uninteresting region been, as by enchantment, transmuted into a landscape, the most animated and varied—lake and wooded isles, river and sea glittering and heaving in the breezy brightness, overarched by the purest heavens, from which the sun beamed with more than ordinary splendour.

I walked along like Burns, as described by Wordsworth—

"In glory and in joy;"

yet could have been well content to have exchanged a good deal of my exultation for a glass of cold water or a cup of tea.

The seeming river, when I approached it, had not only left its bed dry, but, I dare say as it found it, burnt and blackened; nor was it long before every appearance of that which had first perplexed, then delighted me, had again left the whole region as dull and monotonous as ever.

A few miles before I reached the Exe, I saw near the road before me a dray; the bullocks belonging to it loose and grazing, and not far off two men with a large flock of sheep. To these people I appealed for something to drink, and had it been juice of the vintage, or barley wine, and I a teetotaller—that shackler of free-will—I had not refused it. I got, however, thanks to our wayfarers, a large pannikin of tea; and to my thinking, in that dusty thirstiness, it was infinitely superior to all the—

"Beakers full of the warm south;
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim."

At the Exe, I found what was called a river only a continuation of ponds; a broadish river generally, but not yet flowing— not until the winter season. Here and there you deem it a fine stream—that stream is not; then, in other places, you walk over it dry-shod. Here, at the "Golden Fleece," inn and sheepstation, I dined with our friend and shipmate, Mr. Greeves. There was pain as well as pleasure in this visit; to find our good and cheerful host confined to a darkened room and his bed, by one of the country's curses, not however very frequent, ophthalmia. After some cheering conversation with these old associates, with Mr. Greeves and his family, and after resting away an eighteen-miles-walk weariness, I again set off for Geelong, twenty-five miles distant.

I must not omit to say that Mr. Greeves's house and out-buildings are good and tasty; and with the river near them, the sheep-folds in sight, and with the river-watered and tree-fringed plains, the situation is very delightful.

From the river Exe to the Little River is twelve or thirteen miles. Nor is there anything very interesting in the nature of the scenery to render that which in itself is long seemingly short. The only object of any extent was the abrupt and bold elevation of Station Peak and its wooded heights—high overlooking the thinly-wooded plains; a conspicuous object in many directions for fifty miles. One only incident did I meet with worth recording, betwixt the Golden Fleece and Connell's Inn. A little more than half way, a little knot of travellers had set down their light cart and turned the horses out to graze, whilst they had been regaling themselves with food or drink, or both. There they were sitting and chatting very much at their ease. I had neglected to bring my customary bottle of water from the last river, and Mr. Greeves's ale had made me thirsty; these travellers I judged would have water, and to them I went. Water nor tea had they; I had come just too late. Still six miles further on, they said, was the Little River, and there was nothing to drink nearer. What I sought was not there; but that which I would have shunned was. "I am going your way, sir"— bawled out a sottish-looking, convict-visaged cattle drover— "I'll overtake you by-and-by." Indeed, thought I, that is generous! Now whilst I was in the Golden Fleece, this droverscamp had been much of the time importuning Mrs. Greeves begging, as though for life, to be credited a glass of rum. They knew him only too well. Here, how unluckily! I had overtaken him. I only wished he might stay but to hold ten more minutes' chat with those people, then sure, as it was the last day of the Geelong Races, we would try which was the best walker. I felt more inclined to sweat along out of his company, than that in its "Erebus,—a cold dew," should "dip me all o'er." On I went for two miles at a quick pace, soon as out of his sight, and had at last rather began to relax into a more comfortable walk, when looking back, often looking, I at last saw, though far off, come running at a round pace—the companygenerous cattle-drover. Which is my bad leg, I know not; but whichever it might be, I put, as the adage is, the best leg foremost. On I went mile after mile, and thought surely he must have given up the contest. Not so! I heard him—faintly and out of breath, calling to me, as I fancied, to stop a bit. That was the very last thing in the world I was inclined to do: I sped on more rapidly than ever, only not running. At last he drew so near that I could hear him calling out—"There it is, sir—there it is, sir!"—"What is there?" I asked in a stern voice. "There it is, sir—there, where the tall thin trees rise up so high,—that is it, sir—that's Connell's Inn!" Up he came. "What about Connell's Inn?" asked I. "Why, sir, it's there, to be sure, you will have to stay all night; the innkeeper is a merry, good gentleman enough. They have plenty of liquor, good and cheap; and that's the place for a traveller." On he talked incessantly, he was determined to be companionable and extraordinarily pleasant and interesting, whilst I moved on, silently sullen, grunting assent every ten minutes, as the dull stream of his words rolled on, soon wasted on inattentive ears. He was thinking of Connell's Inn and glasses of rum, whilst I was reflecting how infinitely superior a creature had been the native of those woods—before such importations as my annoyance of a convict-rum-guzzler—the discivilised of civilisation, had debased and demoralised him. Where was now the dignified simplicity of those children of the woods? Gone, and they were fast following it—convict-morals and convict intercourse had proved too much for them. Lingering like darkness, like a few dusky scattered clouds, hanging dimly on the dawn of a new race, there had been storm, there could be no amalgamation of the old and the new; blood had been rained upon the earth, wrong and cruelty there had been; but the dawn was brightening, and remorse and pity would grow for them in the light from which they had vanished.

"Here it is, sir! This is Cornell's Inn." I looked about me to find water, in what proved to be the dry bed of what one would suppose had once been a famous river. He knew what I wanted, and said with a look of great satisfaction, "That's the Little River, but there's no water in it, there's not a drop of water for miles except at the Inn." I had heard that Buckley had said, that for the thirty years which he had been amongst the natives it had never once flowed; indeed, from the natives' account it had flowed only once in fifty years. It was, indeed, a little river. "But," said I, "where do they get water at the Inn?" I need not have queried thus, for I now saw near the Inn a pool in the dry river's course, which I dare say is filled every winter, and is partly used and partly evaporated every summer. The little water in the centre, evidently fast retreating, was greened and silvered over with weeds and scum, and well guarded round with slimy mud a yard deep. I saw at a glance the good policy of the inn-people. They satisfied themselves to wade once a day for their own supply; it would not do to make it easily accessible—all was clear enough. I walked on. " You'll surely stay, sir,—there's not any other inn nor any water to Geelong, and it's fifteen miles!"—"Twelve," said I; and walked on. My affable companion had felicitated himself on meeting a hearty welcome at Connell's, by taking to himself the honour, in that out-of-the-way place, of having brought them a chance customer. But when he saw me stride on in defiance of waterless rivers and of comfortable inn-folk standing invitingly at the door, he stared in blank amazement; and I smiled to myself as I faintly heard uttered, in no pleasant mood, curses, teetotalism, and fools, mingled in one growl, sent after me by the chap-fallen convict-cattle-drover.

From Connell's Inn to Geelong is fifteen miles, if yon prefer going on the old oad, because it is an old road—and there are doggedly old-fashioned folk who will plod whilst they live along their old ways: of this class was not I, and so I followed the plough-track recently cut right across the country, which is only twelve. Just when I had passed Connell's Inn the sun dropped from the western hills, yet I paced on in the twilight, then in the dusk, half of the way.

My faithful companion, who had refused all the gratuitous civilities of the cattle-drover with growls, surly as her master's silence, now as the dusk gathered round us pricked up her ears— running back every few minutes, growling, she looked up in my face, was anxiously restless, nor would be coaxed into quiescence. Probably she was apprehensive that our late suspicious-looking intruder might again be upon our track. At length, finding it w*ould be impossible to reach Geelong until very late, I turned aside to a shady she oak, where, as I had found no water, I could make myself no tea; I got something to eat, made myself a cheerful fire, and wrapt in my blanket, after a thirty-seven miles' walk—Fanny all night keeping watch—I slept tolerably well.

The next morning, before reaching Geelong, I came to a beautifully transparent small stream of water, and intended there to make my breakfast; but Fanny, as a true servant should, having applied her tongue to it, looked up in my face with the intelligence that we were only mocked with salt-water. So on we jogged together, to see just such another stream of the clearest salt-water. At some cottages with Irish inmates, at a little distance from North Corio, asking for a glass of water, I was told that they were expecting some in a short time from the town. Fortunately after some canvassing I did get a mug of water, and it was indeed welcome, for I had not been able'to get a drop since I had left the river Exe, about noon of the day preceding. Hence, leaving North Corio to the left, I struck down to the river Barwon a mile and a half, where I made myself breakfast.

Near me was Pollok's punt and a ferry-boat over the Barwon, a stream about the width of the Yarra at Melbourne. When I had dispatched my breakfast, and sat looking sometimes on the water, then at the Barroboul Hills, and whilst I was pleasing myself with the great and remarkable similarity there was betwixt two of the hills at which I was looking, and two at Winchester, St. Giles's and St. Catherine's, the ferry-man oared his boat across to fetch some person waiting on my side of the river, and I started up that I might cross too, and thereby save him the trouble of coming again. Strange coincidence enough! the traveller and myself recognised each other at once: it was our old forest-traversing companion, the man of drays and bullocks, our farming-man, John Sparks. Thus good fortune had prepared for me a safe guide, familiar with the intricacies of the hills, bound for the very locality to which I was going. On the same morning we had left Melbourne, but he had taken the easier trip by the steamer. As we walked and talked along I found that John was still John. He was, as I said before, quite a character. He had three objects of devoted regard—his kind, money, and wine. His love of money kept his lcve of wine in abeyance; thus I never saw him get drunk. His industry supplied him with cash, and his warm-heartedness caused his pocket always to be emptied again. A well-told and artful tale had the very effect upon John that it always had on Oliver Goldsmith. At one time, he had saved after three years' labour fifty pounds, the other hundred which he must have received, having melted away from him, in that time, in deeds of kindliness. He had been compelled by this very weakness, after eighteen years' residence in Van Diemen's Laud, to quit that country, that he might by cutting all old connections, amongst a new people in Australia Felix, be enabled to save as much money as would take him back to see once more his native scenes and English friends. He had, as I said, saved fifty pounds, when an old Van Diemen's Land acquaintance, with whom he lodged when out of a situation, made it appear very clear to John that the money would be very serviceable to him. Strange enough, John let him have it, and received, after a long period had elapsed, not his money again, but a horse for it. It proved that this horse John had sold for forty pounds, and had taken a twelvemonth's bill for the money. The bill had been due the preceding week—John had been to Melbourne—and had got from the horse-buyer a pitiful story of the unmonied nature of the times, and had returned with two other bills, one of eight and the other of twelve months. "John, John! I am afraid you will never see England and your friends!"—"Well, sir, what could I do, if I had sold everything the man had—horses, cattle, station, everything; you know the condition of thoose colonies," (John always said thoose,) "the man must have been made destitute to only just raise the money." It was clear enough that the word destitute, or the feeling that word excited in John, caused him to go back from Melbourne with those two bits of worthless paper in his pocket.

But we are at Highatt's Dairy Farm, close to the Barwon, a good substantial building, with other nearly as good and substantial out-buildings, all of them of stone. From Geelong it is ten miles, and I had been told it was six; and had it not been for my guide, what a wearisome walk it would have seemed. This was a pig-station as well as a dairy, and no small number of swine, old and young, ran about almost everywhere. John said there were three hundred. I saw the dairy, a spacious cool room, the floor well lined with rows of zinc milk vessels, broad, shallow and long. From this farm they send abundantly butter by the steamer to Melbourne Market. The pigs are to be killed, salted, and barrelled for export. From Mr. Highatt's other farm, a very fine rich black-soiled one, corn and potatoes are sent most abundantly to Geelong and Melbourne.

Hence, after a rest, and the refreshment of tea at noon, with benedictions on Australia's behalf and our own, on the good Chinese, and on our hostess also, not for her tea alone, but for the fresh golden-hued butter, and the really beautiful damper, we continued our course two miles further to the Swiss vineyards. These I had long purposed to visit. I had been told that fifty Swiss peasants had here located themselves; and consequently I had come with enlarged ideas of the extensiveness of their operations. Of the rumoured fifty only were there three; and amongst these there had been division. Two separate vineyards a mile from each other was the consequence. The first we approached was the recent one; yet with newly-set vine-cuttings looking promising enough, it could not be more than three or four acres in extent. The next we found to be the vineyard! One of the proprietors, a gentleman from Neufchatel, only proved to be at home. His cottage of wood—picturesque as it should be outwardly—was not yet, as most likely it will be, overgrown with vines covering it entirely. Inwardly it was rustic enough—hung everywhere with domestic utensils, garden and vine-dressing implements, and chequered all over with dried plants, or with parcels of garden-seeds. But in the vineyard and the sweet garden was the treat. In what luxuriant, diamonded rows were the vines growing—many of the new green shoots from five to ten feet high. Everywhere was evidence of industry and skill. The vineyard was seen to great advantage, lying before you at a glance, covering broadly the rich slopes of a hill. In one part, where the soil seemed chalky, the vines were stunted and seemed poor; but the vine-grower observed that from such soil they would have the best wine. He pointed out to me with evident pride a small vine-tree, as an object of great interest: "That," said he, "is a Burgundy." The vineyard was kept in the neatest possible order, all the taller trees being tied with rushes to upright poles. In the garden were abundance of vegetables; but what delighted me most was to meet with so many old and dear friends amongst the flowers—the richly-blowing balsams, passion-flowers, &c.,— whilst the scent of thyme, and other homely cottage-garden smells, made me feel myself in England. The same associations often, no doubt, wrap their owner in a Swiss Elysium.

Here, having shown us all his sources of present gratification and of his future expectancies, he led us into the house, and there sliced up for us three or four kinds of the most delicious and fragrant melons: of these we partook, and then with thankfulness wended on our way. Such men as this our friendly entertainer, simple in their habits, unostentatious and economical in their mode of living, respectable and industrious, are an acquisition to any country. The land possessing such, and blest with good laws, must flourish. He spoke with evident gratification of several visits paid him by Mr. La Trobe. Such men deserve encouragement; and Mr. La Trobe is just the kind of intelligent patron to stimulate and encourage them by his kindly approbation. Such a vineyard as this, although small in itself, is a noble and important one as a commencement: the forerunner of rich Australian vintages, which will hereafter

"In Bacchanal profusion reel to earth,
Purple and gushing."—BYRON.

On my way back to Geelong I took another road and crossed a small stream called the Morable, ascending along pleasantly at the foot of the Morable Hills. Here at Fyan's Ford is a tastefullybuilt stone house, used as an inn, in one of the most romantic spots imaginable: the inn, verandahed and terraced, with rocks about it—with the not alder-shaded but gum-tree-shaded river in front, and a long, winding road-track seen for miles ascending the ranges,—make a very pretty kind of Derbyshire picture; I could have thought myself in Matlock Dale.

I reached Geelong in the evening, having progressed to and fro thirty miles. With the neighbourhood I had been much pleased, and with the locality of Geelong itself no one can be undelighted. The knoll on which North Corio is built overlooking its arm of the Port Phillip Bay, stretches out bold and bare, seven miles from Point Henry, projecting far into the inland sea of Port Phillip. South Corio is half a mile, perhaps, beyond a gentle ascent on which stand alone the church and a courthouse; the pleasant mount wooded, gracefully overlooking both South and North Corio, the principal portions of Geelong. These knots of houses and Bar won Terrace also display many excellent establishments, both town and suburban. The country is smooth, delightfully undulated; and its woodlands are of the richest character, principally she-oak. This place is secondary only to Melbourne; has progressed wonderfully; and should this country become more prosperous, must at no distant date almost equal its more fortunate prototype, the metropolitan city of Australia Felix.

Perhaps Geelong was seen by me at its best, just at the races; for the next day, when the bell rang to announce the departure of the steamer for Melbourne by which I returned, all the beach was alive with holiday people. The steamer was thronged not only with gay passengers, but with stately carriages and horses, going the nearest, most expeditious, and least expensive way home again. Not only had the steamer store of gay passengers, but the unaccustomed waters were enlivened with the sound of martial music, there being a band onboard.

From Geelong to Melbourne by water is between forty and fifty miles. We started at seven, or were to have done so; touched at Point Henry to leave wool on board several ships lying at anchor there; and were at Melbourne by two o'clock. I had been out nearly three days.

On my way from Melbourne to Geelong I had met many a large flock of sheep; and, repeatedly asking the question of whither they were bound, received uniformly one answer, "To the Melbourne Melting Establishment." Day after day, flock after flock, thousands on thousands were pouring in from every part of the country—sheep, and not only sheep but cattle—all to one never-satisfied vortex, that leviathan devourer of cattle and sheep, the Melbourne Melting Establishment. Nay, there are many melting establishments in Melbourne, and at Geelong also. At one place in Melbourne, when I came away, they announced that they would alone melt down three thousand sheep per week. The reader will naturally inquire for what the sheep are melted down? The answer must fill every one with pain, that all this mass of animal life is sacrificed for the fat solely. So murderous a system did this seem, such a wanton waste of food—food of which thousands and tens of thousands of our hungering fellow-creatures were destitute—such a violation did it seem of God's universal economy, that as I afterwards moved along through the sheep districts, I no longer looked upon the shepherds and their flocks with pleasure: all the poetry of pastoral life had died in me, it had faded utterly from the country: the sheep-bells had a melancholy and funereal sound. How different had been my sensations and reflections on my way, a few months before, towards the eastern mountains! I thought not then of melting establishments—I gazed on the pastoral vocation as a felicitous one, serving at once God and man; communicating the goodness of one to the other. The flocks had their fleeces tinged more goldenly by the reflection of all the good these, by their growth, brought unto and diffused amongst our kind, not only in their growth but in their manufacture. Then there was life, human life, sustained and blessed by increased animal life and enjoyment, for food. A portion not to be contemned, not to be cast away wantonly, of the life of our fellow-creatures in that food. But I had then no feeling, no haunting sense of this miserable waste: I only saw God's goodness in the immense increase and comfort of his creatures, moving on legitimately to fit ends—to man's good; everything tending by just degrees from animal to intellectual enjoyment. All that was now at an end. And from this land, so blessed with abundance of food, and so unblessed with any inward prosperity, so abounding in many respects, and so destitute in others, the people were fast emigrating. They were rushing out of it— some to Valparaiso—some to the Cape of Good Hope—and others, not a few of them—and amongst them ourselves—to England. It is a subject of sage and deep reflection for the statesman, how the Famished and the Food are to be brought together.

THE GOLDEN FLEECE OP AUSTRALIA.

"Meanwhile, ere arts triumphant reach their goal,
How blest the years of pastoral life shall roll."

CAMPBELL.

IT has not been all at once that society has become artificial. Men have not at first, without reluctance, and lingeringly, renounced the wild freedom of nature, the unrestricted denizenship of wood and heath, mountain and glen, for square walls and conventional habits. How tenaciously do the gipsies, in the heart of civilised nations, cling to their out-of-door wandering life; more eastern in that, than in their black hair, eyes, and olive complexions. The eastern life lives in them; and more inclement regions cannot chill it out of them. It cannot die. In it glows the memory, an impression descending from generation to generation, of warmer latitudes, of a blander atmosphere, of uninterrupted communion with the heavens and the earth. They bear about with them, dimmed and sullied, it is true, intimations of the regality of nature. We love to trace amongst them, mingled with much that is wretched and rude, the ease and holiday spirit of untoiling, uncaring, unshackled, primitive society. They pitch their tents, appear and disappear, as pleases them. We contemplate their mode of life with more pleasure, as it is full of the youth of the earth's history: it has more of the liberal dimensions of the poetry of life; and is the nearest approach to the pastoral. It is not poetry that has given a charm to pastoral life, no disparagement to Theocritus and Bloomfield; it is the soul of that kind of occupation that has been the inspiration and the life of all pastoral poetry.

Greece, with its heroism, poetry, its gorgeous architecture, and sculpture—the land of ruined temples and statues, with all its beautiful old impersonations, is less delightful to us in these, than when we fetch luxurious pastoral images from Tempe—from Arcadie.

Yet these are nothing compared with the pastoral poetry of the Bible. We see the patriarchs sitting under palm-trees, or at the doors of their tents, and with them angel guests. The pastoral is no longer an earthy vooation: heaven has descended, and the simplest is most dignified. At once is present to us all the plenitude of the most princely occupation: the whole land is studded with flocks of sheep, with groups of shepherds, and with camels. Perhaps they feed their flocks in Dothan, in Mount Gilead, or in Carmel; whilst the Cedars of Lebanon wave in all their stately beauty to complete the picture.

Nor alone were these patriarchal sages visited by angels; they waxed strong in the land; they enlarged their worldly dominion; they increased their herds and flocks abundantly; they gathered unto themselves gold and silver; and became princes—the fathers of nations.

The land and climate of Palestine, both essentially pastoral, are felt most livingly in the pastoral history of the Bible; and in a book, universally diffused, lend a charm to every other pastoral country; most especially to Australasia, where the similarity of character is so striking.

When we take this view of pastoral life and the poetry of it, no wonder that our artificial mode of existence should impel us, warm with youthful impulses, not only to visit in imagination all time-hallowed and song-hallowed old pastoral lands, but actually to emigrate half over the wide world, and to locate ourselves where such views of simple and natural occupation and wealth may be realised.

Alas, that the actual and the poetical are not one!

Whilst visiting the sheep stations within fifty or sixty miles of Melbourne, you meet with nothing to unrealise your golden visions of the good fortunes and felicity of the Australian pastoral people. Around you in many places extend almost immeasurably level plains; and, perhaps, at the base of gentle hills you find the elegant verandahed, grass-thatched, white-washed-wattle-and-dab abode of the pastoral settler. Near it, with one or more flocks in sight, valleys narrowly opening, winding on into calm hollows, invite you. There, under what is called by the natives the shiac-tree, profuse of waving tresses, that sigh sedgily in the wind, you may seat yourself, how cozily, with a book. Here English and Scotch gentlemen are more closely secluded in a land that is itself a retirement, and enjoy with a freshness, seldom known in society, the most beautiful of our famous national literature. For them Milton and Shakspeare, Byron and Burns, have sung; and Scott, Cooper, Mitford, or Austen, have for them woven the web of never-tiring fiction. Then how pleasant beneath such skies to read Vathek. the Epicurean. Kehama, and Thalaba.

At home the squatters breakfast early; then a few hours' ride takes them to dinner, in congenial society, at the Melbourne club-house, to friendly chat over their wine,* or to read letters, duly awaiting them there, from their home-English or Scotch relatives and friends. I have heard of one of these gentlemen shepherds, a magistrate of his district, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Portland Bay, who, so little is he of the austere justice, that he is frequently found playing on the guitar, surrounded by his flock. Nor does he solely make the bush musical for his own gratification; he declares that upon the sheep it has a tranquillising and delightful effect.

Surely there is nothing to ruffle the current of so much ruralseeming happiness. But what is this in a recent Port-Phillip Patriot?

SQUATTERS' MEETING.

"THE squatters of Australia Felix will meet on horseback, upon Batman's Hill, on the 1st of June, for the purpose of forming a Mutual Protection Society. From the Murray to the sea-beach, from the snowy mountains to the Glenelg, let no squatter be absent."

This body of squatters is in a great measure composed of British gentlemen; men of unsullied reputation; of old and honourable families; educated too in our best schools and colleges; not a few of them have grey hair; changed to grey whilst fighting year after year the battles of their country. Their actions do not forget their ancestry, nor yet their indomitable independence of spirit. In these respects they belong essentially to a people

"In whose halls is hung,
The armour of the invincible knights of old."

The hill on which these horsemen were to meet is at the west end, and overlooking Melbourne: the most conspicuously beautiful elevation for miles, with its graceful crown of shiac-trees. It was once feared it would be desecrated, but was not; for Sir George Gipps did not fulfil his promise, that he would give it to the town of Melbourne for a botanic garden. It ought to stand as it is for ever; and young shiac-trees should be planted upon it as the others decline, and more especially if it becomes sacred to liberty as well as to nature.

It is well known that the pastoral settlers are but too generally implicated in the almost universal insolvency of the colony. Delusion there has been, and there is distress. Most of them came out from their far-away lands, encouraged by the most fascinating representations; * urged in some instances also by the vast wealth realised by fortunate home-returned Australian adventurers—to do what? Not themselves to return thus enriched: no; but to make investments at the most unfortunate periods; to give from twenty to thirty-five shillings per head for flocks, that now, per head, would not realise five. And year after year have they lingered in exile, struggling against adverse circumstances, to be year after year less wealthy than when they left first, strong in hope, their friends and country. Such was notoriously not a time or condition of things calling for additional taxation. It is true that Lord Stanley announced, sometime ago in the Hguse of Commons, it to be his opinion that it would be well to try by a tax of one penny to threepence per head on sheep, to compel the squatters to purchase their locations. True wisdom did not suggest any such experiment. Were the squatters left at their ease a little more; were they to become a little more prosperous; were their locations, by a more liberal course of colonial policy, through domestic government, made more valuable to them, perhaps they might purchase them. Compelled they will never be. Compulsion would drive them from the land; they would transfer themselves, as they have publicly declared, and their flocks, to the more foi'tunate colony of South Australia; or abandon, as others do, the country altogether. There is no home-feeling in the land; such as do not quit Australia for Britain, Valparaiso, and the Cape of Good Hope, are awaiting anxiously some great political change in their favour; are seeking some sure foundation for public confidence and gradual prosperity,—never to be theirs in alliance "with the middle district!

As an instance of expectations, disappointed by pastoral Australia, let this suffice:—A young gentleman, who emigrated from England to Van Diemen's Land in 1840, was advised by his friends in that island, before he located himself there, to try what could be done in Port Phillip, then so famous as a scene of pastoral adventure. Over he came, and brought with him twentyone Merino rams, which, with the expense of shipment, &c., cost nearly, if not all out, eighty pounds. He attended the government land sale, but bought nothing. Then agreeing to join a friend and shipmate at a squatting station, he went over to Van Diemen's Land a second time, to purchase a dray, horses, and other requisites for their intended station. The rams had proved troublesome enough, having to be dressed for a disease, the scab, which they are often liable to after being on shipboard; three of them were worried, and the rest were left in some butcher's care at Melbourne. He crossed Bass's Straits three times; and these, with the voyage from England, could not have cost him less than one hundred pounds. Men were hired, and driving the rams before them, our squatter and his cavalcade went up by slow marches to the river Goulbourn, seventy or eighty miles. The station to which they were bound proved, on a second visitation, destitute of water, and the squatting scheme had to be abandoned. Before he reached once more Melbourne he had lost all his sheep but three, and of these he had cut the throats, and cast them away in the Bush, as more merciful than leaving them to be chased and torn to pieces by wild dogs. Another loss he had by the way; his best horse was drowned through attempting, whilst in the dray, to tlrinkat a water hole. From the dray, into the same hole, another loss, his gun-case and a beautiful gun were precipitated. The horse cost eighty guineas. This miserable journey occupied six weeks; and he was never undressed during the time, but slept under the dray. Vexed and dispirited, he had resolved to dispose of his remaining purchases and embark for England; when, accidentally meeting one of his ship-friends, he was persuaded to join him at a sheep station just then to be disposed of. There, comfortably located, he thought his ill-fortuue at an end, when there was another misery; the cottage was robbed, a loss to him of thirty pounds, and afterwards it was burnt down. He must have sacrificed nearly four hundred pounds.

None of these misfortunes were dreamt of in setting forth; all was bright in the distance; the rainbow of hope was bent before him from hill to hill, in the pastoral paradise of Australia Felix.

This was enough: still he was more fortunate than hundreds of his fellow squatters; he did not purchase any shares in Sir George Gipps's land lottery; to have done which would have been utter ruin.

Five years have elapsed since he bade adieu to his mother and other relatives; and he has not regained the position, as it regards capital, in which he was placed when he first set foot on the Australian shore, that he might, by a ten years' voluntary exile, on returning to the land of his affections, look on the future with confidence.

Amongst other serious miseries collisions take place frequently betwixt the shepherds and natives; blood is shed; and a black stain rests on the lustre of the golden fleece.

Flocks are subject to the scab, and, if from New South Wales, to catarrh. Natives sometimes, at far-away stations, drive away the sheep in hundreds. Wages too are higher in unquiet districts; wool is sometimes in those districts also unwashed, is shorn and packed in the grease, and is nearly worthless. Then wages, generally, add no little to the expense in the growth of wool. And were it not for these things, through what a rude and almost impracticable country has the wool to be conveyed! Much, too, of its golden lustre fades before the agencies through which it has to pass: merchants, and wool-sorters, and packers, in Australia; lighterage to the ship and freight to England; then merchant's commission in England; dock dues, and for "shewing samplesbesides other expenses. These not only dim the lustre, but eat deeply into the fleece itself. The atmosphere grows dimmer; the wool, although admirably fine, is only wool; Jason here says good bye—and we look about us in vain for the golden fleece.

Still, after all, what a goodly sight it is to see, as I have done, drays after drays, with their teams of eight or ten bullocks, the loads of wool extraordinarily large and square, coming from all parts of the land, to be laid down in vast heaps on the wharf. Then it is scarcely safe to go by the steamer in the wool season, it so swings about with its enormous loads of wool.

This product of the colony, if not so individually golden in its nature and results as it has been represented to be, is an incalculably general blessing; its vast importance is known, and every day more justly appreciated; you feel at once that it is the basis, and must be for years yet, of colonial wealth; one of the-broad and deep pillars on which the prosperity of Australia must rest.

HOME-RETURN-ANXIETY—ITS EFFECTS.

NATIONAL and local attachments exert evil influence on the progress and prosperity of colonies. The kind of people who emigrate generally, are not prepared by nature and habit to benefit colonization. Those who cherish strong local prejudices, and in whom the affections have a liberal empire, act with one aim, unremittingly and injuriously, to new countries. "Wealth" is the watchword, and "Return!" Adventurous, if not conscientious, they quit their native land as conquerors, to come back laden with the spoil; to leave nakedness—desolation behind them. Personally they are abroad, but mentally at home; living, moving, and having their existence amongst their friends and kindred. The roots are the affections, the stem avarice, the branches accumulation, aggrandisement. The rich man visits the region of speculation with temporary sunshine; he steps forth from the clouds of its morning—

"Flattering the mountain-tops with sovereign eye."

All is brightness about him, every thing is tributary. But the gorgeous visitation is too good for continuance; the radiance is withdrawn, and the mantle, cast on the earth from the chariot of the departing splendour, folds the land in double darkness.

The best principles of our nature, in expatriation, exert themselves to their own destruction. We must by all means, and in all seasons, pursue, as the only true good, wealth. We must render obtuse and dim our perception of what is beautiful. We must degrade our moral feelings, and over-task our physical energies, to assist, to subserve a cause that cannot be benefited by such agencies. Good may exact reverence from evil; but in vil, in that root, is no nourishment; nothing but death.

What a lesson has avarice been taught by Australia Felix! The usurious, many from a distance, looked upon colonial interest as the fruit of a flourishing and goodly tree—the tree of life —productive abundantly. It has not, however, proved a Eucalyptus-tree, dropping manna. Capitalists, who lent money at an enormous rate of interest in prosperous days, still cling to it tenaciously; like the vampire, a death avarice, adding, by inordinate and unnatural slakings of an unwise thirst, the living to the dead.

A colony tests strongly human nature; developes fully the real character of man. At home, old opinions, old habits, manners, and the hereditary customs of society, shackle, sustain, and continue, as he was, the creature of circumstances. The appearances of things are the pillars of his probity, the dome of his respectability. In a colony, a new arena, he is another being. The elements of society are oddly mingled around him. Ennobling example is solitary, and thence weak. He begins to suspect his own nature; finds that he is dependent on himself individually. The old world, its restrictions, its supports, have passed away, and there is a new order of things.

In penal colonies and their neighbourhoods, the air of the one mingles with the other; the moral atmosphere is vitiated; not alone by a convict population, though that will do much; by the genera of our species most prone to emigrate: the active, the energetic, the shrewd, the uncompromising stick-at-nothings.

The observation is common, that such a person was very different at home,—home the general term abroad for one's native land. It may be true that he appeared such. All great changes act upon character. For of all changes, all revolutions, the greatest, and the most striking—yet, to the philosophical observer, natural enough—is that of human character.

In colonies, men cast off all disguise. Consequently every kind of monstrosity and villany display themselves in all their hideous nakedness colonially. Honour appears contemptible silliness; honesty, weakness and folly. So much so, that the terms Yankee, colonial, and sharper, have become synonymous.

Much of this unmasked avarice, dishonesty, and mad recklessness of character, is attributable to home-return-anxiety.

The present time, and ourselves, are narrow motives for action; and this is another circumstance detrimental to colonial progress and prosperity. Of the migratory species we build only for the summer, still thinking of autumnal departure. Our objects, our outlay, our efforts, and industry, are all circumscribed by the short time we intend, or have to remain in the colony. "Plant fruit-trees!" "They would not bear fruit whilst I am here." This is the common suggestion and reply. "Our dwelling, though a poor one, will do for a few years." We do nothing without some reference to our return, without reference to a speedy return, of some kind. It seems that colonies, destitute of historical and industrial wealth in the past, are also to be destitute of them in the future. By this narrow policy, we neither do ourselves any good, or the country of our adoption. The greatest blessings most assuredly are those, to themselves and the land, who come from the old country to the new, attended by friends and kindred. Who have in reality exchanged one country for another. Who ally themselves to the new region as to a bride, to abide wdth it for good and for evil. Who think less of gold than of the necessaries and comforts of life. Who look to labour for health and support, exclaiming with Timon, "some roots good earth although not, like him, casting away the glittering ore which presented itself instead.

There was a time when in Australia such people and such industry were encouraged and rewarded by a paternal government with additional acres. That day is gone; the day wherein it was more blessed to give than to receive. The day of the rewarders is no more, and we have the receivers—the utilitarian day in its stead. In this instance the change, as in many others, has been for the worse.

Fortunately, industry is self-rewarding. Statesmen or governors cannot giye us that. A motive they may furnish us with for its exertion; oftentimes a delusive motive. No matter. They may tax the produce of labour more than is needed for its protection. They may add bitterness to the sweat of its brow. Still it was one of the attendant beneficences that followed Adam from Eden. It is the parent of health; the bestower of appetite; the crowner with the honey-dew of sleep. It is blessed in itself, and in its consequences. Also Nature is more beneficent than man, and gives with a freer hand. We have no scruples, no self-love to be wounded, no pride to be humiliated; we receive generously what she presents us with liberally, unostentatiously; drinking, as at the fountain of eternal beneficence, pure and invigorating waters. There is health and manliness in the draught. Our fellows are our equals—some of them; Nature is our superior; we receive, therefore, her blessings from the hand of God.

* Some time ago, a shepherd residing on Mount House found in the bush, somewhere in that neighbourhood, skeletons of dead horses; and the iron-work of bridles and saddles; which were said by the natives, but it is not known with what truth, to have belonged to the missing travellers.

* Real places in Van Diemen's Land.

* Champagne, nothing less certainly, since Sir George Gipps' vision of empty Champagne hottles, never seen by anybody else, strown for hundreds of miles round Melbourne.

* A table, in a Port Phillip pamphlet, reprinted in London, makes it appear an indisputable fact, that a person commencing sheep-keeping in Australia Felix with £600, must inevitably be, in ten years' time, worth £13,000!!!

AUSTRALIAN POEMS.

VERSES WRITTEN WHILST WE LIVED IN TENTS.

CHEERY days in Boroondara
And in Morang have we spent,
In the bland autumnal season,
Whilst in Prahran stood our tent.

In the woods of Meriang,
And beside the Yarra river;
And in Woolert could we dwell,
Roam or rest content for ever.

Through the Eucalyptus shade
Pleased could watch the bell-birds flutter,
Blending with soft voice of waters
The delicious tones they utter.

From long tossings on the ocean,
From the voyage vast and drear,
Joyance find we in the wild-wood,
Rest, by Yarra flowing clear.

July 22, 1840.

TO THE DAISY,

ON FINDING ONE UNEXPECTEDLY IN AUSTRALIA, JULY 30TH, 1840.

WHENCE was the silvery gleam that came?
A daisy! can it be the same?
— Some fairy from my native land
For me this glad surprise has planned,
Of light and joy a sudden shower,
Or never had I seen this hour,
Our real English daisy-flower.

Daily I meet some shape or hue
That brings old times before me new:
Some token of life's brightest hours,
In streams and trees, in birds and flowers:
The past is by such spells unbound:
But never, until now, have found
What made me feel on English ground.

Of poesy thou favourite child!
First seen when some blest angel smiled!
O'er Britain scattered every where—
But strangely solitary here—
Yet buoyant-looking, brisk and bold,
That with like cheer do I behold
Thy silver rays and disk of gold.

These mosses, ferns, resemble ours:
These sundew, sorrel, speedwell-flowers:
Yet none are in all points the same
As in the isle from whence we came,
Save thee, dear daisy! thee alone,—
Thy crimson tips proclaim thee known;
At once we hail thee, all our own!

Now easy seems it to my mind,
I also may a primrose find
In some shy glen; or it may be
A cowslip nodding on the lea:
All things are possible, it seems,
To him, for whom the fairy schemes,
Whose waking hours are blest as dreams.

O, not miscalled the eye of day—
Sweet gowan of the Scottish brae!
Close shut at eye: with dawning light,
Opening on heathy summits bright:
When first the crimson streaks the gloom,
That very tint dost thou assume,
And sweetly blushest into bloom.

Flower of the dawn, and dawn of song!
O, well may grace to thee belong!
By ancient bards how blazoned wide—
And how by Wordsworth glorified!
And seen by Burns he could not choose
But crown thee with unfading hues—
Thou—loved of every sylvan muse!

In England thou art always seen,
On mead, on moor, on village-green:
In forest glen, on mountain height;
A common thing in common sight;
But here, 'midst flowers superbly dressed,
Shalt thou, and prized o'er all the rest,
Become our cherished garden-guest.

Australian flowers I prize nor scorn;
Let those who in this land were born
Admire them, praise them, pluck and wear
On swarthy brow, in jet-black hair:
I never gathered them, nor knew,
Where I a child to manhood grew;—
What have I then with them to do?

Yet flowers bloom here of loveliest dye,
Where roves and rests the enamoured eye;
Chaste forms, and tints of beauty rare;
For these no fondness can I spare;
Of song they have no generous dower;
No life-long memory, homely power,
Like thee, our darling English-flower.

Eastern Hill, Melbourne.

THE NATIVE WOMAN'S LAMENT.

WHEN he was weak and we were strong,
The white man's soul was warmth and light;
With friendly smiles and gentle tongue,
He talked of reason and of right.

He asked of us in language meek,
Where flocks and herds might well abide;
We led to river and to creek,
Fair streams and pastures, green and wide.

He heard the river-bird content,
Peal its sweet bells along the wave;
He by the Yarra pitched his tent,
And to us wond'rous food he gave.

But now they rise on every hand,
As clouds o'er heaven that move and spread;
They thrust our living from the land,
And build their domes upon our dead.

"Gago*," the white man cries, "away!"
He points us, nor delays to push;
"We have no food for you to-day—
Away, black Lubra! to the Bush."

Now they are many—we are few,
Still brightly shines the sun and moon:
The white man wears an altered hue,
His soul and face are dark at noon.

We wander o'er the weary plain.
But rarely meet the fleet emu;
We search for food the woods in vain,
Nor ask who killed the kangaroo.

The white man wanders in the dark,
We hear his thunder smite the bough;
The opossum's mark upon the bark
We traced, but cannot find it now.

The white man tells us where to go,
He tells us where to turn and stand;
Where our own creeks and livers flow,
In their old freedom, through the land!

His flocks and herds our forests fill;
A thousand woods we wander through;
And hunger—yet we may not kill
The white man's woolly kangaroo.

O, sorrow! weary little one!
O, helpless, and ill-fated child!
The food, the life, the land is gone—
And we must perish in the wild!

April, 1841.

TO THE RIVER YARRA.

CHILD of the hills—the forest child!
Unwearied wanderer of the wild:
Thou, Yarra, art a stream sincere,
As ever soothed the poet's ear:
Although by minstrel yet unsought-
Unsung—unknown in hallowed thought!
O, mirror of fair forms! thou source
Of joy along thy mazy course.

Not soon shall we forget how first
On us thy primal beauty burst;
With trees of trunk and limb sublime,
As they had grown from oldest time;
Woods over woods, and hills far seen,
With knolls, and slopes, and glens between;
Where Art had entered not—our way
Taking through endless forests grey:
Where all we met was new and rare,
And all we saw was good and fair!

But, Yarra, thou art lovelier now,
With clouds of bloom on every bough;
A gladsome sight, it is to see,
In blossom, thy mimosa-tree.
Like golden-moonlight doth it seem,
The moonlight of a heavenly dream;
A sunset lustre, chaste and cold;
A pearly splendour blent with gold;
That in its loveliness profound,
The waters have a mellower sound.

When Eve, fresh from the Almighty's hand,
Moved graceful in the orient land,
And gladness, like a river, flowed
On with her through that blest abode;
Light from her limbs diffused—a fine
Effulgence of the touch divine;
Pure as an angel, and as fair,
Such blossom might she pluck and wear.

Free-waving wide, ascending high,
And to the waters drooping nigh,
There shows of myriad flowers a gleam
Trembling in the glassy stream;
'Midst azure gleams a golden glow,
In the softer heavens below,
Blent with clouds of purest snow.
Oh well may Yarra turn and stay,
Well may she here and thither stray;
Oft turn, and fold herself to sleep,
As loth to join the oozy deep:
Even like a maiden blooming bright,
Who turns on home a lingering sight,
And, for the first time, leaves in tears,
The home of love from earliest years.

In sooth, the whole wide vale is fair,
And spicy rich the odorous air!

Flow on, sweet Yarra! time shall be,
Shall happy votaries crowd to thee;
And smiles of cultured beauty bless
With theirs, thy natural loveliness.
These miams soon will disappear,
Rude sheds which thy dark people rear;
Domes of a race uncouth, forlorn,
Wide-scattered by the winds of scorn.
Whate'er the good may do or say,
Self-moving to a sure decay,
Possessing nothing to retard
Of slighted arts the sure award,
Thy ancient tribes will pass away.
Others now seek thy flowery bed,
Here social life will bloom instead,
And cottage, hall, and rural farm,
Will rise to cheer thee and to charm.
O, Yarra, worthy highest place!
No more wilt thou reflect a race
Squallid in form, in aspect base;
Fair girls, from England's lovely land,
Bright as thy bloom will by thee stand;
And stooping low, thy waves will kiss,
Lips pure as from the realms of bliss;
And in return wilt thou disclose
Fair brows, clear-seen in thy repose,
Our England's lily and its rose.

Joy to thee, Yarra—be thou blest!
The weary come to thee for rest.
Far England's care-worn sons and daughters,
Sad ocean-pilgrims seek thy waters.
And some of those who to thee flock,
Are beings of earth's noblest stock;
Heroic, just; who could endure
Great sorrows that they might be pure;
That, in the land they left, resigned
Much—not the heaven-erected mind;
Nor firmest will; nor native dower
Of moral and creative power.
These with them bring their treasures old,
Stores of the soul, if not of gold;

And added unto thee shall make
Thee, Yarra, famous for their sake.

The Tweed is now a wondrous river!
The Ayr flows on in song for ever!
The Cam and Isis have a fame,
With streams of Greek and Roman name;
And Thames, and Trent, and Ouse, shall charm
Wherever song the heart can warm:

And, Yarra, a strong heart hast thou;
For honouring wreaths an ample brow;
And hence in strains that will endure,
Will poets sing thee, Yarra pure!
And hence the manly and the fair
Will pace thy borders loosed from care;
And wine, and song, and lover's tale,
Will overflow with bliss thy vale!

OLD IMPRESSIONS.

NAY—tell me not, the exile said,
You think this land as fair as ours;
That endless spring is round us spread,
That blessings rise on every hand:
O, give to me our country's flowers—
And give to me our native land!

Our churchyard, with its old grey wall;
Our church, with its sweet sabbath-bell;
Our village fields, so green and small,
The primrose in my native dell:
I see, I hear, I feel them all—
In memory know and love them well.

The bell-bird, by the river heard;
The whip-bird, which surprised I hear,
In me have powerful memories stirred
Of other scenes and strains more dear;
Of sweeter songs than these afford,
The thrush and blackbird warbling clear.

The robin which I here behold,
Most beautiful with breast of flame!

No cottage enterer, shyly bold,
No household bird in seasons drear,—
Is wild, is silent: not the same
Babe-burying bird of ancient fame:
Where is the strain I wont to hear,
The song of russet leaves and sere?
O, call it by some other name!

I'm tired of woods for ever green:
I pine to see the leaves decay:
To see them, as our own are seen,
Turn crimson, orange, russet, grey:
To see them, as I've seen them oft,
By tempests torn and whirled aloft;
Or, on some bland autumnal day,
A golden season still and soft,
In woodland walk, in garden croft,
Die silently, and drop away.

The fields in which my youth was spent,
The scenes through which I daily went;
Went daily through and did not see,
On inward visions fair intent:
Those scenes for which I had no eyes,
Where in the wild thyme hummed the bee,
I now have rightly learned to prize;
To me in dreams do they arise,
With tenderest hues they visit me.

Then tell me not, the exile said,
This land may not compare with ours,
Though endless spring be round us spread,
Though blessings rise on every hand;
O, give to me our country's flowers,
And give to me our native land!

But more than all, the exile said,
In this poor country of a day,
Where rise the works of ages fled,
Your halls and ivied castles grey?
Your ancient cities, where are they?
Where live your sculptors', painters' toil,
That consecrate the meanest soil?
Where, whither shall we turn to find
Man's noblest monuments of mind?

The spirit of this clime is tame;
The aspect of this race is cold:
To buy and sell their souls they frame:
The worship of the land is gold.
With these no sympathy may claim
Our ancient bards of mighty fame,
Our statesmen, and our warriors old.

By no dull ties of custom bound,
In that sweet land which first I knew,
A world within a world I found,
And from this sordid life withdrew.

By soul-enlarging genius led,
I traversed wide the realms of mind;
And communed with the living dead,
The deathless sages of mankind.

From out decay the springing flowers
Rise hallowed in that northern clime;
O, what a place of birth was ours,
The land of Memory and of Time!

SONNET.

THEMES for Australian poets, loveliest flowers
Fix sweet regards upon me: some with eye
Serious and thoughtful; others archly sly.
Amongst them do I spend delightful hours,
And marvel how unwearied Nature dowers
With grace these alien wilds. Blue as the sky
One gleams, all beauty: one, of fiery dye,
Outflames the sunset, and the sight o'erpowers.
Others of lowlier aspect, look demure:
Some calm as contemplation, and eve's star:
Others, as infancy, are bright and pure:
Many, more brisk, wear looks of Love, or War.
Even like the world of Men the many are—
Vain, grave and dull, conspicuous, or obscure.

NATIVE LAUGHTER.

THE savage stalks along the land,
And from him is shrill laughter tossed;
A cry that startles near at hand,
But soon in far oif woods is lost.

How strange such alien voice resounds,
Deep in the wild—across the flood:
How hollow, joyless, seem the sounds
By his dark mates sole understood.

As if to mock him, in the tree,
With peals of laughter uncontrolled,
The Jay, of fun and frolic free,
Outrageously is blithe and bold.

PRIMITIVE NATIVE CONDITION.

ALAS! for human nature here,
In this Australian wild!
Unclothed, and miserably fed,
The mother and her child
Move on: the Lubra darkly sad,
The Picaninny mild.

Like darkness dim in look and limb;
Not all devoid of grace;
Though from God's image, majesty,
How fallen far this race:
Alas! here for the human form,
And for the human face.

TULLAMARINE.*

TULLAMARINE, thou lovely flower,
I saw thee in a happy hour:
When first I gazed upon my boy
I saw thee with a mother's joy.

Methought thy beauty on me smiled:
And by thy name I called my child:
And thence alike with joy were seen
Both boy and flower, Tullamarine.

The lights in heaven appear, and go:
Both stars and flowers their seasons know:
Thus, in thy season, thou art seen,
Sweet earthly star, Tullamarine.

Soother of many a weary hour,"
By mountain stream, in forest bower;
I gathered thee with choicest care,
And wore thee fondly in my hair.

Wide wandering through the woods away,
Where with thy bloom the ground was gay,
I called thee then the "flower of joy,"
Sweet namesake of my darling boy.

He grew: he flourished by my side,
He ran, he gathered thee with pride;
But, woe is me! in evil hour
Death stole away my human flower.

I wander in my sorrow's night,
My star is emptied of its light;
Thou, flower of joy, art changed to grief,
Thy dews, my tears are on thy leaf.

Therefore do I behold in vain
Thy beauty: look on it with pain;
I see thee with an inward groan,
Because I look on thee, alone.

All things my sorrow seem to share,
There broods a sadness on the air;
There hangs a gloom along the sky,
My boy is dead, and thou shouldst die.

Now for the joy which long I had,
The sight of thee must make me sad:
So in my path no more be seen,
But, deck his grave, Tullamarine.

Tullamarine, a month or twain,
Thy annual smiles must breed me pain;
But, blunt for me thy sorrows keen,
Sweet flower of tears, Tullamarine.

TO THE DAISY.

ON AGAIN FINDING ONE IN AUSTRALIA, SEPT. 12, 1843.

MEETS the miner casual treasure,
Quick he looks for other store:
At this unexpected pleasure,
Round me thus I search for more:
Still, unlooked-for daisy, thou
Art my sole discovery now.

Years have passed since of thy kind,
One I in Australia saw;
And from that great joy of mind
Often could I solace draw:
Hope, with chance delights to meet,
Made by hallowing memories sweet.

Thou dost bring as from the dead
Visions of our English lark,
Warbling blithely overhead;
And the bird that cheers the dark:
In those seasons of delight,
When thou wert in daily sight.

When a bowery village lane,
Copse, or dell, or chiming brook,
Homely, well could entertain,
As an ever-open book;
Fancy, feeling, thoughts which grew,
Hourly, fed with wonders new.

All an exile's sadness seems,
Round thee, lonely flower, to brood:
As if food of far-off dreams
Sole sustained this solitude:
As a nature far apart
From home-happiness and heart.

Heart-reliance can be none
Where no life-long mate is seen:
Of the many left not one,
Gems of sward like emeralds green,
Waked by spring's benign regard,
Merry masquers of the sward!

Were this little alien flower,
That so near thee neighbouring dwells,
Our own cowslip, hour by hour,
From its pendent odorous cells,
What old greetings would there run
To thee in the breeze and sun.

Still its aspect brightens thine,
For resemblance it displays
To our little Celandine,
Golden star with gorgeous rays;
Whilst this violet, pink and blue,
Seems an old friend in a new.

Hence despond not—let us cherish
Offered heart's-food far or nigh:
What is garnered will not perish,
Whilst the "worship of a sigh"
Pays the spirit to life's prime,
Scenes and seasons yoked with time.

ALIEN SONG.

BLIND Homer sung in alien realms
Heroic strains of deeds sublime;
Thus he whom absence overwhelms,
May sing for every land and time.

With Gama went the Lusian bard,
First Eastern India to explore;
He sung, and now has his reward,
Contemned, neglected now no more.

Tasso, immersed in dungeon glooms,
From friends and home-scenes pined apart:
Yet still in vigorous beauty blooms
The amaranth of the poet's heart.

The bird that nightly carols sweetest,
An alien is in British bowers;
The first to come, to go the fleetest,
And sings to cheer the darksome hours.

By alien streams sad Hebrew sages
Their harps had fain on willows hung:
Yet vibrate still through latest ages
The mournful numbers which they sung.

In fields as Bethel bright, or Haran,
Carmel, or Seir, my being grew;
'Midst flowers sweet as the rose of Sharon,
Or lilies wet with Hermon's dew.

Where woman's warmth and light are heaven,
'Midst noblest shapes of manly mind;
To me a life enlarged was given,
And earth's dull nature half divined.

For this, midst Austral wilds I waken
Our British harp, feel whence I come,
Queen of the sea, too long forsaken,
Queen of the soul! my spirit's home!

* Gago—go, Lubra—woman.

* "Every flower I now see I imagine to be the native's flower, Tullamarine; simply for this incident. A gentleman mentioned to me that a beautiful flower was in its season out everywhere in the forests, and he at that time was a missionary amongst the natives, out in the Bush with them, when one of the Lubras had a little boy born, whom she named poetically and naturally enough after the then universally prevailing flower, Tullamarine. The boy died just when it could run about; and the distress of the bereaved mother may be imagined from the circumstance that she often, in the most perfect abstraction, would seat herself in solitary places, where she, indicating inward agony by outward action, frequently in meditative moods rubbed with her finger and thumb her temples until they dropped blood. The preceding lines are an English translation of her sorrow."— MSS.

THE ABORIGINES OF PORT PHILLIP.

OF all the novelties of the new land, that which was with us a matter of the greatest interest and curiosity, previous to our arrival in the colony, was the kind of people and the condition in which we should find the natives. The country from the first had not been located more than six years, and we thought that amongst them yet would be found much of the original simplicity, wildness, and picturesqueness of their peculiar situation, undimmed and undissipated by familiar European intercourse. In this respect we were not entirely disappointed. With what avidity, from very childhood, had we read and heard of all strange people of all strange new lands! and here we were going to come, for the first time, into contact with a race as strange and singular as any of them. In Melbourne they were first seen, and what a contrast did they present, so seen, with the European inhabitants! Already they were become, not only Gibeonites, hewers of wood and drawers of water, for the white strangers—they were beggars; and they swarmed about the newly- arrived with great earnestness, probably finding that there their importunities had not yet produced the usual effect. Women in their dirty brown blanket mantles, with hair in elf-locks, and faces flaming like a sunset, reddened, especially about the eyes, with a similar coloured earth, with ornaments of cane-beads about one of their ancles and on one wrist, and sometimes necklaces of the same. These creatures were at us first; other women there were, in well-worn, tattered, and faded opossum-skin rugs; their hair, too, grotesquely ornamented, and children with them, the larger ones leaping and running about; the boys naked; the girls with a slight rope-fringe covering tied round the loins: other lesser brats were in magras, gipsy-like, at their mothers' backs; and these came round us, wanting "black money," "white money," "bread," &c.; others we saw chopping wood in kitchen-yards, white women giving them directions how to do their work. The men more leisurely, more like holiday people, were stopping the settlers who rode through the streets to shake hands, and very cordially did the settlers shake them by the hand, and gave them money—white money, too. Loudly the black fellows talked to the white fellows, and loudly laughed, also; especially when they received a silver gratuity. A vast deal of English and the native language we heard the first few days, chopped up together, and odd enough it sounded. At night, or rather in the evening, we saw the women and children coming from the town, loaded with sheep's-heads and feet; and these they prepared to cook, in their way, by the river. They first cut a quantity of long grass by the water-side, dipping it in the water; this they placed in a hole where some old tree had been blown, and on it kindled a fire. I supposed the process some aboriginal mode of steam-cookery, but was not sure. No sooner, however, were the women and children comfortably despatching their sheepshank meal, than one of the lords of the black creation came to them, and entering the black circle, he dealt amongst them a liberal gratuity of blows with his waddy on first one head and then another, every blow producing its effect of loud lamentation. One poor woman, on whom his blows had fallen the heaviest, went thence a little way, and sitting her down, wept bitterly. I thought before the scene wretched enough naturally, but they felt no doubt comfortable, until their black "friend of an ill fashion" had broken in upon their miserable happiness with deeper misery. Amidst all the wretchedness which he had suddenly occasioned, their black lord moved about with an air of the coolest indifference; he first took up one of the dogs, and then another, and tossed them deliberately into the river.

This I saw from the opposite side of the Yarra. Not very far off, but luckily far enough from the tyrant, sat a young native woman, busy tricking herself out in a cast-off print gown, given her by some "white lubra," and making use of the water as a mirror. Very great self-satisfaction and personal admiration was evident in the face and motions of the dark maiden while contemplating herself and her grand acquisition.

Very soon we had an opportunity of witnessing in the very little boys, the admirable dexterity with which they fling the bomerangs. To our thinking the thrower was only sending the instrument along the ground, when suddenly, after spinning along it a little way, it sprung up into the air, performing a circle, its crescent shape spinning into a ring, constantly spinning round and round, until it came and fell at his feet. This adroitness astonished us no little; nor had the skill been acquired so early without abundant application, and great natural freedom and elasticity of limb.

One circumstance that struck us as very peculiar was the nice perception the natives have of the progress of time; for without any general or individual time measures, they, by one simultaneous movement, may be seen streaming from a hundred different localities to one centre of attraction, and that every evening, arriving a little before sunset at the native encampment. If the heavens are obscured they are as exact, and know to a nicety in what part of the sky the sun is. Of localities they have also as nice a knowledge. When out hunting in the far-a-way wild bush they will cast down a war implement or an opossum-rug at the foot of a tree, and after going here and there widely about the forest, will return to the left article as accurately as a person in a town would to his own door.

We soon had opportunities of witnessing, first a battle, then a corrobory, or native dance. One day we saw from our tents people of all classes coming out of Melbourne, crossing the punt above and the ferry-boat below us, and all proceeding in one direction. We added ourselves to the concourse; and soon came amongst the trees, about half-a-mile off, to the assembled warriors and spectators. The appearance of the savage people was wild and hideous, painted red and white, naked, with their long spears, their bomerangs, their waddies; and with the women and children belonging to each tribe, two groups of them, each under a tree apart. There was much noise and stir on both sides. One warrior would suddenly start out from amongst his comrades, and going up rapidly to the very front rank of the enemy alone, he there defied them, taunted them, poured upon them scornfully his utmost contempt; and they, all the while he was making contemptuous gestures and talking vehemently, were crouched in a row, sputtering with their lips, and tossing dust towards their defier. Then the same defiance was acted by the adverse party. There was all at once a commotion and a shout —or yell rather—and then a bomerang flew, many following after it—and spears too—and shields were as actively used for defence as the weapons were for injury. To witness this war burlesque there were nearly a thousand of the Melbourne people, whilst of the natives there could not be more than three hundred. Would to heaven all Christian wars were as bloodless! To hear the yells of onset and the shouts of victory, and to have seen the shifting panoply of dreadful strife, the flight of horrid weapons, you felt pretty certain all must be annihilated. Slain none; wounded one; one man was speared through the leg.

Had I not seen afterwards other battles, I should have set this down for mere mockery. Thus they do not kill each other in open warfare, but secretly and treacherously. This battle took place through the Port Phillip tribe having been over to the Goulburn, eighty miles off, and stolen away their lubras, their wives, not called gins in this part of Australia. One of the lubras resisted, and was killed; the others were brought away.

We had visited their fires nightly, and in the daytime they had visited ours; for they do not move about at all in the night.

Major Mitchell's account of their dwellings, inclined pieces of bark, open sideways to their fires, is correct. There they lie about on grass, or on the hard ground. A white man lives with them in a tent, called the protector of the blacks: he has, I believe, a salary. I saw with him a native or two in his tent, Jacka-Jacka, the chief, being one; there he sat, with an open desk, busily employed in writing, many sheets of well-inked paper lying before him. I troubled him with no questions, but supposed him occupied with some account of the people, or, perhaps, their language.*

The next night we witnessed their dance of reconciliation, the corrobory. If we had been gratified by the war exhibition, with this we were much more so. There is something in the corrobory unimaginably wild and grotesque; celebrated as it is by night in the presence of vast fires; their dusky painted figures mingling oddly; their wild gesticulations and uncouth voices, modulated to suit savage ears, in the strong glaring light and the dense darkness.

Imagine fifty men of all ages dancing in mazes, first in one figure then in another; one old man, apart from the rest, as master of the ceremonies, indicating their movements by his own, and time beaten by a group of women seated round a huge fire. Movement and voice in most outlandish unison; sometimes slow and solemn, then rapid and shrill, and as suddenly ended, and all hushed!

No pictorial representations can convey any but faint notions of their movements; either of the battle or of the corrobory. I had read of them, and seen them pictured: but, with all helps of a willing imagination, they were beaten hollow by the reality. I shall not attempt a complete description; let those who deem themselves equal to the task perform it. To us as much of the charm consisted in the season and the scene as in the people. The wild dance, and rude accompaniment of strange motions and sounds, had a singular effect, so strongly aided by strong lights and shades;—

Seen by "flaming fires, which lit
The darkness of the scenery."

Glimpses of what was seen will haunt the soul years after such exhibitions. You hear the wild songs; see the dusky moving figures; the old fantastic trees standing round darkly in their own deep shadows, their boles and under-boughs brightened by the fires; glistening eyes of dogs, and half-faces and forms firetinged: the bland moonlight and stars in their dark depths, contrasting tranquilly above with the smoke, flames and turbulence below.

Of the customs and superstitions of the natives of Port Phillip I shall only notice such as have for myself been fraught with interest, the result of my own observation, or that of my friends, but in no instance gleaned from books. Their legends and traditions I have received with some caution, knowing well in what kind of soil they have grown; often planted there by romancing shepherds, and afterwards adopted by the dark people as their own.

The idea generally entertained by the blacks, that they at their decease go to Yan Diemen's Land, and come back white fellows, originated no doubt in this way. Buckley on his first appearance amongst them, the first European they had seen, was received amongst them as the re-appearance of a native just dead, whom in every respect, except colour, he closely resembled: was fully believed to be the very man; was adopted by the dead man's friends and tribe, and called by his name. No doubt but the similarity, fortunately for Buckley, saved his life. Afterwards, when settlers streamed over from Van Diemen's Land, and the natives heard it mentioned, almost only, as the place whence the white people came; and probably seeing many others in person or feature resembling their dead relatives—that they should have such an idea, is nothing singular or wonderful. Much more singular and curious ideas they have; strange indeed is their notion of death, or rather that with the constant and palpable decay of the human frame before their eyes, they have no belief in death from natural causes. All deaths they consider to be the result of accident, malice, or magic. When a death occurs, they decide that the deceased person's kidney-fat has been stolen away in sleep by some enemy, aided by magic. The body is tied up immediately in a lump, tightly drawn together, body and limbs, by strips of bark or cords; and he and every kind of property belonging to him, scrupulously and superstitiously, war implements, his waller wallert, or opossum rug, guns if he has any, even double-barrelled ones, although ever so highly valued, are broken; and these, with the white and black money, in spite of itching hands longing to take it—everything, in fact, goes with him into his grave religiously. Gravely also is it whispered into the ear of the dead man, that he may rest satisfied in his grave: that his black friends will, without fail, avenge his death. And in consideration of this arrangement, he is requested to refrain from terrifying his old friends and tribe: that he must not haunt them with alien voices, or the foot-marks of strange feet about their encampments. The mourners wear their white paint mourning, never washing themselves, even if months should elapse before they have performed their vow to the deceased; when they have tasted the enemy's kidney-fat, the mourning ceases. This is a miserable superstition, and causes a great deal of bloodshed. To discover in what direction the enemy of the dead is to be found, they take an insect, and observe in what direction it crawls—and that is an infallible indication. In that quarter they go, no matter how far, the first native crossing their path is the murderer of the dead, and in his turn becomes the murdered. One death, even a natural death, thus becomes, through ignorance and superstitious custom, the cause of many unnatural deaths. Another of their inhuman and inhospitable superstitions, is that regarding strangers: how different from the Jewish or Christian code, by which strangers are privileged and sacred people," Thou shalt in no wise hurt the stranger in thy gate." Immediately that a strange native is found by any tribe in their neighbourhood, all the people are in a state of tumult, yelling, and getting ready their weapons of war for his instant destruction: for their belief is, that if they do not kill him, they will themselves generally, and most fatally, be visited with dysentery.

A native named Jackia Jackia, who for spearing a heifer had been brought from the Murray and tried at the Melbourne assizes, but dismissed, as they almost always are, owing to their non-comprehension of our language or the forms of court, had, after being put in the right way for his own part of the country, by Mr. Thomas, turned back, and got into the hornet-nest of his enemies, and would then have been dispatched summarily with their tomahawks and spears, had not the good old chief Billebellary, more civilised than the rest, interfered, and brought Mr. Thomas to his deliverance. On Mr. Thomas's hearth, sitting with crossed legs before a comfortable wood fire, his round black plump shining good-natured face, his bright jet black curling hair, reminded me, thus accidentally seeing him on one of my nightly calls upon Mr. Thomas, what a good Man Friday he would have made. I imagined him to be the very beau idéal of De Foe's fiction. I learnt that a rather romantic incident had just before occurred in the encampment. Jackia Jackia, and a sister of his who had been forcibly carried away in childhood, had unexpectedly met again after many years' separation, and had instantaneously and tenderly recognised each other. Jackia had tried to persuade her to return with him, but she declined, and wisely, for most likely she would have been followed and killed.

It is said that fear of evil spirits prevents the natives from moving about in the night; and that if they are compelled to move, they carry fire as a protection. There are however exceptions, for I have met parties of natives on two occasions duskily moving through the dark woods, fireless, and gliding stealthily; we thus met and passed silently as shadows.

Of their traditions the most novel is their creation. First, say they, a young man, along with others, "quamby along a beek," sat down in the earth, when it was "plenty dark." There they were, not merely two, but many people, lying or sitting unfinished and half torpid in the ground,—this reminds us of Milton's Limbo. But Karackarock, daughter of the god Pungil, a kindly divinity, had condescended to "yannina warreet," walk a long way to look out for them, to clothe them comfortably with good opossum-rugs, of which no doubt she had great store. The Old Man, so they call Pungil their god, not unlike the Hebrew term, Ancient of Days, now held out his hand to "Gerer" the Sun, and made him warm. When the sun warmed the earth it opened like a door; and then plenty of black fellows came up out of the earth. Then the black fellows "plenty sing," like it white fellows "big one Sunday which means that a day is kept sacred like our Sabbath, in commemoration of the creation; the dance on that day being of a peculiar kind called gaygip; at which time they corrobory before images carved curiously in bark.*

For a long time after the creation, in the winter they were very cold, for they had no fire; their condition as it regarded their food was not better than their dogs, for they were compelled to eat the kangaroo raw; and to add to their misery, the whole land was full of deadly snakes and guanos; but good Karackarock, their truly womanly divinity, did not forget or forsake them. Pungil her father, like a true natives' god, was too much of a "big one gentleman" to do any thing but carry his war weapons; whilst Karackarock, a native divinity of the true feminine sort, a worker, came a long way armed with a long staff—native women carry such—and with this she went over the whole land killing the reptiles; but j ust before she had killed them all the staff broke, and the kind did not all perish. Misery there was in the breaking of that weapon, but there was also mercy, for Karackarock had so warmed it as well as herself with such a great slaughter, that when the staff snapped there came out of it fire. Fire they now had to warm themselves, and to cook with. Their condition was much improved, but did not long continue so, for Wang, the crow, a mysterious bird, regarded as superstitiously by them as the raven amongst Thor and Odin's worshippers, watched his opportunity and flew away with it. For a long time they were again in a most sad and tireless condition, until ever kind Karackarock learned their state, supplied their wants, and they have never since lost it.

Of a great flood they speak that rose above the highest trees and hills; and how the natives were some drowned, and the rest, for a great wind blew, were caught up by a whirlwind to another similar country above them. When the flood subsided, there jumped up out of the earth, trees, kangaroos, and opossums—every thing. The old race, the antediluvians, became stars. Amongst them were Pungil, their principal deity; Karackarock, their female Prometheus; Teertand Teerer, sons of Pungil; Berwool and Bobinger, son and daughter of Pungil, the first pair who dwelt on the earth after the flood, and from whom the present race of natives are sprung. Wang, the crow, also became a star.

Pungil was still, notwithstanding his deification, and stellification, bodily often on the earth; but the coming of the white people was fraught with ruin for him as well as for his black children; for the god of the white people, was in like measure with his white children, more powerful than Pungil; and strictly ordered the old man no more to wander about the earth, which was no longer his, but to get himself into the ground. There he now is, and the white man's god does not permit him to eat or drink, not even to smoke, neither is he allowed to sit or stand, but must evermore lie down; still in his abject condition, if he has any stomach for it, to solace himself in his darkness and many griefs, he is at liberty to sing a little.

Courtships and marriages are summarily despatched amongst these people, there being fewer words than blows. Most of the lubras are stolen, knocked down with their waddies, and dragged away from neighbouring tribes. Some of the women, ugly enough naturally, are rendered more unsightly by ill usage. Sometimes they get murdered through attempting to escape, and at other times just live on only, in the most battered condition. The ceremony of knocking out a front tooth on the admission of a youth to the important rank of manhood, is in some tribes practised, but not universally.

The funeral rites and ceremonies vary very much—are almost as various, in fact, as the languages of the different tribes. Some cover the dead with boughs, others with stones, and again others burn them. The Yarra, Goulburn, Barraboul, and Port Phillip blacks buiy them. The Mount Macedon, King's River, Ovens, and Murray River, and the blacks to the W. and S. W. generally burn them. After the flesh is consumed, they collect the bones and put them some height in the hollow of a tree. That they do sometimes consign the dead decently to the ground I once had evidence. Strolling pleasantly along the bends of the Yarra, in the Government Reserve, formerly occupied by the mounted police, two miles from Melbourne, I came unexpectedly on the grave of a native. That there was such a one I had been told by my friend Mr. Jones, and was in his company to have visited it, when he was called away unexpectedly to the distant aboriginal station of Narra Narra Warreen. I looked for it alone, unsuccessfully; now unsought for, it was before me. There was a small mound of earth about a foot high, circular, gently ascending and nicely rounded at the top; the soil bare and patted smooth. About five feet from the centre of the grave, circular also, was a slight elevation, and in it, driven at short intervals, stakes five feet high, and twenty in number. The small neat mound, the circle surrounding it, and the circular though rude inclosure, had a very simple, graceful, unostentatious appearance. I was pleased with the situation; its selection was made in very good taste. The grave was on a point of land nearly encircled by the river; the murmuring water, and the bright sunshine, chequered by the foliage above, mingled together, to eye and ear very pleasantly. It was a place of deep woodland quiet, to which the occasional notes of the bell-bird added a still deeper sense of seclusion. The banks on the opposite side of the Yarra rose steeply up to a great height, rounded and divided into pleasant slopes and knolls and glens, all tenderly greened by the spring rains: it was a delicious spot, and worthy to be the resting-place of a chief. One of the stakes had fallen to the ground; I took it up and replaced it reverentially. The spot was sacred, though unconsecrated; for it had been distinguished from the surrounding wilderness by human solicitude, it may be by affectionate hands, and was dignified and hallowed by the dust of man. He was a miserable savage, it is true; such a one as has been shot without ceremony or remorse, perhaps by his white, self-complacent, more intelligent fellow-creature. Perhaps, too, he was a cannibal, for most of them are; yet who knows if he might not have been

"unto the measure of the light vouchsafed,"

flowing on like his own river, in the old hereditary manner, bound by natural laws, with impassable barriers and limitations, a far nobler being than many who ignorantly contemned or injured him.

Rest to his ashes—to his spirit peace.

Women and children are, if buried at all, dismissed unceremoniously.

When one of the natives has murdered another, he is adjudged to die, unless by his skill he can save his life; for a certain number of spears are thrown at him, more or less according to the rank of the person murdered. Here, as in their wars, they generally prove skilful enough to come off unhurt; yet certainly, looking at the narrowness of the shield given to them, they must possess great bravery, presence of mind, and dexterity, to defend themselves.

These people are not at all intellectual; you will never find amongst them any poetical gem like this, picked up by Clapperton amongst the Africans—a kind of dirge for some chief—

He is dead, he is dead!
His heart was as large as the desert:
He was as the moon
Amongst the little stars!
He is dead—he is dead!

Still, like the American Indians, although on a much inferior scale, they are an aristocracy of nature, nobles by birth and habit; that is, the men: they make war and orations, but must not degrade themselves by any kind of physical labour. The women—their peasantry, their slaves, must busy themselves in ordinary tasks, and in domestic drudgery, whilst the lords of nature must be dignified and erect, eager in the stir of battle, voluble at the council-fire, or active in the chase. Alas for the miserable women! more slavish, abject creatures there cannot be in any land. They often procure food through great hardships, to have it torn from them by the men. Often, when the lord has satisfied his hunger—and his hunger is something—he flings the bone to the lady, which falling at her feet, sometimes becomes her property, but much oftener, if he looks sharp, the dog's. You seldom see the man carrying anything, save his implements of warfare; no binnock or basket, no mogra or berang, no net or bag: their beast of burden is the lubra; she is oftentimes loaded heavily—the piccaninny slung gipsy-wise at her back, carrying, beside it, a bag of food, and in addition, often the gentleman's gun, and even his pipe: when you see a man loaded, you may be sure he has no lubra. The men move about singly, or in small companies, armed with spears and waddies, &c. Wherever you see some fore-running, long, lank, shaggy, starveling, wild-looking dogs, such as are to be seen nowhere else in the world, the lubras are near at hand. Yes, there they are; and what can be more evident of their being the gentler and kinder sex? for the dogs, few of which ever follow the men, are seen in scores running before, or circling round them. What a sight it is! the gaunt creatures, part terrier, part bulldog, with something too of both the wild dog and greyhound in their composition. Then the women in their waller-wallerts, opossum skin mantles, or wrapped in dingy grey blankets, each armed with a long thick staff; their hair long and jet black, some of it curling beautifully, and grotesquely ornamented with kangaroo teeth, and the feathers of the cockatoo.

It is a pleasure to me to learn from themselves the names of the natives, men and women. Mostly, however, all that you can get from them is the name they have adopted; honouring by the assumption such people as Mr. La Trobe, Captain Lonsdale, Mr. Ryrie, or De Villiers. It would sound oddly enough to hear that Mr. La Trobe had beaten his wife, and that Captain Lonsdale had been met in the bush, his wife carrying a child at her back; and that the captain had given her a sheep's head— what was left of it—half raw, for her dinner. The black La Trobe is not much of a governor, and the other's treasury is in, most likely, a sorry condition. The women are all Kittys, Sallys, Marys, &c.; yet their native names, when they will tell them, are not inelegant. I one day met a black and two lubras; the man articulated his name in a way that I could not understand it; the names of the women were, if I rightly heard them, Eligana and Torticalla. The old man, large-limbed and grimfaced, would have made a good Neptune if he had had a trident in his hand instead of his fishing and fighting spear. A capital Pluto and Proserpine might be found amongst them by any historical painter engaged on a work requiring the Greek divinities; but I am afraid not one that could represent Diana or Minerva; and for Yenus, O ye gods! he must not come to Australia. If she arose from the ocean-foam, it was not in Bass' Straits, nor was it in Australia that she landed. The Greeks were right; it was in Greece or Eden that she was first seen, and instantly Love became a living god! No: Beauty, in its divinest earthly shape, if it is yet "a living presence of the earth," must be sought in England, where it flushes, with pearl and rose, ancient and venerable halls, and not seldom, cottages.

I have never seen more graceful figures than many of the Australian blacks; the men, some of them venerable-looking, with quite Roman-like nobility of contour; bold, strong, wellrounded limbs, and fine countenances. The lubras, as I have said, are not very beautiful; many of them are wretchedly put together; and must, I think, in some Amazonian battle have knocked one another to pieces; and on selecting their limbs afterwards, have run away with the wrong ones. Anything more droll or ludicrous cannot be imagined than are some of them; large-bodied creatures with two very lean mop-stick legs; then large flattish round heads, with bodies and legs like a pole, and with scarcely anything to hide their grim unshapeliness. There is no necessity to go to Tartarus for a Fury: more wild and fantastic heads of hair, in elf-locks pomatumed with earth and whale grease, were never seen. Fear, Hate, and probably Revenge, would, meeting with these people, wish to change heads; whilst Famine must seek her counterpart amongst the dogs. There are, however, exceptions; there are, we must admit, some not exactly handsome, but rather pleasing-looking women. Both men and women, lords and their slaves, are, though lamentably situated, and low as human nature can descend, human creatures —of the same, I am convinced, origin with our race; firm as marble to retain their old freedom and habits, and soft as wax to take the impression of what there is degrading and demoralising amongst us. We have done them some good, and much harm.

The formation of a native police, at Melbourne, has, notwithstanding what there was good in the design, been, and must continue to be, fraught with mischievous results. It is in fact arming one tribe of natives against all other tribes with whom they are at enmity. No native will let slip the opportunity of killing wild black fellows—those of other tribes. These native policemen, on horseback, and furnished with guns, are dreadful enemies to the other wooden-weaponed natives; and they know how to make their position terrible. A child belonging to a settler in the Portland Bay District was carried away by the blacks and murdered. The native policemen scoured all that part of the country, commanded by Captain Dana. The murderers, if there was more than one, were, it. was thought, discovered and shot, for four deaths of natives were reported in the newspapers. It is very probable that the murdered child was avenged seventeen to one; for a native policeman counted by the evening fire, upon his fingers, the number each of them had killed, and they amounted to seventeen. Mr. Wills's hut-keeper and shepherd were killed on the Edward, 200 miles up the country. The native policemen went within twenty miles of that neighbourhood, and killed many blacks, but it is doubtful whether any of the depredators. Another Lord Glenelg is needed to originate a more extensive, economical as possible, but much more general protectorate, and to do what he did not—see it thoroughly enforced. Perhaps the natives of Port Phillip will have justice done to them at the same time as the other inhabitants, when Australia Felix is not the only Australian colony without a domestic government.

A great deal of nonsense has been talked about the aborigines, as it regards their social and moral condition. Had they been in a more civilised state it would have been singular; for no country on the face of the earth yet discovered has been so destitute of the means of fixed residence, corn and fruits, for the localisation of a people. It is easy to call a native a fool for not providing himself with a house, but it is not so easy to furnish him with a fixed maintenance. It is not all at once that even Europeans can change their own fixed habits. The mode of life of the natives of New Holland is the natural result, age after age, of the one compelling necessity of roaming over the land in search of food. The blandness of the climate, too, tends to perpetuate such a kind of existence. Their desires are simple as their food, and easily satisfied. Had "God's blessings," to use Richard Hooker's words, grown out of the earth more abundantly; had it been at all a land of corn and oil and wine, it might have been otherwise. Its indigenous fruits are few and contemptible. The dwellings of the natives are such as would naturally result from their wandering life. In one instance only was a tribe found in Port Phillip with better abodes than common, and that was at the Scrubby Creek, in the Portland Bay district, where they had constructed hive-shaped Hottentot-like dwellings, because there they could make fish-dams, and partly subsist on fish. Yet it is doubtful whether they lived in these houses more than one part of the year. These people, through some squabble with the settlers, were dispersed, and their homes burnt. All attempts have, in a great measure, failed for their civilisation, because it has not yet been tried in the right way; nor will any good be produced amongst them extensively, until they are expelled from all towns, have good locations assigned them, and a regular supply of food. With this the task will be difficult enough, but without it almost useless. Of the two aboriginal stations, the one at Narra Narra Werreen is at one time of the year without water, and, consequently, everybody has to abandon it. How absurd to fix on such a station! But of course anything will do for the natives. Often, when the Assistant Protector has thought that he was about to make some impression upon them; when he hoped there might be a chance of fixing them about him, and of getting them to do some kind of work for their own benefit, on an evening a wandering individual or two of the tribe have dropped in from the distant town, with the intimation that at Melbourne there was "plenty flour! plenty beef!" and the next morning not a native has been left in the encampment.

Lord Glenelg, much to his honour, despatched from England four Protectors of the aborigines for Australia Felix, and assigned oyer these four, a fifth as chief Protector—a Mr. Robinson, then resident at Flinders' Island, and well known for his services to Yan Diemen's Land regarding its aboriginal people, consequently a man well fitted by experience for his office. This was in 1838. Of these four assistants, one of them, Mr. Dredge, considering the case of the natives hopeless, conscientiously resigned: another of them, Mr. Seivewright, was dismissed; Mr. Leseuff, a person appointed in the colony, was by colonial authority again dismissed. Thus the protectoral labours devolved upon Mr. Robinson, the chief, and his two remaining assistants, Mr. Parker and Mr. Thomas. The field was wide, and the labourers, to say the least of it, too few. Had it been possible to collect together the scattered tribes, and when brought together, could they have persuaded them not to murder each other, the task would have been worthy of the wisdom which generated the mission, and of the really excellent persons who undertook, not exactly to do that, but to do something. All, consequently, that the Protectors could do, was to locate themselves, each of them, in different parts of the country, with a few friendly tribes. For the others, whites and blacks, where were the Protectors? Lord Glenelg's instructions to these Protectors were admirable—were, in fact, Christian; but means were not accorded to carry them into effect. In the first place, the rights of the natives were to be protected. What rights the natives had, the Protectors found it very difficult to determine. The whole country was claimed as the property of the crown; thus they had no right to the land, over that for its sale, or to let it; four officers of the government were appointed, called Commissioners of Crown-lands. Right, the aborigines had not, in many a locality, to drink at their own rivers. To eat they had a right, if there was sufficient food left for them by the thoughtless and wantonly wild-game-killing settlers. The aborigines in tribes, very small tribes, and even getting smaller, are to be found wherever there are creeks and rivers; and on these creeks and rivers good cultivatable locations, fitted to their numbers, should be set aside for them. To give them something as their own, would be one means of originating in them the idea of property, and they then would have some rights to protect. Still there would be a great deal to contend with in their civilisation, where old habits, more in them than a second nature, an indolent, uncompelling climate, and absence of their former food, constrain them to dwell as beggars amongst the not always very pure civilised.

All that Mr. Thomas, in the neighbourhood of Melbourne, has been able to do, has been by constant residence amongst them— what his office imports—to afford protection—to defend his charge from personal injury—and to impress upon them the necessity of respecting the property and persons of our race. The almost child-like simplicity of manners by which Mr. Thomas is characterised, and his goodness of heart, have fitted him in an extraordinary manner for his office. Well, indeed, may they call him, whose hand and heart are never closed against their necessities, in their own language, Marmon Arter, or the Good Father. Still, with the most devoted anxiety to perform his duty morally and religiously, his situation has been one of the most trying description; to concentrate, to localise them, he could not be expected, without a fixed provision for them; and it was hopeless to attempt their amendment in manners or morals, whilst there was daily intercourse with the most dissolute and immoral of the white people.

Mr. Parker at the Loddon Station, at a great distance from Melbourne, was better situated on this and other accounts, and consequently succeeded better. What he has done we will quote from his address at the Wesleyan missionary meeting in Melbourne, Oct. 1843.

"My first business has been to concentrate the natives, to induce them to forego their wandering habits, and employ themselves for their subsistence. To a great extent I have succeeded in these objects. During the year 1841, the average number daily present throughout the year, at the station under my charge, was 100. In 1842 they amounted to 115. In the current year it might be still higher. Sometimes as many as 300 were present, at other times a smaller number, but the station had never been wholly deserted. Then as to the possibility of inducing them to give up their wandering habits, I may state that with considerable labour I made up for the government a report of the time spent at the station by the fifty or sixty men who are considered as properly belonging to it, and I found that the whole of them had resided more than six months out of the year at the station, and many of them nine and ten months. Their families would of course be with them. These people have been taught to cultivate the ground, and to raise agricultural produce for their own consumption. They have this year reaped a splendid crop of wheat; they thresh their own corn; grind it into flour; make their own bread; and the colony will no longer be at any expense, for my district at least, for the staff of life; but I will not dwell upon the mere secular part of my work. It will be more interesting to you, to advert to my efforts for the religious culture of these unfortunate beings. For, though my office is purely secular, it was distinctly understood, when that office was conferred upon me, that as opportunities would be presented of imparting religious instruction, it was expected that those opportunities should not be neglected, and I trust I have not forgotten the responsibility I am under, not only as an officer of the government, but also as an accountable creature to God. I have endeavoured to teach the people under my charge to reverence the Sabbath. They attend divine service, and at every opportunity of the kind are addressed in their own language on the great truths of the Christian faith. They appear to listen with interest; and it is really affecting to hear some of their replies to the questions which I occasionally put to them in the course of our public worship. 'We are very stupid; black fellows are all stupid; they never heard about these things before; white fellows are not stupid; they read God's letter; tell us all about God's letter.' By God's letter they mean the Scriptures. You will ask, what are the results of all this? I cannot, it is true, tell you of any decided conversions. Diving into the depths of their wretchedness, I have not, as yet, been able 'to bring up the gem of a human spirit, flashing with the light of intellect, and glowing with all the graces and virtues of the human characterbut I think I can mark a restraining influence among them, resulting from these instructions. You may travel for fifty miles or more around my station, and scarcely meet a single shepherd with a gun in his hand. Life and property are secure; and for a long period no outrage has been committed, and no aboriginal blood shed."

This is so far good. Mr. Parker has performed his duty to the government and his kind faithfully. We will listen to Mr. Tucklield, and learn what has been done by the Wesleyan mission at their station at Buntingdale, in the Geelong district. This mission tried at first to collect and localise the various tribes; but they found that concentration could not be effected, there being opposed to it the deep-rooted antipathies and superstitions of these people. Thus they were compelled to settle down with one tribe, and two families connected with it by marriage. This, all who know anything of the natives, admit to be the only method. They must be civilised and christianised separately, tribe by tribe; then should they amalgamate, and live peaceably together, their good example may exert some influence on Christian Europe; nay, should they still quarrel and fight a little, perhaps we may tolerate it, unless we expect them to be better than ourselves.

The Rev. Mr. Tuckfield says, "The temporal department of the mission is in a very prosperous state. This jear there will be fifty acres of this fine soil cultivated with wheat, potatoes, and other vegetables, and the whole substantially fenced. About half of the tribe are already comfortably settled in slab huts, which they have erected themselves; and at present there are four more huts in course of erection, which would have been occupied before this, if the bullocks could have been spared to draw the materials. In fencing, splitting slabs, building huts, driving bullocks, and other manual labour connected with the cultivation of the soil, they have engaged themselves in a manner which does them much credit. They grind all their own flour with a hand-mill, and regularly shepherd the small flock of ewes which has been given them by the surrounding settlers, with a view to lessen the expenses of the establishment, and ultimately to promote their independence. Under the superintendence of Mrs. Tuckfield and the overseer's two little girls, nearly the whole tribe, male and female, are learning to make their own clothes. During the past four months, in addition to their own work, they have made 27 pairs of trousers, 12 shirts, 12 coats, and 22 dresses.

"With regard to the opening prospects of the mission, there is abundant cause to thank God and take courage."

Thus much of a race, only intended by Providence, say some very intelligent writers on Australia, to occupy the country for a time, and then utterly to vanish before the coming of a superior people, of more graceful physical proportions, more nobly, more liberally endowed with moral and intellectual faculties, and blessed with all the plenitude of an old and fully developed social condition: a kind of soulless precursors, the pioneers of God's more intelligent creation. Such were my own sentiments, my first convictions, when I saw those people, and penned the following lines:—

Whatever the good may do or say,
Self-moving to a sure decay,
Possessing nothing to retard
Of slighted arts the sure award,
Thy ancient tribes will pass away.

It may be so; for Mr. Thomas's accounts of their rapid decrease, even in the neighbourhood of Melbourne, where they have been protected, which we will shortly give, favour materially that conviction. Still it is wonderful what agents they have been— blind, unconscious instruments, labouring aimlessly and ceaselessly in the great cause of human progress, generation after generation, age after age, whilst the old world moved on, unconscious of such a land, its few savage inhabitants, by the very acts which thinned their own numbers, by their wars and fires, were preparing, what but for them would have been one matted, impenetrable wilderness; were clearing the land universally; were preparing it for the reception even whilst themselves were waning away from it, of a civilised people, and were making it pastorally smooth for the admission, at once, of flocks and herds. It would seem that no sooner had the social condition, the advanced state of European civilisation, its science, arts and machinery, created a want, than it was so arranged by the universal Intelligence that here was the supply. Good pioneers certainly they have been, whatever may be their future destiny.

Mr. Thomas states: "The tribes more particularly under my charge are—the Wawaurrong, or Yarra tribe; the Boonourrong, or Coast tribe; the Tarragate, or Port Phillip tribe. The Port Phillip tribe are nearly extinct, only eight or nine being left.

"After much difficulty, on the 20th of November, 1839, I took a census; their numbers were:—

Mr. Thomas continues:—"Their temporal wants are not considered, and how can we expect that their spiritual wants will? At present their lands are unceremoniously disposed of, without any reference to them—without any consideration whether they can be dispensed with by them. Hence collisions, wherein life to no small extent is sacrificed: to what extent will never be known till the woods and forests give up their dead, I fear that in many parts the slain exceed the number living."

A few words, and we must conclude, on the effects of

CIVILISED AND SAVAGE CONTACT IN AUSTRALIA FELIX.

To look at our own concerns, to consider our own immediate interests only, and to be wrapped thoroughly up in them, regardless how they may affect injuriously others, is, if not very just, very comfortable.

The New Zealanders complained thus:—"Your horses damage our potatoes." The settlers replied, briefly, "Fence your potatoes in." Said the New Zealanders, more justly, "Our potatoes do not come to your horses to do them injury: fence in your horses."

So it was in Australia Felix. The new settlers found the country very much to their liking. There was abundance of not entirely unoccupied, but of the smoothest, park-like country, thinly sprinkled over with the most beautiful trees; water, often good and abundant, and often otherwise. The country, moreover, was thinly occupied by dusky natives, and plentifully stocked with wild animals, their food. Here the new settlers made themselves quite at home. All that they wanted was the land entirely to themselves—room; and that they found, for cattle and sheep to range over almost inimitably; to see their flocks and herds grazing in quiet; to be themselves, with their sheep and cattle, at ease; in the midst of plenty; satisfied with the present, and looking on cheerfully to the future.

But there were the natives; and they, also, wanted something: principally to range the country in the old hereditary manner; to find game where they had always found it; to kill it where and when it suited them; in short, like the new race of people, to have the country wholly to themselves.

The settlers were not always unjust, or inhuman; but they were attended by servants, as stockmen, shepherds, hutkeepers, &c.; men frequently of the most reckless, debased, and desperate character; and these became the pioneers of—not civilisation— but of strife, jealousy—conflict, and depopulation. Most of these men were convicts, assigned servants; others were ticket-ofleave men; and the rest emancipated convicts: wretches who had been expelled from their own country for the worst of crimes. And these were our representatives of European civilisation—on whom it devolved to impress upon the Australian aboriginal people our character, manners, customs, and religion.

It is easy to imagine the fatal results of convict and native intercourse; lust, and reckless cruelty on the one hand, and recrimination and deadly revenge on the other. Avarice amongst the worst of the settlers would also have its effect.

That these fatal conflicts took place very frequently without the settlers' knowledge, much less participation, is a fact; known in their results only, when the fatality was not only amongst the natives, and in the destruction or dispersion of flocks and herds. Also knowledge of the murder of the aborigines has been revealed by remorse-stricken convicts in the most horrible death-bed confessions.

Of the great value of cattle and sheep; of the capital invested in them; of their value to the settlers individually; or of their momentous importance to mankind generally; the aborigines could not be expected to know anything—not even, in most instances, that they were property at all. They well know the nature of hunger, and how to appease it. Other idea of property in animals, except by capture, they had none. Formerly game was everywhere abundant, open to all, and had been killed by all indiscriminately.

This circumstance was sure to lead to great errors in the new order of things—much conflict and mutual suffering—before there could be any amount of knowledge imparted to the natives on these mighty interests of all civilised nations—Meum and Tuum—and have often been written for their instruction in blood.

It must always be a subject of the most painful regret to the better portion of our kind, that where we, as a people, in participation of what there was good in this, as in other lands, have gathered to ourselves its benefits, its blessings, that we, in so doing, have not only not been any blessing to the people of it, by imparting any of our advantages to them, but have rained upon them the contagion; have diffused amongst them the pestilence of our vices; have demoralised them by our contact; and have rewarded them—a Christian and magnanimous return— with disease and death.

That this has been the result of convict contact with the New Hollanders, preventing almost entirely all possibility of future good; closing the field almost universally against the Christian missionary; no one well acquainted with Australia and its aboriginal tribes can deny.

* This was Mr. Assistant Protector Thomas, with whom I had afterwards the pleasure of becoming intimately acquainted. My surmises were correct; but since I left the colony the whole of his interesting papers have been stolen.

* The frontispiece represents a corrobory of this character.

EMIGRATION.

"It is lamentable to think what blunders have been committed from time to time in the management of our Colonies."

Author of "SAM SLICK."

There is scarcely any human act so important in its consequences as that of exchanging one country for another; especially in parents, who must be the authors of good or evil, not only as it regards their own success or failure, but extensively to others who have not yet acquired the habit and responsibility of thinking and acting for themselves. For difficult, indeed, is it for such, if disappointed, to retrace the step they have taken.

Seriously responsible then must be the vocation of the visitor and describer of foreign and distant countries, who must be the cause, the living and moving impulse, the light and guide unto emigration. It will become the most imperative duty of such writer to make himself intimately conversant not only with the soil and climate of the scene of his operations; not alone with its pastoral, agricultural, and other capabilities; or the salubrity of its atmosphere, things in themselves vitally important; not only how far its rivers and springs and the quality of its water fit it for being thickly inhabited; but to employ his faculties sedulously in the discovery of whatever affects, or has affected materially the general healthfulness and prosperity of such emigration field; and promptly and boldly to lay bare the sources of evil, careless of any mortal consequence to himself that may result from the performance of a great, public duty.

Not only has the writer to do justice to his countrymen, to himself, and the God of the whole earth; he is accountable, it is his duty, to give a just report of the unseen land.

When I first decided on emigration to Port Phillip, and made known my intention, the numerous requests which flowed in upon me, from persons with whom I had previously no acquaintance, that I would give them information of one kind or other with regard to the place of my destination, when I should have it in my power to do so, caused me to consider seriously, how extremely onerous such situation must be; whilst the determination many expressed of being guided by my report, made it certainly more so. On this account I was careful from the first not to say anything that could give a false gloss, or poetical colouring, to any of my accounts of the objects that might present themselves to my notice, or of the country generally; yet, thus cautiously guarded, such of my letters as were from time to time made public in England, caused me to be considered in the colony as the author of misrepresentation; and, on the other hand, I was accused by a few emigrants of having misled them by a rate of colonial wages, through the publication of a letter never intended to be made public.

So great and rapid had been the reduction in the price of labour, and so fearful the disappointment of bounty emigrants, that the considerate path I had marked out for myself, and the fact of my never having recommended emigration, afforded me great satisfaction.

I shall never forget the description given me by one of those persons, of the warmth of expectancy with which the passengers on board the Westminster, and the all-eyed anxiety which absorbed them on approaching the coast of Australia, to behold from the highest possible elevation of their vessel, as from Mount Pisgah, the Promised Land, the region of Hope and Happiness. When it dawned upon them, great was the sensation, and loud and simultaneous the acclamations of delight. The long line of elevated coast westward; Mount Macedon, Arthur's Seat, Station Peak and the Barraboul hills inland; the smooth outline of almost naked foreground around the Port Phillip Bay and about the Heads; the beautiful expanse of inland water; the ample and pleasant ranges of pastoral country, by turns occupied their attention, and were the subjects of endless rapturous commentary. The-rich cope of variegated sky, the exhilarating purity of the atmosphere, the pleasant breeziness, and the bright sunshine, fresh reaches of the country growing upon them momentarily—all combined to form a picture and a feeling as they entered the Heads and glided smoothly up the bay, to whose felicity there seemed no termination. A boat neared them: in it an important personage—the pilot. Opportunity was watched for anxiously, and obtained by some one of the passengers; inquiry was made as to the condition of the colony and the rate of wages. How blank the face of the inquirer! He has first felt the power of an extinguisher! intelligence that has

"Soberised the vast and wild delight."

Thence went low careful whisperings upon deck, circulated eagerly, followed by a great quietness. By and by some of them sauntered about listlessly; others hung thoughtfully oyer the bulwarks, all with lengthened and haggard visages, none caring to look out upon the new country; England, a place forgotten in their happiness, coming back by degrees into their memories and into their hearts.

Many of the emigrants would naturally take the Home-Circular from their pockets and read such poetry as this: "This fine colony."—"This delightful and prosperous colony."— "That fine quarter of the colony."—"Labourers are scarcer than ever; if one thousand couples of labourers and mechanics arrived here every month, they would all be absorbed without lowering wages!!!"

"The demand for female servants is enormous, they get 20l. to 25l., and such as can cook 30l.; all living of course as their employers."

"If one thousand single women (eighteen to thirty years of age) were to arrive in 1840, I would undertake that they would find husbands in a short time."

This was strong poetical seasoning! What are the facts? The bounty emigrants had to be employed by the Government until they could procure work elsewhere; wages did come down enormously; and a vast quantity of the marrying young women are yet out at service unmarried. As it regards the emigration from England to Australia Felix, of British capitalists, the most momentous inquiry of these must be, "What is the condition of the province? in what can capital be safely invested? and what certainty is there of any adequate return? The distance is great, and the advantages ought to be as great and palpable!"

To the first query we regret to say, that it is the only Anglo-Australian colony that has no domestic Government. Its Land Fund has been a robbery upon it of one hundred and eighty-nine thousand pounds, for which it has received not a farthing of return. Twenty thousand per annum surplus revenue is also drained out of it. This data sufficiently accounts for its wretched political position, and its almost nothing of a circulating medium.

Good soil and good water there are; and, however scanty these may be, considering the extent of the country, they will be sufficient for all demands for a century at least, whatever may be the tide of emigration. In England many a sterileseeming district has been rendered by cultivation productive and delightful; and so it will be in Australia. Water, where there now seems none, will be found in abundance by digging wells.

What the country may eventually become it is impossible to predict; so we must satisfy ourselves for the present with Campbell's augury—

"As in a cradled Hercules we trace
The lines of empire in thy infant face."

Of the climate we have said enough elsewhere. Of its healthfulness as an emigration-field; of what it is, and what it is not, something remains to he said.

Our first consideration must be, what it is not. This reflection sends us back through the old and money-accumulating times of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. We think of the pleasant progresses made by the Governors of those times, when they moved about the land royally, visiting their people in hall and cottage, freely distributing their favours, reprehending the idle, but most assiduously rewarding the industrious. The mind loves to escape from the present universal pinch-fit

condition of the times, both of the old countries and the new, and goes back for ease and refreshment to the days when wealth and desert so cordially shook hands. " What money have you?" asked the Governor, " let me see it? yes, very good." Land was allotted to the settler in proportion to his cash. By-and-by the Governor in his rounds paid him a visit, and if the settler was idle or improvident, he shook his head solemnly and went on; but whenever there was evidence of progress, if the country smiled encouragement on the industrious, so did he; the deserving always found their account in it. Nay, I have heard of some of these governors, particularly King and Sir George Arthur, going privately, unattended and unknown, amongst their people. On those occasions, in the simplest and homeliest manner they have enjoyed the hospitalities and attentions of the poorest cottagers. One time, I think it was Sir George Arthur had been taking a meal with a wood-splitter's family, and had just gone, when a neighbour stepped in to ask " what the Governor had been there for?"—" Governor," said the woman, "it was only a settler gentleman,"and she tidied her cap, and placed several little things about the room in nicer order. "The Governor," repeated the man, "it was the Governor." Great was the sensation; the Governor was to them a king; and all the anxiety was as to the state in which he had seen them. As first flutterings subsided, the good woman did not forget that the stranger had commended the tidiness of the children and of the garden. Sure enough it proved that the neigh-bour was right, as the government grant to the cottager of a nice little thirty acre farm very quickly certified. It was during the dynasty of these rewarders that the colonies flourished. Such men as the M'Arthurs of Camden, with their thirty thousand acres of land and forty thousand sheep, rose gradually with others, steadily progressing; the healthful tendency of things bore them on to vast wealth; they became like princes of the country, each deserving settler making for himself "a house." Alas!

"A change came o'er the spirit of their dream."

From the year 1832, and the mercenary land-sale system, the whole tendency of affairs has been to a ruinous consummation. The colonisation of Southern Australia and the peopling of Adelaide was the first impulse, the first innovation on the regular and safe march of colonial progress. Adelaide was built, a great body of people were in it located, long before the country lands could be had possession of and cultivated for their support; and the consequence was, a great and sudden demand on the agricultural produce of the elder colonies. A great advance in prices was as consequently sudden. Stock rose in value also. Sheep from 2s. 6d. rose to 20s., and other property proportionably. Almost immediately land grew into demand: from 5s. per acre, in a very short period it became 5l. This was in 1834, 1835, and 1836. Splendid visions of farming opened upon the inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales. Well indeed there might; for it is estimated that little short of a million of money passed from the Adelaiders into the old colonies, for cattle, sheep, and farm produce. To get hold of land became the universal hunger. All available cash was invested in it. Kindly, very, just at this juncture, two banks from England were established with capital, one million each. This enabled the colonists to implicate themselves in land-speculation, ruinously, to their utmost desire. Had these banks not stepped in, little mischief, comparatively, could have been done. Had the agricultural colonists bought land only with their own bonâ fide cash, it would have been sufficiently afflicting for them in the subsequent reaction; it would have brought down many a lofty head to a level with the low, but would not have plunged them into an abyss of misery and destitution from which thousands will never emerge.

The ruin, in its progress and termination in Australia Felix, was only an act, on a larger scale, of the same tragedy. The best evidence of this is the following advertisement from a colonial paper:—

"THE BANK SCREW.

"In consequence of the Union Bank having first made money cheap, lending it out to persons who failed in paying, and then inducing others to become pledged to make up the amount so lent, then the Bank immediately restricting its issues, to the ruin of many in Melbourne, I, the undersigned, am compelled to recommence business," &c. &c.

The writer of this advertisement had realised a comfortable fortune; had gathered around him the elegances of refined enjoyment at his delightful country retirement on the Moonee Ponds, a most delicious place; when, by colonial fluctuations, he was compelled to descend, and once more begin the world anew. Such is the fate colonially of thousands.

No such condition of things could ever have existed had not the colonial governor, Sir George Gipps, hardened the point of the spear in the fire, and sharpened it for more certain fatality. On first landing in Melbourne, I was impressed with the mischievous tendency of the then mode of land-sale, and expressed my conviction in a letter dated July 11, 1840. "If the land was sold in too liberal quantities at first, the government has amended that indiscretion; those who purchased have some leisure allowed them to retail their speculations out again; and thus, between the sales, men's land-appetites are sharpened, and the present dribblings keep it on edge." As speculation raised the price, the government price kept pace with it. When suddenly, on this steam-rarefied atmosphere of colonial excitement, Lord John Russell breathed his 1l.-per-acre cold breath, and there was a condensation in tears of blood.

Of the subsequent value of crown lands, enough may be gathered from a "settler's life," &c. at page 165. How far agriculture is rewarding and land investments are valuable may be inferred from the same article. Of the condition of the squatters, enough has been said at page 166. They are not on a bed of roses.

When Sir George Gipps arrived in Australia, he found the country—the people of it—in a prosperous condition, and he will leave behind him in it almost universal bankruptcy. In Melbourne, and about the district, there have been 244 insolvents, in a very few years, out of a population of not more than 19,000. Some of the insolvencies are for 75,000l. Still this is nothing compared with Sydney insolvency; there, in the papers, have been announced one firm for more than 300,000l.; week after week from ten to seventeen. This is the result of the "working-well" system of "give me your money, and you shall have land, and I will lay the money out for you in labour." It is the result of the system, and of Sir George's administration of it. If the system has worked well, and Lord Stanley says it has, it has worked up all the accumulated wealth of the former system, and much British capital also. One million, Lord Stanley said, in the House of Commons, had been received for crown lands in the Australian colonies since 1832.

Australia has been the arena of experiments in colonial government, subject consequently to fluctuations, and fraught with ruin to myriads. That one million of money has resulted from the various bad systems of land-sale in Australia, looked upon abstractly, has something in it brilliant and dazzling. The sum on the lips makes a rich sound. A great battle, a splendid victory, great in action and suffering, glorious in narrative, is horrible in detail and consequences. To us on the scene of action the details are familiar, and the ruin explicable. What myriads have ventured their patrimonies and lost them utterly or in part! What savings of long, laborious, and careful lives have been swallowed up in the all-absorbing vortex of that gorgeous, imposing, fine oratorical one million! It was ill-gotten and injudiciously expended. It is unfortunately the thirty pieces of silver for which the coldly-commercial modern utilitarian Judas of avarice and monopoly has betrayed a fine, expansive, glorious opportunity for progressive good: it wears the crown of thorns: has been brutally crucified for a time: let us hope there may remain a glimpse of returning life and energy after such immolation. Land has become unsaleable; consequently, no British capitalist will, with the view of purchasing, emigrate thither. This is a lamentable state of things. Now, instead of capitalists emigrating to Australia, the current has set in the other way— from Australia to England. In the Aden, which left Port Philip in March, 1844, were thirty-four emigrants. Some of them took from Scotland and England large sums for investment—some 10,000l., others more—and were returning despoiled of all. With its working people rushing out also to Valparaiso and the Cape of Good Hope, what inducement does its condition hold out for the peasantry of the United Kingdom? It is true that most of those who emigrate to Valparaiso and the Cape are such as have gone to Australia injudiciously; having either obtained false certificates, mechanics feigning to be labourers, or have got admission into bounty vessels through the cupidity of emigration agents. Such impositions have caused a wanton waste of the immigration funds.

As it regards the labouring class, for shepherds and hutkeepers, Australia is what a soldier once said of the United States—it is a "full belly country," and it is nothing more. And in this respect but too generally for single men only. In some instances, "wives" are patronized, but "children" never. Advertisers want "men," and sometimes their "wives" without "incumbrance." Children are an incumbrance in a country where a bounty, a serious bounty, has to be paid on their importation. Penuriousness, or poverty, must dictate such advertisements, not patriotism.

The world is becoming too intelligent for even working-men to rest satisfied with mere food; mere animals they are not satisfied to be. Mechanics' Institutes, and Artisan Libraries abundantly evince this. Mutton and Damper are good in their place: but other good is needed, and leisure and opportunity for its attainment. The colonies may amend in this respect, may become more internally prosperous; working themselves out of the rough, leisure may grow about them, but it is otherwise at present.

For men of small capital, Australia is not at all adapted: for such especially as have labour within themselves, working men with working children. For this reason, land is considered really to be furnished to the purchaser for nothing, the purchase money virtually being for the introduction of labour; thus the labour-self-supplied settler throws away his money when he pays, in paying for land, for labour which he does not need. He also by paying for the importation of labour, helps to reduce its value, to his own disadvantage, if he should need to labour a little for the public as well as for himself. The class of small farmers, Dr. Nicholson declared, in the Sydney Legislative Council, to be the worst off of any people in the colony.

As it regards monied men, intending to emigrate, if I have not said enough already, I must repeat, confirmed in the opinion by four years' experience, sentiments published with my name in Tait's Magazine, written by me on arriving, first, in Australia Felix, "Until we have a governor of our own, direct from England, I could not conscientiously advise any person to emigrate hither. With this, and with a more liberal and wise policy than has hitherto been pursued towards us, then, but not till then, is there any chance of our being permanently prosperous."

America can be easily visited, as an experimental or preliminary measure—nay, if people are disappointed, they can easily return. Australia is a matter of other moment, it is immensely dim and distant. As Dr. Johnson said of Anningait and Ajut, "a few summer days and a few winter nights, and the life of man is at an end." The Australian voyages cut away liberal slices of man's existence: a few of these, and "the life of man is at an end."

I see by recent Australian papers,* that if land had, in Port Phillip, any real value remaining, Sir George Gipps is determined to extinguish it totally, for he is actually offering to let by auction sections of land at five pounds each the square mile. The most dishonest circumstance connected with these pettifogging crown landlord affairs is a fact, made clear by the advertisements themselves: for in them it is clearly shown, that good money has been invested in the locations adjoining. "This square mile," says the advertisement, "is bounded by the purchased property of Mr. Walker, and of Mr. Bear." Each of these purchased square miles could not have been bought for less than 640l., and it is possible, that they might have cost much more. The cash received for one of these, if but 640l., the Governor would place in the bank, and receive for it more than thirty pounds per annum. Yet the Governor has the impudence, if not in words by his actions, to declare that the money of these capitalists, the 640l., is only worth five pounds per annum!

Thousands of our countrymen have gone sixteen thousand miles to implicate themselves in the ruin of a state of affairs like this. They made investments in land, having faith in the honour of a government, which had by one steady line of conduct, however injudiciously, given a high rate of value to every kind of property. All investments were alike, all progressed together mutually dependent: and all it was very evident must be ultimately advantageous or ruinous, as the government in its wisdom should sway them this way or that. Thousands and tens of thousands by state fluctuations have been elevated a little, only to be cast down infinitely lower. What years of man's best season, what energy of our manhood, what patrimony of careful ancestors, what time wearily passed in expatriation by land and sea, what patient toil and sweat of industry, what wear and tear of heart and brain, have been cast away as nothing, through the weakness of a confiding and deluded people, and the blind experimental enactments of a distant and incapable government!

* April and May, 1844.

AUSTRALIAN NOTE-BOOK.

OUR FIRST NIGHT IN AUSTRALIA.

We had passed our first Australian day in going up from the ship in the passengers' boat, oaring our way up the river, then strolling about the town streets, looking about us at everything new. We had stepped into the small police office, in which, for want of a larger place, the town sessions were being held, and had been much amused by the intolerably stupid, automaton-like counsellors,—wigged and gowned, as in English courts, but, as we thought, not men whose talents would much stead them at the British bar. Some bakers were taking their trials, and I think very justly, for a conspiracy to keep up the price of bread; and if Pharaoh had been recorder, he would have hung up the chief amongst them without doubt. We had witnessed the trials of other people, and ours were at hand; for on returning to our boat, it had been taken in tow by the Custom-House officers. They had suspected us, Heaven help us! of being smugglers, and as our boat was unnamed, it was confiscated, for the time at least. So off towards the sea-beach we went on foot,—a rather mutinous company,—and at the shore a new disappointment awaited us. Our comrades who had pushed on foremost filled the ferrymen's boats, so that four of us were left to pass away the night as we could on the beach—Dr. Howitt, poor Mr. Massey, who has now a grave in the country, my nephew, and myself. Mr. Massey, who had courteously carried a loaf belonging to Mr. Hall, was, by that gentleman's kindness, allowed to retain it, so that we were provided with bread. Wood we collected—selected a snug spot, as we thought—made our fire, and tried assiduously to persuade ourselves that the night might not, after all, be so very disagreeable. Water we found —rather brackish to be sure, but plenty—in a tub let down deep in the sand by some fishermen, whose two huts were in sight. Soon one of these fishermen came to us, to inform us that nobody was permitted to set fire to the whole country without a license from the Governor, on a penalty of £10. Moreover, he assured us, the bush once on fire, that if all the firemen in Inferno were to come to our assistance it would be of no use. We presumed that we were not inclined to call in to our help the firemen of that office, as we thought their services in such circumstances were rather to be doubted. Yes, yes; we might make light of it; but a whole country in a flame—huts, forests, houses and corn—was no joke. Well, we should do no harm; we were careful people: were there any folk near us who could make us some tea? Yes, the fishermen. It was brought—a large iron kettleful; the tea and sugar boiled in the water until it was as black as ink. It had a coarse sweetness and was bitter too; still, it was welcome, and well paid for. Night deepened about us; then we had another visitor. A tall, good-looking lady, attended by two children, stood, almost before we perceived them, at our fire. In one hand was a bottle of port wine, and in the other a wineglass. "Here," said she, "Hector, hand round the wine." He did so. The port was especially good; better for the unexpectedness and the courtesy. "Now, children," said the mother, "kindle a good fire on the beach to guide your father from William's Town." The father it seemed had a boat, and was three miles off, which distance he had to come over the water in darkness, and often in storms. With what alacrity did those children make an immense beacon-fire; waiting long silently, then shouting welcome as the father came. At our fire, too, the tall, well-made, military-looking father soon presented himself. These people had not been long in the colony, were evidently superior persons, and were industriously supporting themselves and nine children. There needed little apology on their part, that want of room only prevented us from being in their hut comfortably accommodated. Well, we were soon left to ourselves and the night; the season Autumn—the last of its months, April— waning into winter; and the cold night-breezes began to question us as to what defence we meant to make against them. A good shield of boughs, we thought, to be sure—then made one. On the fire we piled fuel abundantly, laid bushes and grass for a bed, and tried to sleep. Again the cold wind came round the fence to ask if we should not feel more comfortable with a blanket a-piece. It was a gross insult; and we roused ourselves to shut it out by considerably enlarging our fortification. Hour after hour we bestirred ourselves—liberally added to the fire —and shut out the wind, first in one quarter and then in another. All availed nothing; we could not defend ourselves from the raw air, although we could from sleep. Indeed, sleep only fluttered about us like a bird attracted by the fire—the dovepinioned and dove-footed sleep that never descended. The dawn found us busily employed at our fortification, which was in itself a comfort as a means though not as an end, and helped, by the employment it gave us, to speed away the night. With the day-light seemed to visit us a kind of scom: the clouds looked funnily at us; the light smiled, as we thought, rosily at our expense; and the laughing jackass had the ill-manners to burst out into a loud peal of mirth in our very faces. We could not hide our heads, so we bustled off to the ship.

This was not the last night by many a one spent by me ont on the beach. If the Doctor ever repeated the dose, it was in the way of his profession, when urged by sudden indisposition amongst his far-away patients.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS.

Melbourne, May 11, 1840.

DEAR BROTHER,—I wrote from this place a month ago, for which letter I had to pay the land postage, 1s. 6d. All letters go from hence to Sydney, although there are ships enough direct from London. The reason, I am told, is this—the postmaster has five per cent, on all the cash he can raise, and on that account they are sent round-about for the nearest. We are perpetually reminded of the old school chimes, "To be—to do—and to suffer." At every turn you take there is something to pay. You get out of the ship into a boat, and pay 2s. 6d. to be set on shore. When you reach the shore, a person is ready with a onehorse cart to take you to the river Yarra for 3s., a distance of two miles and a half, and to go over the Yarra, 8d. You next bring your goods and luggage to the town—10s. per ton. You will find at the wharf a custom-house—the only sign of civilisation. Another sign of civilisation—they are ready again to be paid for wharfage where there is no wharf, the place being rather worse than God and nature made it—man having trampled into mud that which nature left smooth green sward. The first day I came to Melbourne along with my brother, and the other passengers, in their boat—a boat they had built in Portsmouth—in addition to our being as sharply looked after as so many thieves on the Custom-house quay, (God save the mark,) in our absence, to obtain clearances for goods at the other Custom-house in the town, the boat was seized by a busy-body of the said customs for not having a name on it. Belonging to six persons, how was it likely? and how could persons, landing for the first time, know any thing of the bye-laws of Melbourne? We found the boat taken to the opposite side of the Yarra, marked with the government broad arrow. This was the first mark of the Melbournites' hospitality to us strangers, on our first touching their shores. I found my brother, and other owners of the boat, using all gentle words, and reasonable arguments, to obtain possession of the boat, and all of no avail—the Custom-house gents, condoling with them, and wishing it were in their power to give it up. Tired of such smooth blarney, I spoke plain English to them. I soon had their metal up: and then, that they might cool a little in our absence, I told them I should have a pretty statement to give of their gentlemanliness and hospitality and courtesy to emigrants, being come out myself to Port Phillip partly for the purpose. The day after, I found what I had said about the statement had had its effect. The boat was given up to us at once, and without even a fine, which the day before was confiscated to government sans remorse. Still they conceived they did us a great favour, taking into consideration the hard things I had said of them.

Above all things, it is the greatest folly for emigrants to bring out servants—men or women—with them; they leave almost immediately. Two families only on board the Lord Goderich brought servants, and both have left, or about to leave. Mr. Hall, a tent neighbour of ours—for we dwell in tents—brought out a servant with him, and he has left him in the space of a fortnight. Two vessels have come in from England since ours, the Louisa Campbell and the China. The governess of a family on board the China was yesterday (Sunday) married to a rich settler here. So much for paying the passage of servants—others reaping the benefit of your money.

Alas! for Melbourne—Australia Felix is a portion of New South Wales. Would it were not! The money which goes from hence to Sydney keeps Melbourne poor. Thirty-nine thousand pounds and one hundred thousand pounds, sum after sum, sale after sale—the land proceeds, go to Sydney; and the government revenues are voted away; £70,000 at once to New Zealand, and other sums to other places; but what is expended at Port Phillip? We have no road; the town is knee-deep in mud, or in dry weather eclipsed in its own dust. There is no bridge over the Yarra. The place is left to itself, fine infant town as it is, as though it were a beggar's brat, to wallow in its own filth, and to be choked by its own dust. Nothing is expended on it by the government. The only evidence we have of the existence of a government, is the presence of half a dozen or a dozen soldiers, the Custom-house, and the government auctioneer. The Sydney government is a receiving government. Alas! for such paternity. I say, God help Melbourne! There is nothing else for it.

The land is a pleasant and desirable land enough; but until we have a governor of our own, direct from England, I could not conscientiously advise any person to emigrate here. Persons who come out to this place find themselves miserably deceived in the price of land. They read of its being obtained at 12s. per acre. They expect to have it at that price, or near it; to see it before it is sold; and being able to fix upon it immediately. They must wait a month or two for land sales. Perhaps they want country sections; and none are put up, or sections not worth having. Bad land, and without river frontage—consequently not worth a farthing—that land may be had for this sum; whilst good land, well watered, will fetch an immense price.

Melbourne, July 11, 1840.

DEAR BROTHER,—All our friends and fellow emigrants, sooner or later, have had letters from their relations in England, except us. Some of them also have had newspapers; a thing, however, of rare occurrence, the Post-offices of these and the parent country being distinct, a disadvantage, among many others, which this unfortunate country labours under. Newspapers could be forwarded to us if something were paid upon them, or if they were made up into a parcel. I should not write to you now, save that there are some things, with regard to this region, which ought to be made generally known to the English people, and the sooner the better. Moreover, a friend of ours, one of our tent residents, is going over to Launceston, Van Diemen's Land, and thus by paying 4d. in that placej I avoid the imposition of David Kelsh, our postmaster, into whose purse must drop 1s. 6d. for every letter transmitted to England. What a shame it is that these colonies should not be placed on a footing with her Majesty's other colonies!

We have been here a quarter of a year, and ought by this time to know something of Australia Felix. Whence it derived this felicitous name God knows, and Major Mitchell; but, certainly, not from the nature of the country. It is, however, deservedly called the Land of Promise, performance lying yet in speculation. The land has grown gold to those who have bought and sold it, almost, at present, its only growth. It is neither a land of rivers and springs of water, nor does it overflow with milk and honey: honey there is none, and milk is 6d. per pint. I have read in the Port Phillip papers a document of Lord John Russell's, addressed to the Emigration Board, newly formed for the colonies; wherein he points it out, as one of their duties, to divest the information they impart of all poetical colouring.

Now, this, without his Lordship's laying any charge upon me, I will, as soon as I have sufficient health and leisure, perform as a duty, gratuitously, to the public. In the meantime, I will mention a few of ours and the country's grievances. We were led to expect a most delicious climate, the thermometer seldom higher than 90° or lower than 45°. On July 3d, it was as low as 25°; there was ice an inch thick in the wash-hand basin, and noon, so sudden and intense was the change, that it was up to 85°. This, of course, was in our tent, where all skiey influences are more strongly felt. We have had, I can assure you, enough cold weather; and I attribute to these extremes of temperature an attack of dysentery, which has, in nearly a week's time, shrank me to skin and bone.

Another of the disadvantages attending Australian emigration, is the length of time before you can purchase land and locate yourself upon it. We understood that we could have any part of the country we might fix upon surveyed, and put up by auction; but this we find, like the mildness of the climate, a fable. It is in the Sydney country, and in Yan Diemen's Land; and there, if the selector pays for the survey and does not purchase, he is repaid by the purchaser. All who come out here must either purchase at second-hand, or wait for a government land sale. Not choosing to do the former of these alternatives he must either live like a gipsy, in a tent, or endure many exorbitant charges in a new settlement; and even then he will have to submit to some. After waiting for several months the sale day arrives, and, to his mortification, there are only town allotments to be sold, and he wants a country section. The first week that we landed there was a land sale, but there was no land that suited us. Consequently, we had to wait, after a long and wearisome voyage from England, from April the 5th to June the 10th, before we had an opportunity of purchasing. At the next land sales town allotments alone will be sold, in Melbourne, William's Town, and Geelong; and the emigrants who are now arriving, or those who could not supply themselves at the June sales, must wait, and linger and wait. Surely, they will not forget this is the Land of Promise, Australia Felix! and that it is pleasant to have something in perspective. If the land was sold in too liberal quantities at first, the government has amended that indiscretion; those who purchased have some leisure allowed them to retail their speculations out again: and thus, between the sales, men's land appetites are sharpened, and the present dribblings keep it on edge.

The soil is not generally of so rich a quality as was represented to us in England. Many who came out with us are dissatisfied; some will return as soon as they have realised their expenses out to England. Port Phillip, or rather Australia Felix, has disadvantages to contend with that the other colonies in this part of the world have not. The old colony of New South Wales, and Van Diemen's Land also, have abundance of cheap labour; and it is to maintain, in their superiority, these old colonies, that the proceeds of our Melbourne lands in great measure go. After more than £800,000 has been realised, so utterly is the place neglected, that there are no wharfs, yet there are wharf charges: no bridges, no roads, save such as are the result of individual industry and enterprise. There is a shallow and dangerous bay, in which almost every ship of any size is aground; yet there are no light-houses, no pilots. There has been time enough wherein to dispose of by auction more than £800,000 worth of the public lands, yet there has been no time to facilitate commerce, or to provide a safe entrance to the bay of Port Phillip on the part of the government. Messrs. Morris and Delanoy, two enterprising persons who were in the habit of offering their services as pilots in the bay, risked their lives, and lost them, by going down last week in a paltry little boat, to the assistance of the Mellish, from England, which was fast aground in the bay. I knew Delanoy well; he had been at our tents, and had gone down in our boat with us from Melbourne to William's Town. Our port, had he lived, and been properly appointed, would have had a good pilot in him.

Another of our Melbourne disadvantages is, its government is at Sydney. This is its greatest calamity. Before you can arrest a person for debt, you must obtain a writ in Sydney. It monopolises all the law, and, I think, all the divinity, for the substantial stone church, which is nearly half built, has been deserted for more than two months; for this simple reason, the funds are exhausted. Thus the pleasantest eminence in Melbourne displays a grievous want of religion, or of Episcopalian spirit amongst the Melbournites.

Salaries are paid to protectors of the blacks, yet the blacks are unprotected. Here is a mounted police, well paid no doubt, and ready, on most occasions, to proceed to any place where a white man has been killed by the natives. When the police force was applied to in a case of outrage on the Werribee river, their reply to the settlers was, that they could render them no assistance. There is little protection for either person or property at the squatting stations. Whites and blacks very often kill each other. You meet with very many people who, you feel pretty certain, must, in their defence, have been compelled to shoot the natives. Some of the settlers at out-stations, when asked how they managed with the blacks, said, "Oh, we were harassed by them for some time at first; but we gave them a good talking to, and they have been quieter since." What the good talking to means, needs no comment. The natives are, most assuredly, a miserable, worthless, and treacherous race; still, after all, human beings. We gave up squatting rather than place ourselves in the disagreeable situation of killing or being killed by such hideous creatures. Whilst the police force is insufficient, and the government supine, the settlers are only safe through their number, and being well armed. More than thirty whites have been missed, besides what the blacks are known to have murdered. The papers here abound with recorded murders. The last week the Port Phillip Gazette contained an advertisement, offering a reward of 50l, for a chief called Jacka Jacka, a black whom I have seen here about. It seems he and some other natives, armed, went, and finding a hut-keeper alone, murdered him. The reward is offered by the owners of the station, not by the government!

There has been a public meeting here, and a petition sent from it to the home government, setting forth our forlorn, ungoverned condition, and praying that we may have a governor of our own. I know not how reasonable this procedure may be thought by Lord John Russell, but were a government to be accorded to us, and were La Trobe the real governor, instead of the shadow—with this and with a more liberal and wise policy, than has hitherto been pursued towards us—then, but not till then, is there any chance of our being permanently prosperous. In the present state of things, although we have purchased a farm on the Yarra, and a part of a town allotment, yet we shall not, on this account, cry up the land as Australia Felix!!!

After all, our morality is to be contaminated by a convict population. Twenty-one prisoners of the crown have been sent here from Sydney. These were intended to make some alteration in the woeful condition of our public streets; yet, by their coming, one of the loudest boasts of Australia Felix is at an end. There are convicts in the land—evil leaven in the lump.

First impressions are not generally very correct: whatever errors there were, however, in the preceding, I must rectify. Time has wrought great changes, but not the emancipation of the colony! One very minor mistake I made about the punt charge. I see in the MS. letter it was three-pence, and in the printed letter in "Tait's Magazine," it was further exaggerated, by mistake, to eight-pence; the real charge was two-pence. About David Kelsh, as postmaster, I said nothing but the truth: on one occasion he detained two of my letters, which arrived from England in February, bearing the Melbourne post-office stamp of that date, until the July following—more than seventeen weeks. Of course, such a postmaster was sure to be dismissed; and with this mention, I also dismiss him.

These letters were, on "Tait's Magazine" reaching the colony, severely commented upon; I defended myself; but do not think it necessary here to reprint either the accusation or defence; still, a few particulars I must mention. It was asserted that I was materially in error about the climate, and about the ice especially. We afterwards saw ice three-quarters of an inch thick, in a similar vessel. Ice there never is on ponds or rivers; the warmth of the water preventing it. Cold weather there is, intensely cold, principally in the winter nights. In the Australian day and night, in winter, are often concentrated the four seasons of the year; it is deep winter a little before the dawn, spring breathes about you about nine or ten o'clock in the forenoon, fierce summer scorches you in the afternoon, and the gloom of evening comes down upon you with an autumnal feeling. Winds from the south, probably from icebergs, may generate the intense cold. That these great and sudden transitions of temperature are not so injurious to health as would be expected, is certain; owing, it may be, to the purity of the atmosphere. The change from England to Australia must be felt, more or less, by all; and the price of initiation paid. Three times did I meet the dysentery, like very giants, all attacks in the first twelve months; and, coming oif victorious, I was made free of the country. From that time I loved to breathe the air of the land; nor had any man in the world more vigour of life in him, more robust health. The English atmosphere is of the earth, earthy, an exhalation; its cold is raw and damp; its heat is clogging and—a word I never heard in Australia—sultry. The Australian atmosphere is of heaven. This, after four years' experience of it, I am compelled by conscience to testify.

If not a country—

"For sportive youth to stray in;
For manhood to enjoy its bloom;"

It is a land—

"For age to wear away in."

Of the other statements of the letters I was, by time and observation, fully assured.

As it regards climate, soil, more rivers and more rain, its immense range of pastoral country, and its maritime position, Australia Felix is infinitely the best Australian province. It is free from the summer frosts, which do so much mischief to the farmer and gardener of Van Diemen's Land; freer from convicts than that island and New South Wales; freer from sand-clouds, "brick-fielders," than Sydney. Adelaide and Sydney are three degrees hotter than Melbourne, and are more visited and parched by the curse of hot winds. In Australia Felix we can say with James Montgomery,—

"There gentler suns dispense serener light,
And milder moons imparadise the night."

There are shades to the picture, plentifully to he found elsewhere.

OLD FAITH FLOUTED BY NEW EXPERIENCE.

YEARS ago Port Phillip, then in its habyhood, became the home of speculative men, who grew with its unsound growth, and strengthened with its precocious strength. Men without capital assumed airs of consequence, and seemed to have that which they had not, wealth and respectability; for it was at this period as in Shakspeare's time—

"The world is still deceived with ornament;"

and by seeming creditable they obtained credit. Some became large store-keepers; some sounded their trnmpets before them as merchants; and others, not satisfied with being both storekeepers and merchants, purchased land extensively; and they gathered around them abundantly men and maid servants.

Blow gently upon them, ye gales of circumstance! the bubbles enlarge themselves endlessly before us, and hang glittering brilliantly in the sun! Men such as these might gain something and lose it again, otherwise they had nothing to lose; but, alas! honest men are not always proof against specious appearances; and they became sufferers likewise in the approaching day of general calamity. The Port Philippians had

"—built their nests too near the river's edge,
Which by a sudden flood were swept away."

The old colonists were wise in their own opinion; they thought to profit by past colonial experience, and they too, the oldest and the shrewdest, were deceived. Many of them mortgaged their bid, slowly-acquired property, wherewith to purchase new. They knew that in Sydney and Hobart Town, and in all new colonies, land originally bought of the crown for small sums realised, in a few years, large sums, especially in towns and their environs; so they were not satisfied with taking Time by the forelock, they outstripped him, and went far on ahead, drawing largely on the Bank of Futurity, by reselling buildingsites and suburban allotments at an enormous profit, to be paid for in some instances in three, five, and ten years, and bearing twenty per cent, interest until paid for. There was good cause for this; the Melbourne town-sections being originally sold in Sydney, were bought quite as lottery tickets are, and in some instances the 7l, purchases realised 1000l. It was indeed no lottery at one time, for almost all drew great prizes, the blanks being all drawn afterwards. A gay sunshiny holiday time of it had the new land. Paper, like leaves of the forest, passed carelessly from hand to hand, on which were written, invisibly, as on sibylline leaves, the fatal destinies of the owners.

To this joyous time the colonists did not think there could be any termination, when Lord John Russell called in all the capital of the Bank of Time; and threw them, to use a sea-phrase, on their beam-ends, by ordering all the Port-Phillip lands to be sold at 1l. per acre.

Many a thrifty comfortable soul, who thought the world had gone on very pleasantly with him, and that, as his hundreds had become thousands, he had nothing now to do but to enjoy himself, suddenly awoke from his dream, to find his thousands not hundreds but tens, and often nothing. These new regulations caused property, if it was worth calling by that name, almost universally to change hands. In a new and improving colony it was not extraordinary that men should purchase land for part only of which they could pay, trusting to industry and the course of time to make that really their own which was then only so nominally—a system generally followed, and followed by as general ruin; misery treading on the heels of misery. Previously to the arrival of these new land-sale regulations there were few insolvencies in Australia Felix; very different was the result in Australia the Sorrowful. From February, 1842, to October of the same year, there were seventy-four insolvencies in Port Phillip alone; and of these, the liabilities of those only then ascertained—sixty-five of them—amounted to 159,035l. 18s. 6d. This, it must be remembered, occurred amongst a population of then not more than ten or twelve thousand persons. In the world's previous annals there is nothing like this. I do not say that Lord John Russell caused all this ruin: Sir George Gipps had prepared the gunpowder, and laid the train; Lord John only applied the fire-stick to it. Lord John confessed, on receiving intelligence, how utterly unfitted his new regulations were for the then condition of the colony; that at the time those regulations were framed, the value of the Port Phillip crowu lands was not known in England. Confessions of ignorance afford but little consolation to those who have been ruined by it. In South Australia the Company, when they had raised the price of land from twelve to twenty shillings per acre and found it impolitic, on reducing it to the old price, made, or proposed to make, compensation to such as had purchased at the advanced price. There was conscience in the Company; they proposed to deal like honest men: and "honesty and justice, if rather unfashionable amongst governors or ministers, are a good example for the people." I told the minister so, and claimed compensation. What did I get? Just what I expected, after about two years' pro and con. the following final decision:—

(COPY).

Melbourne, 9th October, 1843.

SIR,—Referring to the representation made by you to the Secretary of State, of certain circumstances under which you consider yourself to have been aggrieved in the purchase of land at Melbourne; and to your claim either to be paid back five hundred pounds in money, or else to have five hundred acres given you in land; I have the honour to state, that I have received copy of a despatch from the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the subject of this claim; and regret to state that his lordship considers that the same cannot be admitted.

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your most obedient servant.

C. J. LA TROBE.

To RICHARD HOWITT, Esq., Melbourne.

The West Indian slave-owners were compensated at a great expense to England, because persons interested largely in that kind of property were the fountains of the law; but the Australian sufferers were unrepresented and uncompensated, when, with millions of unsold and unsaleable acres at its command, the government might have been honest so cheaply.

We were no speculators; we had purchased land to cultivate, and did cultivate it; when, by government alteration in the value, we found ourselves—myself and brother—defrauded out of the sum mentioned in the Secretary of State's despatch. How far we were rewarded for such cultivation will be found faithfully, yet very briefly, detailed, not half of the difficulties or untoward circumstances mentioned, political or natural, in a former page.

By taking advantage, every advantage, of a new field of speculation, the crown realised a vast land-fund. What was done with it? If it was ever intended, and it was said to be so, to be laid out in labour for the benefit of the people from whom it was derived, never was any good intention so completely defeated. Several thousands of persons were imported into the colonies at a cost of 20l. each, only fitted for a temporary purpose, at a cost which should have insured their being in accordance with the country's necessities, universal in their usefulness, and for life. Through lamentable ignorance, cupidity of emigration agents, and other miserable circumstances, all colonial classes have been made to suffer. Thus where there should be one mechanic in the colonies, there is a hundred. These are not only wretched themselves, but cause ruin to others. Such of them as can leave the country do. What ruin has been occasioned by fluctuations in property, through the injudicious introduction of labour, may be judged from this simple circumstance, that building materials, bricks especially, at one time 3l., are now 8s. per thousand; consequently all buildings, like other colonial property, become nearly worthless. Whilst artisans are starving, or leaving the land, the settlers are making a loud clamour for shepherds, hutkeepers, and labourers.

On this subject, in conclusion, I will quote, in confirmation of my own sentiments, uttered previously in letters to my friends, what Dr. Lang, a true patriot and philanthropist, declared boldly in his place in the legislative council of New South Wales:—

"Dr. Lang, in an able and lengthy speech, blamed the government for withholding assistance from the unemployed; and referred to the poor of Ireland, the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, who had been repeatedly relieved by the imperial government.

"The honourable member also accused the executive of being, in a great degree, the cause of the present distress; it had doled out land in small portions, not sufficient to satisfy but merely to whet the appetite of the public, and had raised, as was especially the case in Melbourne, the price of land and town allotments to an enormous rate. In short, the government had acted precisely in the same way with their commodity as any mercantile house would do that had the monopoly of any article of general demand in the market, and merely looked to get the highest possible price for it, whatever might be the consequence to the purchaser. They had killed the goose to get at the golden egg. And what did they do when they had got it? They placed it at a high rate of interest in the banks; and thereby virtually forced these institutions, in self-defence, into a state of unnatural action and excitement, to throw multitudes of paper kites that seemed exceedingly beautiful as they sparkled in the firmament, but that descended in a stream of liquid lava, that spread desolation over the whole country. The money thus obtained in the first instance, and employed in the way he had stated in the second, to aggravate the evil, had last of all been expended in the most reckless manner possible. He alluded, of course, to the bountyemigration system; a system under which the best interests of the colony were left at the mercy of the most uuprincipled speculators, without any of those checks of which common sense might have dictated the use. Considering, therefore, what the government has done to originate and aggravate the existing depression, he thought they were bound to afford all possible relief."—Nov. 8, 1843.

EMIGRATION-AGENT KIDNAPPERS.

"On casting our eye over a file of Irish and Scotch papers, the other day, we observed advertisements announcing the projected departure of the emigrant ships for this colony with their freight; and strongly recommending carpenters, masons, mechanics, bricklayers, smiths, and wheelwrights, to take advantage of the 'Bounty System,' as there was an urgent demand for their labour in the colony. Now, as the very reverse of this is the fact, we hope these unprincipled agents—these traffickers in human flesh—will be made to suffer for their anti-christian conduct. It may be said that these people would make good shepherds, but common experience proves the fallacy of such a statement; and any one, who has the least knowledge of the world, must admit the great difficulty there is in inducing persons to change long settled habits, or to adopt a different course of life to that which perhaps many have been accustomed to follow from their boyhood. One volunteer is worth two pressed men; and we apprehend that but few mechanics, among the emigrants, will feel disposed to handle the spade, or to assume the shepherd's crook. This is what they will be forced to do, or they must starve."—Sydney Record, Jan. 13, 1844.

THE GUM-TREE BELL.

In some of the most simple, ancient, and picturesque of English villages and hamlets, the old churches are in fields, or with their small grave-yards, stand by road-sides. Some of these have singular belfries. I recollect, at Isley Walton, Leicestershire, the bell-rope of the only bell hung outside the church-tower, for anybody to pull. So also at Buttermere, in our English Switzerland, the lake country. Perhaps, in some places, the bell, where there is no tower, may be hung in a tree. So we suppose it must have been in the early days of Christianity in Britain; the bell, with its iron tongue, speaking from some old oak or elm, called the scattered villagers to church. At Melbourne, the Roman Catholic Church has near to it a gum-tree, from which depends picturesquely enough its one bell, there being as yet no belfry built; in fact, although the day of wooden places of worship is gone by with all Christian denominations, yet part of the Catholic Church only is erected, the east and west portions having yet to be added. The church-going Episcopalians are called together yet, having no bell of their own, by that of the Police Office; a circumstance rather apparently ungracious, the voice of the church modulated by the tongue of civil authority. I love better to hear the free swing of the gum-tree bell.

PORT PHILLIP RAIN TABLE.

The scale is one inch and hundredths. For this I must acknowledge myself indebted to Edward Curr, Esq. of St. Heliers, a Roman Catholic gentleman, an observant and intelligent resident of the colony.

Commencing August the 12th, 1842.

This is a goodly quantity of rain it must be admitted, which, but for the dryness of the atmosphere, warmth of the climate, and quick evaporation, would not only prove too abundant but unhealthful. Everything considered, the climate is, as Mr. Curr himself observed to me, as near perfection as possible. Still the rain falls too scantily in the heat of summer, and a little too heavily in winter; and then, owing to the season, lies too long.

We rarely meet with, to use Milton's term, "good unmixed" in man, much less in countries. We must be thankful for the pure dry atmosphere of Australia; its almost everlastingly diaphanous heavens; its salubrity; its abundant and cheap food; yet there are great drawbacks. Its few rivers, and far between; its immense stony and sterile ranges; its small quantity of rich soil, and that too often found where it is liable to floods; its great scarcity of spring water, and less of good. England, how unquestionably superior to Australia in these latter respects, yet how unhappily circumstanced as regards the former! If in England there is a more humid atmosphere, a greener land, abundance of wells, springs, brooks and rivers, there is also an endless list of human ailments, coughs, colds, agues, consumptions—their accompaniments.

HOME APPOINTMENT OF COLONIAL GOVERNMENT OFFICERS.

I have heard an intelligent colonist complain that the Homeappointment of Colonial Government Officers had, amongst other evil influences, this, that such persons introduce a more expensive system of family expenditure into the colony, and make it fashionable by their influence and example; and that the disappearance of the old custom of colonial masters and servants taking their meals together, and living on more homely food, is one effect of such influence.

Thus much is advanced by homely regard for the past against modern refinement—not in the colonies alone; but it should be borne in mind whether some good may not accompany such refinement; there may be diffused a little moral and religious purification from the folds of garments of an older civilisation, not unneeded in the atmosphere of penal colonies; high principle, let us hope, and moral worth in their divinest revelations.

There is another objection to such officers. I quote Mr. Ross, of Hobart Town:—

"In place of such men becoming an acquisition to the colony they become a sensible mischief, sapping it of its best resources, shutting out legitimate settlers, and occupying their place to the drawback and detriment of the rising community: such as swarm round the door of the Lieutenant-Governor's office, with the hope of obtaining some easy post, in which, after a few years, they may save up wherewithal like him, and be enabled to desert the colony with a portion of its wealth. It was the knowledge of this fact that induced Governor Macquarie to recommend the government at home to give the preference to family men in sending out persons to fill public situations, there being less likelihood of such persons studying directly colonial spoliation."

It is not to be wondered at that the old and permanent colonists should regard such transfer of colonial cash to England as a notorious evil; still, if they cannot detain in the new country all the wealth it-has in it, received or generated, let the Australians and Tasmanians rest satisfied with what they do receive and retain; for, for every pound that leaves them, one hundred will be returned to them from England. Let but a few rich settlers return home, that is, enriched by the colonies, and, like the bunches of grapes carried from the Land of Promise, which made such a sensible impression on the Israelites, and the golden fruits of colonial enterprise will not all be lost to the colonies. It is only unfortunate for us that such has been the most wretched new land-sale system of the colonies, and such their deplorable consequent condition, that no Calebs or Joshuas can bear back to the Father-land any fruit except such as is the fabled growth of the Dead Sea—ashes and bitterness.

SOLITARY COGITATIONS.

Oftentimes when hastily bending my way to Melbourne, internally busied with ordinary cares, or occupied with mental cogitations of the present or the past, there falls upon my ear the gentlest note that was ever uttered by the bill of bird, "Quick-enough, quick-enough, quick-enough." Kindly spirited creature! Gentlest of taskmasters! It intimates, like Solomon, that there is a time for everything, time enough; and that it were wise that I should relax my steps, and look around me a little more leisurely, were it only to observe how gracefully, regarded or not, the *shiac-trees are waving their tresses in the wind; how freshly green are the mimosas; how venerable, antique, and sturdy, are the ashy-looking boles and boughs of the giant gum-trees; and how singular in appearance are the Banksias, prim and formal-looking trees, studded all over with the last year's cones interspersed thickly with this year's blossoms, willow catkin-like, only not thin or drooping, ruddy colouring blent with yellow.

This tree the Australians call Honeysuckle; little short of blasphemy. Surely deep mortal forgetfulness must have fallen upon the person who so designated it. What! would he have us believe that there is the slightest resemblance in gracefulness or fragrance, betwixt this besom of a tree, and our sweet, wild, rural, lover-worshipped, arm-entwining, gay, and fantastic, English woodbine? It is nothing less than high treason against the regality and poetry of Nature! Still, let us not be angry; some sad and home-sick personage might, out of the world of old affections, so call it, that he might be less forlorn in exile. Nay, even in his imagination Seeing the really delicious English shrub, and slightly and lovelessly regarding this, he might thus felicitously beguile himself with the presence of the remembered sweet: thus—

"Wasting his kindliness on stocks and stones,
And on the vacant air;"—

so let us in charity believe.

But, what sound is this? The very hum of a clover fieldyes, these are surely English bees—certainly they are—and in these flowers. Well, now, the blossoms do a little more resemble honeysuckles—English woodbines.

Alas, poor fools! what could bring you from the flower-gardens and fields, the parterres of art and nature, the heaths, slopes, and uplands, of your native land! But I forget myself; these simple creatures know nothing of the system so fashionable in our human world—the voluntary. These, called of old, by quaint poets, sweet thieves, though in spirit free as the breeze of summer, wild woodland wanderers though they be, have not been guilty of this far and outlandish quest. The swallow, our English visitor, may come and go with inconstant wing, but the bee is no restless-souled emigrant, no half-witted voluntary exile. These plunderers of bud and blossom, like other freebooters, have been certainly transported; lagged out for life for some most natural thieveries, some kind of instinctive poaching. Here, like silly poets, they will find little quintessence in the soul of things, little of the golden poetry of bud and blossom, little of any kind of gold. Whatever can compensate to them the loss of their old and familiar world of sweets—their English paradise? Even now, whilst I think of it, there seems a sadder tone in the murmurous sound which I hear. I must believe that they see the place whence they were taken. They see the small straw-roofed cottage, under whose far-protruding thatch their own little houses stood. There are the row of hives. The red rose and the white nod against the diamond panes of the window, and peep in at the door. The grave old cottager, and the clean, homely matron, pass silently in and about, amidst the scent of ladslove, thyme, and lilac. The shrill chirp of a sparrow is above them, and the lark's song is in the sky. The fields are all gold and silver—a waving flood of fragrance.

Alas, poor exiles! Where now are your common heritage of blossomed bean-fields? your heath of purple ling and golden broom? your fields of ruddy clover? your homesteads full of marjoram and meadow-sweet? where are the real honeysuckles and the wild red roses—full of dews, and shadows, and sunshine, and sleep—full to overflowing with your sweet bee-wine?

A GOOD MARK.

I wondered often what was the meaning of this, amongst many other peculiar colonial phrases, "Is the man a good mark?" Our bullock-driver had it familiarly in his mouth. I heard it casually from the lips of apparently respectable settlers as they rode on the highway, "Such and such a one is a good mark!"— simply a person who pays his men their wages, without delays or drawbacks; a man to whom you may sell anything safely; for there are in the colony people who are regularly summoned before the magistrates by every servant they employ for wages. They seem to like to do everything publicly, legally, and so become, notoriously, not "good marks."

"A more-pork kind of fellow," is a man of cut-and-dry phrases; a person remarkable for nothing new in common conversation. This, by some, is thought very expressive; the more-pork being a kind of Australian owl, notorious for its wearying nightly iteration, "More pork, more pork."

The common people are not destitute of what Wordsworth calls "the poetry of common speech," many of their similes being very forcibly and naturally drawn from objects familiarly in sight, and quite Australian.

"Poor as a bandicoot," "Miserable as a shag on a rock," &c.; these and others I very frequently heard them make use of. I stared at a man one day for saying that a certain allotment of land was "an old-man allotment:" he meant a large allotment —the old-man kangaroo being the largest kangaroo.

ECONOMY AND MORALITY IN CONVICT COLONIES.

There are, and have been, in Van Diemen's Land abundance of small settlers, and not a few of the more wealthy—if to possess large tracts of land entitle them to be considered more opulent— who manage their affairs in the most miserable, careless, and uneconomical manner imaginable. Almost every thing is done on the credit system and by barter. The land is purchased or rented, and for the seed to sow it with they go to some of the town storekeepers; and the crop, even before it is in the ground, is thus mortgaged; for the wool, before it is shorn, they obtain rations—tea, sugar, flour, salt provisions, clothing of all kinds— all to be paid for with the growing crops.

Any man possessed of sheep or cattle, farm or rural location of any kind, opens an account with the storekeeper. Of these storekeepers many are Hebrew, and others Christian Jews— most unconscionable dealers; whose charges for goods are not proportioned to the risk, but to the possibility of obtaining all they charge. If a settler is industrious, persevering, steady, and fortunate, he gets on in the world, and soon gets out of their hands; otherwise, they get by degrees all his property, stock, living and dead, into their possession. Many of the wholesale dealers in colonial knavery have realised enormous fortunes; some of them have had two or more strings to their commercial bow. They have also been innkeepers and extensive fanners; the farms and stock having fallen into their hands in the naturai course of things, resulting from their vocations of storekeeping and spirit-selling. Who so well known for their wealth as those famous colonial traders, T—, of Sydney, and F—— and W—, of Launceston. Men, whose lives, whose sayings and doings, were they written, would abound with racy material for the novelist; and would present to the student of human character some striking incidents in new and romantic situations. F——, at one time, apprehended and sent as a prisoner, as all criminals then were, to be tried at Sydney; and along with him, as the most necessary evidence of his guilt, packed in casks, the skins of the sheep which he had stolen and killed, and which had been found in his possession. He, so rich, and to be tried capitally, was rather a serious, and would liavo been to most a dreadful situation. To him it was a matter of other moment, food for drollery, and a well-spring of perpetual good-humour. No one could think him guilty; his pleasantly won insensibly on all his sea-faring companions. To his accusers, and to those who had the charge of his person, there was something in it incomprehensible. He must, they felt assured, have other hopes and evidence on his side of the question to adduce, of which they knew nothing; for nothing seemed to their apprehension more certain than his guilt, conviction, and death. Poor creatures, and pitiable for their simplicity! They had forgot that he was a magician, and carried with him a talisman as wonderful in its effects as the lamp of Aladdin!

When arraigned and tried at Sydney, he was acquitted; for on opening the fatal casks, the Pandora's box whence his evil genius was to issue, the skins were—Omirabile dictu!—seal-skins! F— had touched the seamen with his golden necromantic wand—the casks had opened, the sheep-skins had gone overboard, and the others had been substituted. Blessed are they who carry with them, if not a clear conscience, that patent life-preserver and deliverer in multifarious difficulties and dangers, the golden talisman! I have heard that in the after days of his prosperity, F—, when he had about him a knot of his confidential friends and associates, used to amuse them wonderfully with facetious recitations of this and his other hair-breadth 'scapes and adventures. Alas, he grew old! and when Death approached him nearly, he felt uncomfortable and restless, and removed to his country location to die more at his ease, and quietly: and then back again to the town. Then some one must pray by him, for he was not altogether as he wished to be. Still human nature would be predominant, and he is said to have declared to his ghostly comforter, that "he was no such great sinner after all!"

PRIMITIVE COLONIAL FARMING OPERATIONS.

Year after year, on myriads of colonial farms in the corn lands, the stumps of trees are left standing, to be cursed every season, and ploughed round in the customary manner. It would be a world of trouble to grub them up, so there they are left to cause infinitely more. Then what a disagreeable employment it is for the English ploughman, who has always had old cultivated fields to manifest his skill upon, to break up a new piece of land! Every few minutes he must pause, to cut through a root or to remove a stone. Often, too, he has to visit the smith with bended and broken plough-irons. Then the Australian climate is very friendly to the wheelwright; the dryness of the sun and the atmosphere shrivelling the wood until ploughs, harrows, and dray-wheels fall to pieces. We had two pair of good wheels (one pair new) in two years. When a fresh piece of ground is ploughed it looks like coarse wicker-work, so thickly is it gossamered over with tree-roots and fibres. To rid the land of these is no small task, most of the fibres and roots being fast at one end. Years elapse before you have done with them. A great deal of corn is lost, and there are no gleaners, because the land is not rolled to break the clods, few farmers having a roller. We had that luxury; and we raked the ground, making ourselves both a roller and rakes: but when the corn was threshed it was full of bits of earth, bark of roots, and small fragments of roots. We had no barn, (there is no possibility of doing everything you wish, and at once,) so we had to thresh out the corn in the country's primitive mode. We had no granary but our cottage; so in it we had to stow our sacks of grain. There it was followed by mice, and the mice were followed by snakes, three of which deadly pests we managed to kill, one of them whilst crossing the very hearth.

How strange it sounds to the free labourer to be told, one especially just new from the old countries, that the settler has no money; that he must be paid in kind. This is general in Van Diemen's Land. If he is reaping, he must receive for his work so many bushels of wheat per acre, and as much slop clothing, tobacco, &c. at the settler's storekeeper's in the town, as his wages amount to. Still more strange it is when he has to thresh where there is no floor but the bare earth, and no roof but the bare heavens. Nineteen crops of wheat have been known to have been raised successively without manure from the same field; beaten out without any attempt to raise a barn, and the nineteen years' accumulated straw has lain in one heap where it was originally thrown, undisturbed. This is not the case universally; some of the rich Tasmanian and Australian settlers have good substantial barns, and other out-buildings, quite suitable to their houses; not a few of which are elegant, and some quite noble.

I have heard people say that they would like as well to thresh on the bare ground as in a barn, and to clean their corn with the wind as with a winnowing-machine: yes—it may suit a lot of idle convicts, who, having once been imprisoned, do not like the sight of walls, and would rather stand waiting every five minutes for a breath of wind that will but last one, instead of using their hands at a machine to raise it; but for doing the work well, and with despatch, commend me to the good old English method. One great disadvantage there is in the out-ofdoor threshing, the wind every minute or two comes in puffs, mingling the threshed and unthreshed corn together. It is true that the corn in the sun comes out much more easily, but the straw is beaten through its intense dryness into dust. Eight bushels of barley is considered a day's work in England; whilst in the colony twenty is talked of, but I think, if ever accomplished, is not well done. Still the primitive custom is slovenly and an idle one, favoured by the warm dry climate, which fosters a great deal of other idleness.

SQUATTING.

Some idea may be formed of the importance of the Squatting Interest by the fact, that from a table presented to the Legislative Council of New South Wales, it appears that at the present time, October, 1843, there are beyond the boundaries of location 879 stations, having 11,000 acres of cultivated land, a population of 8000 souls, 11,796 horses, 491,000 head of horned cattle, and one million eight hundred sheep.

An idea may also be formed of the immense loss of capital sustained by the Squatting community, when we reflect on the great depreciation in the value of all kinds of stock. A depreciation which has swallowed up all the increase, and will yet for years swallow it up.

The Squatting Interest is certainly important in wealth and its results; but, as a system, for the full occupancy of a new and extensive country unsatisfactory, only advantageous as a temporary measure; and the sooner such uncertain and semioccupancy of the land is converted into real and full possession by purchase, the better both for the Squatter and for the permanent good of the country. A new land-sale system only can do it; the land must be sold according to its real relative value.

THE COUNTRY BETWEEN MELBOURNE AND ADELAIDE.

REPORT OF MR. HAWDON.

Lieutenant Mundy, late of the 21st regiment, and I, left Melbourne at noon, on Thursday, the 11th of July, and after a drive of thirty-two miles over the beautiful open grassy downs of Port Phillip, halted for the night near Mount Macedon. Our route for nine miles was underneath the southern point of Macedon, through ranges of, as it is usually termed, the Black Forest, thickly covered with stringy-bark and other timber of great size. At the termination of this forest the country again opens into undulating downs; the soil is of good agricultural quality, and the pasturage not to be surpassed for sheep grazing. This parklike scenery continues for twenty miles, when we crossed the Campasby rivulet, a small but valuable stream which flows into the river Hume, four miles below the junction of the rivers Goulbourn and Hume. We started from the Campasby at noon, on the 14th. A few miles brought us to the pass over the Colobin, running through a deep ravine down high steep banks, where Mr. Mundy found it a difficult task to drive with any degree of safety. The country here was of granite soil, affording good sheep pasturage. Crossing over a rocky pass, called by Major Mitchell, Expedition Pass, we encamped in a small grassy valley on the southern side of the range: the distance travelled during this afternoon, twenty miles.

Monday, 15th.—Passed over some small timbered hills, through which a branch of the Yarraine streamlet runs (when flowing); the valleys well grassed. About five miles further, we again came upon open grassy downs, on which we saw a number of emus feeding. The soil as we proceeded was of rather an inferior quality. Travelling for about ten miles, we approached a deep and broad valley, through which the course of a large creek or principal branch of the Yarraine winds. On some of the sheets of water we observed musk ducks, with heads of an unusually large size. After having dined, and changed the horses in harness, we proceeded down the valley for the distance of a mile, when, turning to the left, we went over some stony hills for four miles: the remainder of the journey continued open downs, when we again descended into a deep valley and encamped by the edge of a large sheet of water, our day's journey being twenty-eight miles.

Tuesday, 16th.—After starting, we crossed for seven miles over the same open country, when we came to a beautiful rich valley, with a sheet of water in the middle. We continued to pass over open downs, the soil not of first-rate quality, but the scenery a perfect panorama; although adapted for sheep, it is by no means fitted for extensive agricultural operations. In the evening we came to a sheep-station belonging to Mr. Bowerman, upon what I should consider to be also a branch of the Yarraine river. Mr. Allan, who lives on the station, showed us a human skull that had been found near here, with two fractures behind, apparently done with a tomahawk. I felt perfectly confident the skull had been that of a white man. Mr. Allan intends to carry it to Melbourne, when some unfortunate man's fate may be discovered. The skull was of peculiarly intelligent formation.*

Thursday, 18th.—We passed for seventeen miles through ranges. covered with stringy bark; these are called by Major Mitchell, the Australian Pyrenees. A few miles to the west of us they appeared much higher and more difficult to cross. The range was undulating, and good driving road when we passed over. Kangaroos were seen here for the first time on the journey, and on a sheet of water a few teal ducks. The remainder of our day's journey was through an open grassy gum-tree forest. After having travelled twenty-three miles, we halted for the night near a small hole of water; here we observed the bones of a horse; from its position we concluded it must have been a blood mare belonging to Mr. Allan, and killed by the notorious Dignum and his followers for provisions.

Friday, 19th.—After a late breakfast we started, leaving the Pyrenees behind us. From this side they appear a formidable range of mountains. We now crossed the plain for ten miles; the surface much broken with small holes, when we came upon a creek of good water. We crossed open downs of a similar character for eight miles. While at dinner, six emus ran past behind a hill to the westward, probably disturbed by a body of natives hunting. We then continued our journey through the same picturesque country for fifteen miles, the Grampian Hills on our right. These mountains are of singular formation, the greater part of them having conical tops, indicating volcanic origin. Although the country is at this season covered with beautiful grass, the soil is inferior to the Monaroo downs lying west of Twofold Bay; but for fine panoramic scenery, it is unequalled. About two hours after sunset, by the light of the moon, we made the river Hopkins, by the side of a large sheet of water, I think impregnated with alum.

Saturday, 20th.—We passed down the valley of the Hopkins to a belt of trees, and there breakfasted. Whilst examining a sheet of water, to get at some wild ducks, we discovered a native skulking among the reeds. He seemed much alarmed, either at us or our guns, and tried to get off. His tribe were no doubt watching us, though not seen, but we had not time to attempt any communication. We travelled on fifteen miles and encamped, the day being wet. Half this distance was over plains, the remainder a beautiful forest of she-oak and the acacia fragrans. Our encampment was in a pretty, sequestered nook, surrounded by fine grass, which our horses enjoyed. Emus and turkeys were numerous over all the route.

Sunday, 21st.—This morning it snowed heavily, and continued till noon, when the day cleared up. We continued our journey for twenty miles at the rate of eight miles an hour, through a beautiful open forest of she-oak. The land was here very good. After rounding the most southern point of the Grampian range, we passed for a few miles through a country of the same description, when, coming to the edge of an extensive plain, which promised us shelter for the night, we turned up two miles to the right, and encamped in a green valley, near a sheet of water, immediately under the singular mount before mentioned. Emus, kangaroos, and black ducks were numerous.

Monday, 22nd.—Leaving the forest, we entered upon extensive plains, somewhat marshy, and heavily grassed. We now quitted the reedy creek we were upon, and took our course westward, across excellent sheep downs. We again entered upon a forest, lightly covered with she-oaks, gum, and cherry-trees. This forest continued for seven miles, when we came to a stream, the upper part of that named by Major Mitchell the Wannon. Large, broad, and deep sheets of water, occasionally extending to a mile in length, were covered with ducks and swans. Following its course, we encamped on a beautiful spot of ground, after a journey of twenty-five miles. Nothing could be more pleasing than this day's drive.

Tuesday, 23rd.—Our day's journey continued along the course of the river, varying from south-west to south for twenty-five miles through a most beautiful forest, the whole way covered with a thick carpeting of grass, the trees being alternately she-oak, the acacia fragrans, gum-tree, honeysuckle, and mimosa, the general features being similar to the Yarra, eight miles above Melbourne. In the evening we crossed to the right bank, where our encampment was enlivened by the songs of birds, which were here very numerous.

Wednesday, 24th.—The country to-day was for some distance of the same description. We crossed a few valleys leading into the Wannon, the course of which was now seen winding through the middle of a deep green valley, bounded on either side by rich green flats; the hills, covered with fine grass on the sides, descending very steeply to the flats. Gradually the country opened out to downs spotted with she-oak and acacia fragrans. Our day's stage was about twenty miles. About six miles above this place the grange of Major Mitchell flows into the Wannon, on its left bank, near which place are two waterfalls, one of fifty, and the other of one hundred feet.

Thursday, 25th.— Leaving the Wannon to our right, we crossed a high ridge of downs, and descended into another valley, through which a small creek takes its course; the country for many miles covered with fine grass. The scenery was park-like, and, in fact, the country as beautiful as imagination could paint, or the most fastidious settler desire. An hour and a quarter's drive of nine miles brought us to the station of Mr. Henty, distant from Portland Bay about forty miles, where we remained for the night.

Friday, 26th.—We started at noon, crossed the Wannon, and, ascending a ridge, descended into the valley of the Glenelg, which we also crossed, and encamped on some beautiful grassy flats on the right bank. The channel of the Glenelg was muchsimilar to that of the Darabin, near Melbourne, the tea-tree growing in the middle of it. At this season very little water was running. Having now proceeded down the Wannon from its source to its junction with the Glenelg, I can safely say that on either side the whole distance of one hundred miles, is the most beautiful country, and the richest land, yet seen in Australia. Major Mitchell might well call such a country Australia Felix.

Saturday, 27th.—Along the banks of the Glenelg we had some shooting at swans and turkeys, when, passing for a mile up a well-grassed alluvial flat, we ascended the high land which flanks the valley. From hence, keeping a W.N.W. course for live miles, passing through a grassy but thickly timbered forest, in which emus and kangaroos were very numerous, we now entered a country of a very different character, destitute of grass, and of a loose, sandy nature, alternately covered with patches of stunted stringy-bark and the grass-tree. Distant about ten miles we came to a small hole of water, where were also some recently deserted huts of the natives. From the shells scattered about, 1»hey appeared to have been feasting on the eggs of the emu. We proceeded, and for twenty miles passed over a country alternating between sandy tracts and rushy marshes, without water at present on the surface. Passing over a high sandy ridge we came upon a lake of fresh water, about nine miles square, about thirty miles N.N.W. from our crossing-place at the junction of the Wannon with the Glenelg. This lake was subsequently named Lake Mundy, after my friend and companion, Lieutenant Mundy. On making the lake, we drove on the beach round the north end, and found some excellent grass for our horses, and encamped here, after having travelled thirty-three miles. When the moon rose, the lake was perfectly alive with water-fowl of all descriptions; too wary, however, to allow us to approach. We now considered ourselves in the 141st degree of east longitude, and entering South Australia.

Sunday, 28th.—We passed for three miles over a well-grassed forest, and entered into a sandy, stunted, stringy-bark forest, through which we travelled for ten miles, passing afterwards through an open flat country, generally of poor soil, though there were generally small patches well-grassed. We now came to a small ridge of limestone, bordering an extensive moor. Mr. Mundy discovered some extensive caves, with many round apertures on the surface, of about nine yards in circumference, by which we descended and slightly explored them. They appeared to be very extensive, but we did not penetrate a hundred yards, having no lights to examine the interior. Our dog had some sport in killing bandicoots, which were numerous, and appeared to be the only inhabitants. Again starting we entered upon the inoor; it was covered with heath and low bush, making the tandem a heavy drag for our horses. We continued for twelve miles, and, an hour after dark, encamped on some white sand near a small clump of bushes, where we tied up our horses for the night.

Monday, 29th.—We started at daybreak, and after travelling three miles, we entered a small forest of she-oak, where, in a bush of rushes, we found a natives' well, about a foot broad and three feet deep. The water was excellent, and the spring was sufficiently strong to enable us to draw, during the day, about fifty gallons for our horses. We proceeded late in the afternoon through a well-grassed forest of she-oak and honeysuckle for seven miles; the limestone appearing now and then through the surface as usual.

Tuesday, 30th.—This forest soon terminated, when we passed through sandy flats of the same character as those previously passed, bounded on the western side by a reedy marsh covered with good water, but so shallow as to permit us to continue our course straight through it. On the border of this marsh the grass is very good for stock in transit. For several miles we crossed a heathy moor, when we again entered a beautiful well-grassed forest, lightly timbered with she-oak and honeysuckle, about four miles broad, which reminded us of the Wannon country. The soil was a black loam upon limestone; the rock obtruding in places. This portion is well adapted for agricultural purposes, the geranium and wallen growing most luxuriantly in spots where a tree had been burnt. In this forest we found a well in the limestone rock, by which we encamped, the rich feed for our horses tempting us to remain, having only accomplished seventeen miles.

Wednesday, 31st.—Our course, which had hitherto been W.N. W., was now altered to N.W. Immediately after starting we entered upon a marshy plain, which continued for nine miles. There were a few very large tea-trees on the plain, and the soil was so soft that we were obliged to lead our horses, and for the last two miles through water about half-a foot in depth. We now entered a wretched sandy scrub of stunted eucalyptus bushes and grass-trees, which continued for four miles, when again a small belt of she-oak trees with good grass succeeded. After feeding our horses and leaving the forest, we entered upon a marsh, which extended as far as the eye could reach in a north-easterly direction, but we crossed in about four miles, and passing through a small forest, we descried, at the distance of a mile, the lake discovered by Mr. Bonney in March last, and named by him Lake Hawdon. On approaching the lake we fell upon Mr. Bonney's track, and saw where he had dug one of his wells; but at this season water was abundant in all directions. Kangaroos and emus were also abundant. We surprised three black women digging for roots, who ran screaming into the forest, where we heard the men answering their cries, but they were evidently too much alarmed to hold any communication. From the lake the swamp extends to the north-east, and we attempted to cross it; but after proceeding nearly three miles, we were obliged to return, as our horses were plunging up to the middle, and skirt the southern edge towards a small forest, where we again encamped by a native well.

Thursday, August 1st.—Continued our course this morning, passing alternately over a thickly-timbered forest of she-oak and sandy land, and marshes, which we were frequently compelled to outflank. The remainder of our day's journey was over plains evidently at times under water; and from the dams made by the natives, it appears that they are in the habit of catching fish here in certain seasons. We encamped for the night by a well of brackish water, after a stage of twenty miles.

Friday, 2nd.—We passed over a boggy country, and entered into a narrow belt of she-oak forest, bordering the coast within 300 yards of the sea-shore. We proceeded along the coast for fifty miles. The land immediately on the shore was high sandhills, bordered by a narrow grassy belt of she-oak forest; then a plain about a mile wide; and to the eastward of the plain, a chain of lakes, as we afterwards ascertained, connected with Lake Alexandrina. Beyond the lakes was a country extending as far as the eye could reach of sand hillocks. These getting more precipitous, we crossed a narrow pass between two lakes, and proceeded up the eastern side, the country being still of a barren description. Towards the eastward I rode about ten miles inland, when I observed another chain of lakes extending to the south-east, parallel to these nearer the coast we had been skirting. I met with an old native, and, as we were both unarmed, we soon became friends. He told me that the waters of these lakes were salt. On overtaking the party, we proceeded to the fresh water stream, discovered by the men left by Mr. Bonney on his last expedition, after he had gone forward to Lake Alexandrina. This stream rises from underneath a mass of limestone. The water is somewhat brackish; the stream is sufficient to turn a mill; but, after running for half a mile, it enters the lake. In this part of the lake, which is perfectly salt, we observed about half a foot of rise in the tide.

Tuesday, 6th.—During the previous night we heard the swans returning from the eastward, and in the morning we perceived large flocks of crows coming from the same direction; indications of a fresh water lake existing, at no great distance, in that direction. This morning we left the party, and proceeded N.N.W. twenty-five miles, over a perfectly sandy desert, and encamped in the evening, with no food or water for the horses. The following day the country for the same distance was precisely of the same character, when, towards the evening, we entered a forest of she-oak, bounding the main southern arm of Lake Alexandrina. Here we found splendid food for our horses, that had fasted for the last forty-eight hours. Next morning we proceeded four miles over a very pretty country bordering the lake, the rich alluvial flats extending from the lake for from half a mile to a mile. The waters of the lake were slightly brackish, but fit for use; and excellent water was found at the well at which we halted. We remained on this beautiful spot for this and the following day.

Thursday, 8th.—After crossing a belt of sandy country for a distance of twelve miles, which separates the south from the north arm of the lake, we struck the borders of the lake, here again surrounded with rich alluvial soil, destitute of timber, and fit for the plough. In the evening we encamped at the spot where the River Murray empties itself into the lake; and next morning we crossed the liver by a boat which was stationed there. The river is here 170 yards wide, fresh and very deep. On either bank the beds of reeds extend in width about the distance of a mile. The limestone rocks continue here, and it appears that the whole country from the Glenelg to this point of the Murray is one bed of limestone, alternately covered with sand, swamp, and strips of alluvial deposit, covered with grass and she-oak. In the whole distance, with the exception of the streamlet we have mentioned, there is not a single course, although water could anywhere be found by sinking wells. I think it probable that, from the appearance of the country inland, and more to the eastward, fresh water lakes will be found.

Three days afterwards we reached Adelaide, through the Mount Barker country, already too well known to need description, having performed a pleasant journey in perfect safety from Melbourne within a month.

NO NECESSITY FOR THE FARMER IN AUSTRALIA FELIX.

Is the land revenue to become extinct; or does the government intend to make landed property of any value; that which it has sold already, or may wish to sell?

Many causes have been ostensibly put forward to account for the public distress in the colony of Australia Felix. Speculation is said to have done much: this is the great and general charge. One intelligent writer mentions the disgust of British capitalists: whilst our resident judge from the bench censures public officers for countenancing, by their own conduct, the speculative mania, and thereby adding to the evil of a vicious state of things. Tampering with the land-sale regulations is another cause; and there yet are other and greater. That we are governed by people who reside at a distance; who, if they know anything of our public condition and interests, have palpably disregarded them; is one fatal and lamentable circumstance. Could speculation to any injurious extent ever have existed had Sir George Gipps clearly foreseen and done his duty? Certainly not. Land was so dribbled out by our local government as to raise its value extraordinarily; to buy and sell it was a thriving and lucrative trade; it was no speculation; no lottery; any person seemed wofully deficient in the organ of acquisitiveness who neglected to embark in it. To purchase and re-sell land was the well-known highway to sudden and incalculable wealth, in Australia Felix. Yet the Sydney government, by its apathy or good-will, fostered this forestalling of the future, this unsafe and precocious condition of the province.

Looking back into the history of the elder settled portion of New South Wales, and of Tasmania, we find that their advancement in wealth and general prosperity, was, as it ought to be, the work of years, steady, healthful, and progressive. There might be fluctuations, there are in all newly settled countries, seasons of scarcity and of abundance, good and bad times; still there was progress, accumulation of wealth, in the main.

Wealth there was, great prosperity, and the rumour of it travelled through all lands. Nothing was more commonly talked of in England than the extraordinary opulence of the people of the old district of this new portion of the globe.

Then unfortunately our splendid region of the Australasian continent became known and notorious. Capitalists from a distance flocked in, Colonial and British, and the result is before us.

Possessing a most delicious climate, and a soil not to be despised, with a range of glorious pasturage almost unlimited; most abundantly furnished by nature and Providence with good, and the means of it; how different under wise, liberal, and efficient management had been its history!

As it is, it has in a great measure proved the grave of capital, Colonial and British. Sound it is at the heart nevertheless; a good land and a desirable; unfortunate only in its maltreated infancy; still luminous through clouds of evil; and full of intimations of a brilliant future destiny.

Still we feel that "sufficient for the day is the evil thereof:" though our calamities are temporary, they are grievous.

Did Sir George Gipps, at the time land was selling in 1840 for such enormous sums, denounce it as a mania? He either thought that state of Port Phillip public temperament of mind sane and healthful, or why did he calculate, why did he build upon its continuance, why assure the home-government of his ability to furnish from the future land-fund such vast sums for immigration purposes; so as to earn a reprimand from it for delusion? It is evident he had himself been deluded, and either lacked the acumen to discern the real cause, or the honest boldness ingenuously to confess it.

It is easy to talk about causes, and to willingly forget or overlook the fatal part he had in them, and to make his present knowledge and experience appear to have been his in the past; whereas, unluckily, the facts will not bear him out. Hear his Excellency a little on this subject in his Legislative Council, Tuesday, May 10th, 1842:—

"It is difficult to account precisely for the mama of speculation, which at times affects all trading communities; but the chief exciting cause of it in New South Wales was, I have no doubt, that for several years preceding 1840, capital was poured into the colony faster than, for want of labour, it could be safely employed, and that consequently, it passed, by some means or other, into the hands of persons willing to engage in hazardous speculations, or to make investments which could not for many years yield an adequate return. This fatal facility of obtaining borrowed money was greatly increased by the establishment of new banking companies, with large capitals (some of them furnished from England), which could only be employed in the discounting of bills. The abundance of money thus created, caused a rapid rise to take place in almost every species of colonial property; and in the delusive hope that this rise would continue to be a progressive one, numbers were led to their ruin."

Sir George himself thought it would be a progressive one. If he thought otherwise, he was fatally negligent of the best interests of the community under his charge; when he could have stopped the mania at once, in its very first stage, by pointing out to the land monopolists the ample means possessed by himself for making that kind of property cheap enough. He only needed to have shown a disposition to check any kind of feverish longing in that way, and the utmost cautiousness would have followed, and serenity to the tone of the money-pulse. But to have referred the land merchants to anything like a map of unsold crown lands: to have impressed upon their minds, however faintly, the boundlessness of the saleable acres, would have proved zero to the summer jollity of the land revenue.

Sir George wished to realise as large a sum as possible from the crown lands, and Lord John Russell a still larger. His Excellency evinced the will to keep pace with the public excitement, and to get as much for the public lands as they would bring; never for a moment considering that he was fostering a condition of things dangerous to the equable advancement and prosperity of the colony, and which has since been followed by so grievous a re-action—a re-action caused by stimulating the public appetite, and overstraining the monied capability of the community.

Then the home government had El Dorado utilitarian dreams of still larger masses of gold to be worked out of the land revenue; dreams from which it awoke, aware that the ruin of a province, the united work of its governments, home and local, was a poor basis for the confidence of future capitalists, a poor incentive to it; and not exactly the condition of things out of which healthful and ample land funds are to be realised.

The discovery of Australia Felix opened a large field for speculation; the dribbling manner in which it was sold created the appetite (mania, if you please); the banks aided the rage by multiplying money, the means for purchase; Sir George allowed plenty of time betwixt the sales for the land hunger to grow, it was so delightful to be able to send large sums to England! then Lord John Russell ruined all. By making land cheap in the colony he hoped it would sell immensely; by enlarging the frog to the size of the ox, it burst; inordinate desires to raise outrageous land revenues—to be enabled thereby to rid the old country of its supernumerary people, proved at once an extinguisher to the former settlers, to colonists generally, and to the land-fund equally.

What is the condition of our agricultural people? Miserably ruinous. Not only have they to compete with the penal colonies; with those privileged communities who outstrip them, having cheaper labour; there is a privileged class in our own colony also, with whom it is less possible to compete. The cost of marine transmission is a partial protection against the former, but against the latter there is none. I allude to the cultivators of squatting stations. As though the farmer's other disadvantages were not in themselves sufficient, it was reserved for our local government, in its wisdom, to permit, at their very doors, this additional enormity.

For instance, before me, and m clear prospect, are two locations: one of them, forty acres, is let* for 80l. per annum, having only 220 yards of river frontage; consequently, possessing only a few acres of alluvial soil. The other, only divided from it by the river, has several miles of such frontage, abundance of the richest cultivable soil, with sufficient back-run for herds of cattle, for sheep, &c.; and for this the squatter pays 10l. per annum. The first location, purchased from the crown for 440l, furnished that sum for immigration purposes; the other has furnished nothing, yet participates in the advantage of labour thus procured, equally. Thus the purchaser of land is made instrumental in his own ruin.

It will be evident how unjust is the present system; and how next to worthless, how unletable, and unsaleable, landed property must be.

Instead of fresh locations being brought into cultivation, much that is already so must relapse into the wilderness, whilst the richest portions of the wilderness can be cultivated so unreservedly and so cheap.

If it was intended by Lord John Russell, and by Sir George Gipps following in his track, to betray and ruin all who, putting faith in them, had made investments in colonial land —and the land fund also, they have acted well to that end.

It was once expected by the landed proprietor and the farmer, that if the squatters were permitted to raise farm produce otherwise than for their own consumption, they would be placed on a more rational equality with the agricultural community generally by a higher rental. Notice was given to them to that effect —then again abandoned, and the old, unequal, and unjust system is continued.

In England, how many and various are the sources of profit to the farmer. Here sheep and cattle, there most lucrative, belong to other departments. Nay, indeed, what is there that cannot be more cheaply raised by the squatter?

The farmer is, thanks to our Local Legislators, a kind of creature for whom there is no Australian necessity!

MERRY MISERIES.

The following song, written by a gentleman of Maitland, and sung in Australia with abundant mirth, is so real a history, if not of Billy Barlow, of many a wiser man than he is represented to be, that its reprint in England will explain much of the juggling played off on newly arrived emigrants by the older colonists—men, considered sensible in England, having too frequently fallen into the same trap.

BILLY BARLOW IN AUSTRALIA.

When I was at home I was down on my luck,
And I yearnt a poor living by drawing a truck;
But old aunt died and left me a thousand—"Oh, oh,
I'll start on my travels," said Billy Barlow.
Oh dear, lackaday, oh;
So off to Australia came Billy Barlow.

When to Sydney I got, there a merchant I met,
Who said he could, teach me a fortune to get;
He'd cattle and sheep past the colony's bounds,
Which he sold with the station for my thousand pounds.
Oh dear, lackaday, oh,
He gammon'd the cash out of Billy Barlow.

When the bargain was struck, and the money was paid,
He said, "My dear fellow, your fortune is made;
I can furnish supplies for the station, you know,
And your bill is sufficient, good Mr. Barlow."
Oh dear, lackaday, oh,
A gentleman settler was Billy Barlow.

So I got my supplies, and I gave him my bill,
And for New England started, my pockets to fill;
But by bushrangers met, with my traps they made free,
Took my horse, and left Billy bailed to a tree.
Oh dear, lackaday, oh,
I shall die of starvation, thought Billy Barlow.

At last I got loose, and I walked on my way;
A constable came up, and to me did say,

"Are you free?" Says I, "Yes, to be sure, don't you know?"
And I handed my card, "Mr. William Barlow."
Oh dear, lackaday, oh,
He said, "That's all gammon," to Billy Barlow.

Then he put on the handcuffs, and brought me away
Right back down to Maitland, before Mr. Day;
When I said I was free, why the J. P. replied,
"I must send you down to be i-dentified."
Oh dear, lackaday, oh,
So to Sydney once more went poor Billy Barlow.

They at last let me go, and I then did repair
For my station once more, and at length I got there;
But a few days before, the blacks, you must know,
Had spear'd all the cattle of Billy Barlow.
Oh dear, lackaday, oh,
It's a beautiful country! said Billy Barlow.

And for nine months before no rain there had been,
So the devil a blade of grass could be seen;
And one-third of my wethers the scab they had got,
And the other two-thirds had just died of the rot.
Oh dear, lackaday, oh,
I shall soon be a settler, said Billy Barlow.

And the matter to mend, now my bill was near due,
So I wrote to my friend, and just asked to renew;
He replied he was sorry he couldn't, because
The bill had pass'd into Tom Burdekin's claws.
Oh dear, lackaday, oh,
But perhaps he 'll renew it, said Billy Barlow.

I applied; to renew he was quite content,
If secured, and allowed just 300 per cent.;
But as I couldn't do it, Barr, Rodgers, & Co.
Soon sent up a summons for Billy Barlow.
Oh dear, lackaday, oh,
They soon settled the business of Billy Barlow.

For a month or six weeks I stewed over my loss,
And a tall man rode up one day on a black horse;
He asked, "Don't you know me? "I answered him, "No."
"Why," says he, "my name's Kinsmill; how are you, Barlow?"
Oh dear, lackaday, oh,
He'd got a fi. fa. for poor Billy Barlow.

What I'd left of my sheep, and my traps, he did seize,
And he said, "They won't pay all the costs and my fees;"

Then he sold off the lot, and I'm sure 'twas a sin,
At sixpence a head, and the station given in.
Oh dear, lackaday, oh,
I'll go back to England, said Billy Barlow.

ENCORE VERSES.

My sheep being sold, and my money all gone,
Oh, I wandered about then quite sad and forlorn:
How I managed to live it would shock you to know,
And as thin as a lath got poor Billy Barlow.
Oh dear, lackaday, oh,
Quite down on his luck was poor Billy Barlow.

And in a few weeks more, the sheriff, you see,
Sent the tall man on horseback once more unto me,
Having got all he could by the writ of fi. fa.,
By way of a change he'd brought up a ca. sa.
Oh dear, lackaday, oh,
He seized on the body of Billy Barlow.

He took me to Sydney, and there they did lock
Poor unfortunate Billy fast "under the clock;"
And to get myself out I was forced, you must know,
The schedule to file of poor Billy Barlow.
Oh dear, lackaday, oh,
In the list of insolvents was Billy Barlow.

Then once more I got free, but in poverty's toil:
I've no "cattle for salting," no "sheep for to boil;"
I can't get a job—tho' to any I'd stoop,
If 'twas only the making of "portable soup."
Oh dear, lackaday, oh,
Pray give some employment to Billy Barlow.

SEPARATION OF NEW SOUTH WALES AND AUSTRALIA FELIX.

The alliance of Australia Felix with New South Wales, is its one immitigable curse. Representatives have been sent to the Legislative Council at Sydney, but its resident representatives have declined.

The men most fit for the office must sacrifice their own interests to the public, by a 600 miles'-absenteeism. On this subject whilst in the colony, feeling its great importance, I wrote the following, which appeared in the Port Phillip Patriot the day of my departure.

A FEW WORDS ON THE SEPARATION QUESTION.

The relative positions of Sydney and Port Phillip, and the underling situation of the latter, its dependent and prostrate condition, has often brought to my recollection the following incidents.

I was walking with a literary friend in the delicious meadows near Lenton, in the neighbourhood of Nottingham, when our attention was suddenly drawn by two lads in a quarrelsome attitude, to themselves personally—the elder of whom was maltreating the younger. My companion assailed the assailant and separated them, reproving the strong for his ill-usage of the weak. The aggressor was indignant—he eyed the mediator with a look of malignity, telling him not very respectfully "to mind his own business—that he had a right to do what he was doing—for," said he, "he is my own brother."

The light of the sun of England must shine upon Port Phillip by reflection only: it must still be benighted: its dispenser of regal favour must still be Sydney. The blessings of direct fostering influence must not be felt by us. We must be humiliated by the position of imbecility and guardianship. Dislike to England will be the result, Colonial alienation, and a growing inveteracy betwixt Sydney and Port Phillip. Van Diemen's Land was once, alas, a New South Wales dependency!

But for our other incident.

A generous Roman Catholic baronet residing in Derbyshire had a steward of a stern disposition, a kind of Egyptian taskmaster, who expected the tenantry under him "to make the same tale of bricks without straw." Many of the tenantry suffered, yet none dared to go to so great a personage as the steward's master with their complaints. Good or bad seasons, crop or no crop, what the steward expected was, the rent. One farmer had tried repeatedly to gain a little time, but gained nothing; he must, and did pay. Nor would the steward do any repairs on the farm, although they were urgently needed. He was resolved to go to Sir Roger, and to him he went. He was kindly received—his petition granted at once: "The steward should have immediate orders to do what he wanted." The knight called for something to drink; and the jolly farmer was soon very much at home, elated with success and brimming cups. Looking round the room, he asked familiarly—"What do you call that, Sir Roger?" "That is an image of the blessed Virgin." "And that other?" "All the other ornamental figures are representations of saints." "Ha, ha," said John Homespun with a significant 'shake of the head, "I'm afraid, Sir Roger, you worship them baubles." "Nay, my good man, they are only to remind us of serious duties, which we are apt to forget." "Well, if you do worship them, you are a good landlord for all that—only let me tell you, and I hope you '11 pardon my freedom—they can do you no good, Sir Roger—it's of no use praying to them. Look you now, it's just like my case; I've been to the steward times and times, and begged and prayed all to no purpose—I got tired of praying to saints, and here I came —Go to Jesus Christ, Sir Roger, and he'll do your business at once!"

Our chief intercourse with Sydney is by sea, the immense plains, the great distance, and its occasional barrenness, are sufficient barriers betwixt the two, were there no individual interests —were there no radical difference betwixt bond and free, penal and voluntary colonies, to render any imaginary line of division unnecessary. Heart and soul, the colonies of Sydney and Australia Felix are distinct. Yet the head-gaoler of the great Australian Penitentiary manages Port Phillip as a distant farm.

Sydney, it seems, John Bull's elder son, has a larger pocket, and larger heart than Phillip—a wiser head doubtless is a better manager, and on that account the moneys of both are entrusted to his keeping. I know not what crime Phillip has committed, or indiscretion, or what heritable incapacity renders him unable to manage his own matters. I only wish until he "is older grown, and bolder grown," that Sydney were not subject to such obstinate fits of deafness on that ear which always happens to be turned towards him. The youngster is, however, not deficient in lungs, he has a powerful voice if he has no brains, and succeeds at times by the help of gesticulations in making Sydney guess what he would be at: but the Colonial-receivingpocket-general has so large and impracticable a button, that after some fumbling and sundry pauses, Sydney assures Phillip that he is extremely sorry, but that to grant his request is impossible —"he has no power!"

Van Diemen's Land, Western Australia, South Australia, Sydney or the Middle District, are all governed directly from England—all but Australia Felix, how happy! All have their resident Governors—and we have a mockery—and to make the mockery more bitter, the farce of representation in the Sydney Legislative Council.

It is probable that were the mother country more "at ease in her possessions," less harassed by internal distractions—Welsh riots—Scotch ecclesiastical differences, and the perpetual thunders at her very threshold of Irish repeal agitation, that she would be more at leisure to listen to our wrongs, and less disinclined to redress them. And what indeed is it that we seek? Not that she should accord us pecuniary help, as she has done with regard to a sister colony. We ask not for 150,000l. as a loan, afterwards to accept it as a boon from her treasury. We seek that our adopted country may be placed on the same footing—maybe made equal with her other colonial dependencies. We seek redress and protection from aggression and spoliation. We seek in the open space, in the free air of our land room for the expansion of our energies. We would take advantage of, and turn to the best account, our fortunate and commanding maritime position; we would develop to the utmost our many and extraordinary capabilities, pastoral, agricultural, and commercial!

Which of the colonies could then compete with us?

And, indeed, what would England lose by performing this act of justice and mercy towards Australia Felix? Not surely our filial regard, and that may be worth cultivating, for, though not a large we are most assuredly an attached and loyal community! One thing is certain—all our past colonial experience tends to one point, all the disasters which have assailed us—all the neglect which we have endured—all the difficulties through which we have struggled, impel us to one aim—in fact, all our rational expectations of future unshackled, unimpeded prosperity centre in three words—Separation from Sydney!

Melbourne, 1844.

HOMER AND HORACE READ AND ENJOYED BY A SHEPHERD IN AUSTRALIA.

A COLONIAL WONDER.

There are yet persons so little versant in the present order of things in this work-a-day world, as to consider, that if a man is "a scholar," he must also have a right to that other honourable addition—"a gentleman,"—taking the term gentleman in its ordinary acceptation: a gentleman and scholar, a man tolerably well-to-do in the world, and well educated. It does not however follow, as a natural consequence, that a person who has acquired a perfect knowledge of many languages, to say nothing of his natural capacity, or his other acquirements in science or art, it cannot be legitimately premised that such person has been either rich, or "at ease in his possessions," or allied to or descended from any of the rich or great people of the earth.

Who is so dull as never to have heard the names of those poor rich men, Burns, Bloomfield, and Clare?—Not to know them argues little knowledge of what passes in the literary world. It is in fact too late now to iterate the truism that the lower, nay, lowest order of society, has enriched the world with poets, sculptors, and painters, masters in their art—men educated in the lap of adversity, who, from their childhood upwards have been made familiarly conversant with the kicks and cuffs of fortune—beings inherently inhaling

"The keen but wholesome air of poverty,
And drinking at the well of homely life."

Wilson, the Scottish author of that facetious ballad, "Wattie and Meg," the great American ornithologist, was a poor weaver of Paisley; Burns was a ploughman; Bloomfield a farmer's boy. Who is there at all a reader of poetry, that has not heard of the "Queen's Wake," "Mador of the Moor," and "Queen Hynde?"—the wonderful productions of a Scottish poet,—not marvellous, because that when Allan Cunningham, himself a poet of humble life, paid him a visit, he found him a ragged and barefooted lad, tending the sheep of Mr. Harkness, of Queensbury Hill. No! wonderful alone for their extraordinary development of kingly genius. The Ettrick Shepherd, their author, was, like Shakspeare and Scott, one of nature's intellectual alchemists, turning by virtue of his inward illumination

"The meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold."

From the days of Adam the gardener in Paradise to our own, there have been some remarkable men sprung from humble life. Smith and Clarke, his namesakes, not the least of them: and in the present day, in my own knowledge, there is an old Northumberland drover, whose son, a village pedagogue, has added to his store of other learning, seven languages. Still this Adam Little is less than little compared with the recently famous American devourer of languages, Blihu Burritt—a man who would have been a valuable acquisition as an interpreter at Babel.

I see in the first number of the Port Phillip Magazine that some shepherd or hut-keeper is accused of having in his bushdwelling the works of Homer, &c. This, the writer seems to think a very strange affair—as though the possessor or enjoyer of such works was out of his proper element, or situated there by a combination of circumstances unsought for on his part. Now, I should think, that if any thoughtful or meditative personage were to select his own vocation, as most natural to his mind or habits, it would be hut-keeping or shepherding.

Nay, furthermore, we should scarcely be surprised at a shepherd of all people producing something admirable in this way as an emanation of his own genius—like Moses keeping the sheep of Jethro, his father-in-law, in the land of Midian, and composing the Book of Job by way of amusement. It is very possible that the world is indebted to the solitariness and tranquillity of the pastoral life for a considerable portion of its most valuable imaginatory literature. It is more than probable that many men have been, in towns especially, so occupied by business and pleasure, so thoroughly absorbed by the constantly recurring cares, so clogged by trammels of habit, as never to have had leisure to withdraw themselves from the outward to the inward world of mind; nor have ever made the discovery that the material of their mental faculties was of more than ordinary quality. This we fancy can never happen to the shepherd. Shepherds indeed can produce persons of their ancient and honourable house of some note: David will be allowed a little merit as author of the Psalms—the keeper of "those few sheep in the wilderness." The Chaldean shepherds, the wise men of the East, knew something of astronomy; and last, not least, one whom we have before mentioned in that simple vocation, has astonished the world with some productions "that it will not willingly let die."

Allan Cunningham, in a most beautiful lyrical poem, says, that

"The husbandman
Walks hand in hand with God."

Moreover, as Cowper declares "God made the country," we should be well aware that there will be found some of his noblest children in it—men of erect spirits, full of the truest inspiration, familiar with whatever lives and moves in the souls of their fellow men, nor alone conversant with the inward powers and graces of the generative spirit—but gathering to themselves the glory of the visible universe, living in the light of suns and stars, and adorning themselves with the gems and flowers of the earth.

Away, then, with the nonsense of soul and situation; away with all boundary lines and shackles; what has the free human soul to do with the ordinary modes and demarcations of conventional society! A king and a beggar may both of them read the works of Cervantes or Shakspeare, very properly both of them, but the quantum of instruction or enjoyment will depend on the capacity and mood of mind in each of them, and it may so happen that the beggar may have the advantage. It is not the situation, but the soul, which makes us what we are. The question is, what are our capabilities? what is our industry? Are we all naturally alike? There are who assert as much! that all souls have the same intellectual dimensions, only modified by variety of circumstances, education, &c.; phrenology, in which I have not myself entire faith, with these people is nothing. Our bodily organisation has, in their opinion, no effect on our mental canacity.

Whilst I see every variety of beauty and gracefulness in trees, plants and flowers; endless variety in the songs of birds, both in compass of voice and richness of modulation; whilst every human countenance varies in form and expression — I must entertain another opinion. There is a difference in everything external in form and quality; and it would be little short of a miracle were the spiritual capacity, the intellectual faculties alike in all men. That few are what they might be, is a fact: we neglect our,own powers, or are too soon self-satisfied. Yet, with the greatest application, Goldsmith could never have written Macbeth or Hamlet; nor could Shakspeare have composed the Vicar of Wakefield; still both of them are poets—both dramatic writers, first-rate in their own departments. Nature has a more wonderful staff than Prospero; the beings of her creation vary more widely than Ariel and Caliban.

Thanks unto Nature! Thanks to the one illimitable and eternal Spirit—the fountain of all order and variety, for the diversity of mental endowments — for the endless flow and variety of thought—for the heavenly revelation upon earth of intellectual beauty, not alone vouchsafed to the rich or powerful, unto kings or to princes, but spread banquetwise before all men. Moses and David, ages ago, and Homer and Horace, sang admirably, that the weavers and shepherds of their day and generation might not lack their delight!

TIMIDITY OF BRITISH CAPITALISTS ON ARRIVING IN THE COLONY.

Railroads are carried safely across the deepest bogs and marshes; but they swallow up a great deal of material before there is anything like solidity of surface. The Port Phillipians are somewhat weary of casting in; they think there is no bottom to our Slough of Despond. Some capitalists from the mothercountry, too, like Faint-Heart, after half-circumnavigating the globe, seeing how many are stuck fast in the middle, and some get out again terribly bemired and dispirited, have set their faces steadfastly again towards England; and not without reason, for the vested property of the colony is not safe: there is extreme caution amongst the monied people; there has been a lesson and a warning written up, like that on the Babylonian wall, by the viewless hand. Who, until stability is in some measure given to colonial property, will again venture their capital in it? Whilst the home government, like the moon, acts upon the sea of our prosperity, there will be extraordinary ebbs and flows. Whilst Lord John Russell, Lord Stanley, and the Board of Colonial Commissioners, keep tampering with the Land Sale Regulations, "colonial property will continue at sufficiently low prices." There needs no further evidence of this than two recent land sales—one at Melbourne, the other at Twofold Bay—one allotment only being sold on each occasion. The writer in a Sydney paper, who gives an account of the land sale at Twofold Bay, exclaims against one pound per acre as too much for bush land— as quite a prohibition. It may be so. Still, if not worth that, it is worth nothing, and had better remain unsold. All that the colonies require,is to be protected against continual alterations in the price.

The home government—

"turns an easy wheel
That sets sharp racks at work to pinch and peel."

Is the effect of the "Ruination Bill" worn off? No! it will not soon be forgotten that when speculation was at its height in Port Phillip, when land was sold at 42l, per acre, only two miles from Melbourne, that the Governor of New South Wales received instructions from the home authorities to sell the adjoining allotments for one pound per acre! Such instructions were not carried into effect. No; but they had their effect. Criminals under sentence of death, may be respited—the sentence may hang over them—and they may die of apprehension before the arrival of a reprieve. Such events are upon record. No person could return to the land banquet with a safe appetite, whose knees had smitten together at Lord John Russell's "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin." We, as a colony, were weighed in the political scales, and found wanting—our prosperity was at its height —our glory was at an end—and we must go into captivity to bankruptcy and ruin! After such a volcanic explosion, the Port Phillipians were not likely to tread the same ground again without apprehension.

Really the changes have been so extraordinary since I have resided in the colony, that not a few years only seem to have passed over, but an age. Alas, for the honest, industrious man of forward-looking mind! the man "of thankful yesterdays and confident to-morrows;" who knew not that the emblem of fortune is a wheel; who had faith in governments, and who doubted not but wisdom and justice made their nests in high places! He now finds that the dawn was too gorgeous to sober down steadily into the homely, healthful light of the working day. In the convulsion of property he was tossed up, and shook bare into the world. Now all is over, and calm again; with the bricks of his ruin, other men have made themselves peaceful and comfortable dwellings.

How multifarious and complex are the wheels of civil polity! The oppressed, whom the machinery pinches, cry aloud—the National Director touches a small spring, and whilst the sufferers are considering whether they are eased or not—what tears, and groans, and wrathful menacings arise in other quarters, from those whom that slight touch has ruinously affected!

How comprehensive in intellect—how wise the head—how good the heart—how tower-like in justice and fortitude—ought that man to be who weighs in the hollow of his hand the present good and evil, and the future destinies of millions of his kind! A good statesman, the sovereign's sovereign, may not inaptly be compared to the oak. And, indeed—

What a grand and interesting tree is the British oak! What compass, what massiveness, and strength of hole. What widespreading and heavenward-ascending of multitudinous branches. How cool and deep, and refreshing its immensity of shadow. How stately in the calm, surrounded and endowed with the complacency of ages. How glorious in the storm, its gigantic arms flinging from it the winds, as a lion keeps at bay his assailants. There is ease in its flexibility, gracefulness in its motions, and beauty in its tranquillity. It is the representative of departed eras: of freedom it is the bulwark. There is grandeur in its aspect and character; rest in its stateliness; sincerity and confidence in the sobriety of its hues; solace and shelter in its umbrageousness and strength; and its voice is the voice of power. When we think of manliness, we think of the British oak. When our souls are filled with the irresistible force and beauty of truth, and of the durability of virtue, our thoughts wander not far for a similitude of worth and continuance—they go to the British oak; for as the whole earth, so is it; it is majestic and venerable; its benefits extend from shore to shore, and the uttermost parts of the ocean acknowledge the sceptre of its sovereignty.

Like it are some of the time-honoured families of our aristocracy: and none more so than the house of Russell. Milton, Russell, and Hampden, are only other names for freedom and magnanimity; for the poetry of actual life, of the heart and the imagination.

Lord William Russell—what a name is that! Home and country—life and death—whatever there is grand and generous in principle, in patriotism—all that is holy in domestic life— felicitous in friendship or fortune—lofty in character, or heroic in action—and what is more—far more—great in suffering—in death—all start up before us at the mention of his name!

And Lady Rachel Russell—love, admiration, and tears, are her perpetual monument!

England owes them much: for brilliant deeds in high stations, inestimable gems of constancy and endurance in the conspicuous setting of martyrdom, fix themselves deep in the national heart, and diffuse themselves through the national character.

England owes them much: but I am disposed to think that, to one of their living representatives, these colonies are but little indebted. Still it is not impossible that the past may be in some measure redeemed, and Lord John Russell may live to do us yet essential service; and most assuredly the colonial past demands not a little at his hands.

A MIGRATORY CHARACTER.

We have a class of persons in Australia that seem to be the most enviable of mankind. Happiness in them appears to be a fixed and central principle, undisturbed by any breath of outward circumstances, without ebbs or flows, bounds or fluctuations. Only contemplate for a moment the situation of a person destitute of money, without a home, friend, or kindred, out of employment, moving about the world unshackled by any apparent connection with it; and there are such persons in this hemisphere who have been expelled from the other. I have known many such, but one particularly arrested my attention. How forlorn— how utterly wretched we must fancy him! Pooh! he belongs to our class of imperturbably happy persons. Has he nerves? has he sensibility? If he has? they occasion him no uneasiness. For many a year he has done nothing that can be termed work. The quietness of his personal demeanour, the habitual placidity of his countenance, never forsake him. His short pipe is the constant companion of his wanderings; the soother or sweetener of his solitude it is not; for being happy in himself, he is ever at home; lonely he is not, needs no consolation. Ease is his natural element; the bush is his world; waking or sleeping, his breath is tranquillity. Of all the world's holiday vagabonds he is the prince. He one day condescended to pay us a visit, and I shall never forget it. A murmurous sound as of a bee came to us from a distance; a soft blue wreath of smoke revealed its whereabout, and a sauntering, listless-looking fellow emerged from among the old gum-trees into sight. Singing in a quiet under-tone he came right on towards the cottage, entered it, and without question or salutation took his seat by the fire. I eyed him for some time with a questioning look, but there was no answer on his lips or in his countenance. Looking at me steadfastly for a moment, he then

"Fell to such perusal of the place as he would draw it."

After a long silence he took his pipe from his mouth, and I turned my eyes full upon him, expecting now for a certainty he meant to declare his purpose. "He is dumb," said I to myself, as he looked still about him, carelessly refilled his pipe and resumed smoking. His extraordinary taciturnity and quite-at-homeness amused me not a little. I should earlier have asked him those blunt questions—"Who he was?" and "What he wanted?" Still as there was something new and mysterious in the guest, I passingly inquired "Whence he came?" "From the last station," was the ready reply. And "Where was he going?" "To the next," said he. He came from the last station, and was going to the next. Could anything be more natural, more independent? He observed that if food was set before him he ate it; or drink, he drank it; or tobacco, he smoked it. He would also have complied with St. Paul's command, "asking no questions." A long silence ensued, during which time I naturally busied my mind with thoughts of the old knights errant—Sir Tristrem, Sir Gawain, and Launcelot du Lake, those redoubted lords of nature and necessity, who passed months and months in forests and deserts, eating only occasionally, and to whose existence regular meals were not absolutely necessary; for to that race of worthies our hero must belong, as he did not trouble himself to ask for anything. I felt quite lessened in my own good opinion by the reflection, that I must be so much of a human animal as of a necessity to take three meals a day—must pay a daily quit-rent of regular eating and drinking, or throw up the lease of life. I was dissatisfied with our best poets for giving us such arbitrary images of man's mortal condition. Crabbe, for instance, when he says of some one that

"He wanders now
Far as the dinners of the day allow."

Our guest—I did not presume to offer him anything—at length departed as he came, without ceremony and in silence, only traceable by the smoke of his pipe and the same happy murmurous under-song. "Where is he now?" I often ask myself. Wordsworth's "Stepping Westward" used to seem to me the very soul of free wandering, of unlimited progression; but since this novel visitation, that has been to me positive and circumscribed. This denizen of the Australian wild came from the last station, and was going to the next; east, west, north, or south, all were the same to him; he was not bound arbitrarily to any one point of the compass. He was free as a bird. If not quite so beautiful and pure a kind of existence as the lilies which "toiled not, neither did they spin," like them he toiled not. He entered freely the house of the settler, or the miam of the savage; both were alike to him, if there was a fire where to light his pipe. Perhaps after crossing the Goulburn, the Hume, and Murrambidgee, he is at Yass or Sydney; or stepping northward, may be looking into some sandy Sahara of the interior; or westward, may have glanced at Portland Bay, smiled upon Port Fairy, and having crossed the Glenelg and the Murray, is at Adelaide. There can be little doubt that he was the first, except the natives, to traverse that Australian paradise, miscalled Gipps' Land, which had for so long a time carefully wrapped itself from sheep-run-seeking observation, flanking itself with mountains, moating itself with marshes, and mistifying itself in scrubbs; yes, it must have revealed itself to our wanderer like some land of Arabian enchantment; but nobody thought of asking him of such land, and its discovery remained to be bruited through the world by Count Streleski. What a world of knowledge he must have of fine unlocated cattle and sheep-pastures! O, but what a find would some years-hunting settler have, could he but know what our endless-wend-away knows, and regards but as worthless knowledge! He would be able to fix himself like the own brother of Job or Abram, with flocks and herds, where the commissioner of crown-lands could never find him— out of the way of fines, and licenses, and assessments. That settler, how rich he would be! Alas! and all this knowledge must die with our hero! for like Byron, he has

"A most voiceless thought, sheathing it, as a sword."

Only think when he was in the mountains, poking about amongst the loose rocks, with his stick in idle mood, of the rich vein of gold-ore that gleamed upon him; and how he left it as Robinson Crusoe did the wedges of gold, as useless; and how he never once gave it a thought when he smoked a pipe with the old goldfinder* in Mount Disappointment; the poor old gold—not finder, but seeker, whose house is a hollow tree, who is clothed in the wild-animals' skins, lives on bandicoots and opossums, and endures all kinds of hardships, day and night poking and peeping about for gold-mines.

Die! I can scarcely persuade myself that he ever will. His easy self-complacency bears him unharmed past the spear of the savage, and must also parry the darts of death. Death—the mere sight of our never-old must change his purpose. Nor indeed in the court of Time would they grant him an arrest. Time and he have dallied so pleasantly together, they have grown old friends and familiars; and indeed what crime could be alleged against him except the number of his years? On he goes with interminable progression! Care and Pain move out of his way; Night wraps him in soothing darkness, and the Day showers sunbeams in his path!

O, for a portion of his spirit! for him the severest human countenance has no terrors; no reflections on the past or future trouble him; all situations and persons are to him alike agreeable. Unshackled by ceremony; untortured by the humiliating sense of impropriety; most natural of natural philosophers; happier Diogenes, with all Australia for a tub. Too happy person—I almost wish some native would murder him!

SHEEPISH SATISFACTION.

When our barque was anchored in George Town harbour, there came down the Tamar a smart brig, the Adelaide; and she dropped down her anchor a little way from us. The next day, it being bright and breezy, the people were out parading on the decks, enjoying themselves. "Who," I inquired of a Van Diemen's Land passenger well acquainted with the people of the island, "is that elderly gentleman with the silvery hair?" "That," said he, "is Mr. White, the owner of the brig, originally a convict, but now a person of great wealth, and this dashing fine little craft he has built to sail into England, to surprise with it his old friends!" "The elderly lady is his wife, I suppose, and the two neat elegant sisterly girls are most likely his daughters?" "No; Mrs. Clayton has lived with White for many years; she left her own husband, preferring to live with White; the husband grumbled a little; but White gave him a dozen sheep for her, and he was satisfied." And in such a moral atmosphere were those two very fair, modest-looking, neatly attired, and really very superior-seeming young ladies, brought up. They were natives of Van Diemen's Land, and were full of anticipation and hope, no doubt, on their way to pay a visit to their unseen kindred, in that, to them, most wonderful of famous lands—England.

MAJOR LETTSOME'S EXPEDITION FROM SYDNEY TO MELBOURNE, FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-THREE MILES, AND BACK AGAIN.

A FAITHFUL COLONIAL HISTORY.

Rumours perpetually reached Sydney through the medium of the Port Phillip press, and were not less frequently aimed at the government authorities through private channels, of the continual depredations committed by the aborigines on property of one kind or other, cattle speared, sheep driven off, and, last but not least, of shepherds and hut-keepers killed from time to time in that fine and extensive pastoral province Australia Felix. It really was a trying time, and these reports grew every day more alarming.

At length it was resolved to send a portion of the military to allay the apprehensions of the inhabitants of that famous district; to subdue the refractory: and by some brilliant display of military prowess, to strike dismay into the blood-thirsty cannibals, to restore order, and leave tranquillity behind them.

In due time, and amidst much rejoicing, Major Lettsome arrived in Melbourne, attended by twenty horse-soldiers.

It was allowed on all hands that they performed prodigies of horsemanship and valour. They scoured the whole of that immense country as though it were a small saucepan. Many grave announcements appeared from time to time of the Major's doings, and his whereabouts. One while they might be amongst the Pyrenees, on the Grampians, or threading the mazes of the Youyong. Then, in how marvellously little time! they were traversing the Edward, a tributary of the Murray. Then crossing and re-crossing the River Goulbourn. Then they might, for aught any body knew to the contrary, be making sulphurous work on the Devil's River. Surely they, both the Major and his men, had some strange ubiquity of person, or great skill in making the best of their numbers and appearance, for they seemed here, there, and everywhere at once.

This was singular enough, but there was yet something more singular. Campbell sung that

"Coming events cast their shadows before,"

and certainly it must have been so, for wherever the gallant Major and his troopers appeared, trees there were, dead trees in abundance for them to tumble over, stony wildernesses on and over which they did penance; but for natives, a hush and a sleep attended our warriors through the primeval forests as though it had been nnbroken from the creation. They beat scrubby marshes mile after mile, popped into hollow gum-trees, o'ertopped the highest mountains, traversed wildernesses, thrust their noses and swords into dens and caves; but for natives, they had surely gotten "the receipt of fernseed," and "walked invisible" — none could they find. Had they, thought the Major, taken themselves away by some sudden and mysterious movement into the heavens, or into the earth, there could not have been a more complete vanishing, a stronger feeling of silentness and desolation breathed through the land, in the length and the breadth of it. Nay, he was thoroughly satisfied that were a reward to be offered for the apprehension of one native, he would not be forthcoming in the districts which they had so valiantly and laboriously traversed. Still the gallant Major felt certain there had been natives, not long ago, in many places visited by him; of this their camp-fires, not always extinguished, were intimations. He knew them to be where they were not wanted, sturdy pieces of black human nature, intolerably real; and that were he to doubt two of his senses, eye and ear, another, conscious of their going by him to windward, would set the matter at rest.

He had done his duty as an officer; he was satisfied of that. He was not sent down from Sydney to make black fellows where there were none; but if any were troublesome, to consign them oyer to punishment, if he could catch them.

What was to be done? he had canvassed marsh and moor, heath and holm, like a true sportsman, but was able to spring none of the black game on Nature's out-of-the-way manors. Still there was the Protectorate station—there were the preserves. That was a good idea. There might be some pretty picking amongst them.

Once more in Melbourne, the Major felt a little mortified that, like the prophet Jonah, he had been sent on so great an embassy without any visible result. He, therefore, lost no time in making inquiries as to the number of natives in the Protector's charge, that were of villanous or doubtful character. This settler and the other were applied to, and, at last, how fortunate! seven aborigines were set down in the Major's black catalogue. To capture these he thought would be an easy and solacing adventure. He applied to Mr. Thomas, Assistant Protector, to assist in the delivery, as he termed it, of these natives up to justice; but Mr. Thomas respectfully declined, not choosing to betray those whom it was his duty and inclination to defend. Moreover, Mr. T. assured the military leader, that these denounced cannibals were very decent creatures; nay, the very paragons of black fellows! Major Lettsome shook his head incredulously; and decided to fetch them in the morning.

From Melbourne in the morning rode the Major and his troop. They crossed the Yarra at the Melbourne Punt; and thence rode up the south side of the river, eight miles, to the native encampment. They had met with some delay, not being familiar with that part of the country, so that just before noon they came up to Mr. Thomas's tent, round which stood in groups or singly, not the natives, but their miams, houses of bark and boughs; for, singularly enough! the black people had evaporated. There were the embers of many half-extinguished fires; pieces of red gum with their lead-coloured bark, sinking down drowsily amongst white ashes; old dilapidated tins; bones, empty bottles, ragged clothes in heaps; mat sugar-bags; fragments of opossum skins, empty miams, but nowhere a native. Far below, flowed deeply betwixt precipitous banks the glassy river. On the other side, right before them, in another encampment, the wild people walked about, or lay lazily stretched out in the sun, very much at their ease. Not so was the Major. The scene was beautiful: most graceful shrubs, huge fantastic trees dipping their pendant boughs in the water; greyly mirrowed rocks, with grand curves and sweeps of steep embankments, but he had no eye for them. He writhed and jerked himself about in his saddle; upbraided Mr. Thomas for making known to the natives his intended visit; and eagerly inquired where the river was fordable. Here again he was destined to disappointment. Only three miles hence was the crossing-place, at the junction of the Merri and the Yarra; but holding too far out into the bush he missed it, and not until he had touched again and again, did he manage to get over the river, and then, in the evening, was twenty miles from Melbourne. Oif they rode all speed for the new native encampment; not humming to themselves that wicked distich, though had there been one wag in the company he must have been reminded of it—

"The King of France with forty thousand men
Marched up a hill, and then marched down again."

Afar off our heroes descried the miam village, for a gentle breeze just then wafted the night-fires into sudden brilliancy. But on arriving there, a great quietness received them. There was nothing of that mingling of wild noises; no loud wrangling; no shrill lamentations of children, blest with the snarls, yells and barkings of myriads of curs and mongrels. All was still. Only on the other side of the river were still brighter fires than those around them; and the measured strokes of the native dance explained at once what there was inexplicable in the matter. Safe were they on the other side.

The Major rapped out a soldierly oath, slapped his hand upon his thighs; clapped spurs into his horse, and he and his twenty troopers, hungry as death and jaded with travel, rode into Melbourne.

The next day, alas for the poor blacks! news reached Melbourne that the Gipps'-land natives had made an attack on Mr. Jamieson's station at Western Port, and Mr. Thomas was despatched by the superintendent of Port Phillip to see into the affair.

Now, Major, is your time! the natives lie at your mercy; the Protector is gone!

And, indeed, he lost no time. The seven poor wretches were seized, ironed, and duly committed to take, there being then no Supreme Court in Melbourne, their trials at Sydney.

Thus shackled, they were put into a boat, and were sent in the custody of two men down the river to be put on board a vessel at anchor in the bay, in which they were to be forwarded to their place of destination.

That place was nearer than they expected. The two men got drunk before setting off; and no sooner was the boat a little way out of the sight of Melbourne, than the natives jostled their keepers aside, jumped into the Yarra and disappeared. Did they go to the bottom? No! they only made their way, like so many frogs under water, to breathe amongst the reeds on the river's margin, until the boatmen went back thinking them drowned. Then there was a rush and a scramble to hide themselves till night amongst the tea-tree scrub. This they did effectually, although there was, almost immediately, the strictest search.

It would have been a good joke had the Melbournites dragged the river, but that I believe they did not do.

Several hungry days were over before the poor fellows got out of their irons. They, however, remembered one amongst the settlers in whom they knewthey could confide. To him they went; he received them kindly, and secretly liberated them. Still it was sometime before they ventured to show themselves openly, or to join their old comrades at the native encampment. So ended Major Lettsome's bloodless expedition. Thanks to him and his men! Such people as they are public benefactors. Out of the matter-of-fact, every-day dulness of life they draw, like lightning from darkness, something new to surprise and delight us. They are the only true heroes, and theirs the only true victory.

Their name and exploits are, in Melbourne and elsewhere, a perpetual entertainment. Thanks to them!

COLONIAL HAWKS AND EAGLES.

There is a marvellous difference betwixt petty depredators and the race of genteel freebooters. The souls of the former, to use Ben Jonson's term, were born in a narrow alley; their thoughts have a restricted range, and their attention is perpetually engrossed by small objects: whilst the latter, better educated, look down as from the world's eyrie like the eagle, with ample breadth of land and sea before them. Their eyes behold much that is valuable on the earth, and what they see, they determine, somehow or other, to make their own. How finely, how fittingly the mercantile portion of this class of men were designated by John Keats, "the hawks of ship-mast forests." The busiest part of the noisy, dusty, brick-wall town is their fitting birth-place; for the hardness of external objects and the dryness of the dust is in their souls. Their histories and romances, the amusing books of their childhood, are The Young Man's Best Companion, The Ready Reckoner, Day-Books, and Ledgers: whilst to use the words of Milton, their

"Childhood shows the man as morning shows the day."

You read in their faces, those indexes to "red-lined accounts," the nature of the race they are about to run, and before they start you award them the prize. Theworldmoveson—you are engrossed by many, and most likely what the world terms trifling objects: theirs are few and sedulously followed. You hear rumours perpetually of the immensity of their attainments, their accomplishments: they are set down in the world's opinion for the wealthiest of the wealthy. They become bankrupts! What of that? They still retain their pleasant country residences; you see them still in their carriages, and on horseback, looking complexionally pleasant. A poor honest man on foot meets them on the dusty road, and in the entire simplicity of his heart touches his hat to the great people. What! they have still their squatting-stations in the bush—line herds of cattle and sheep; and of their servants, and of their well-doing, there appears to be no end.

AN EARLY SETTLER.

What an eventful life was that of Batman! His adventures in the woody wilds of Tasmania, previously to his settling in Port Phillip, when pursuing the aborigines and the bushrangers, would fill an ample volume; and, if agreeably written, would make an admirable winter fireside story. He, indeed, rendered such valuable service, in these vocations, to the government, that Governor Arthur promised him some boon; not, perhaps, whatever he might ask, as the Arabian Genies would have done, but anything in accordance with the quality of his public services; and he did ask something that made the governor pause and demur. He did not request any honourable or lucrative public office, nor that ample breadth of fair lands might be accorded him, but what one so free, gallant, and fearless, should have done; he sued for pardon for a fair and youthful dame— an outcast and outlaw—whom he had met with in the fastnesses of the mountains, and secluded in the solitary woods; too interesting a bushranger to be readily delivered by him up to the public authorities. It is said that she attended him as Kaled did Lara, in male habiliments; and that she was secreted at times at his country location under ground. What kind of bower he made for his Fair Rosamond I know not, nor by what clue he found her; he loved her well, perhaps wisely, and such grace found, after some delays, his intercessions, that she was pardoned, and became his wife. Prosperity brightened before them, and their affection. They were amongst the earliest settlers of the new, and then not far-explored region of Australia Felix; and the hill where they resided near Melbourne, and a beautiful hill it is, graced sweetly with shiac-trees, is still called by his name. I have been told by a person who attended the small, low-roofed, wooden church, in the early days of Port Phillip, that to see the Batman family, not a small one, the parents, and the children of various heights and ages, all marching in orderly, all graceful, figures, with open, healthfully blooming countenances, was a most beautiful sight. A spectacle that was, no doubt, additionally interesting from what there was romantic in their history.

November 30, 1843.—Waterton, Audubon, or any of their naturally-observant brotherhood, would have had a feast this morning of no ordinary kind, had they found, as a member of our household did, an oval nest, in a wattle-tree, not far from the house, suspended by a thread, and swinging like a sailor's hammock in the breeze. I have seen similar nests suspended by a twisted line of fine twigs a few inches in length, but never such a blending of man's and animal's work as this. The thread was more than a foot long, not bird-manufactured, but stolen, and first unwoven, from a piece of canvas left out-of-doors. How the nest could be built there, was the most singular circumstance. The thread was fast woven into the texture of the nest, and tied to and again about the bough. There it swung, with its two pale, not white, eggs, but with a faint blue tinting their whiteness. We suggested that the nest had been originally fitted and completed in the branch above, and had been either launched thence, to swing hammock-wise, or that such a position was merely accidental, that it had been blown out and suspended by a chance thread. Analogy did not bear out either inference; birds, these birds, do suspend their nests; no doubt to defend them from snakes and other enemies; then there seemed nothing like chance, but every certainty of a nicety of design; for had the nest fallen, it might have swung sideways or upside-down, instead of being in the exactest natural position. Design there was, most unequivocally complete, in its whole and fit development; ordered by the same intelligence as our reason; wonderful in its operation; forcibly reminding us, by its novelty, of the wisdom and benignity, observed or not, ever evident in the whole creation.

UNANIMOUS INDECISION.

Monarchies are sometimes good things, so are republics perhaps. Decision in a leader is a great blessing, when directed by wisdom. The race, after all, is not always to the swift, or the battle to the strong: accident is sometimes better than strength or swiftness; better than republican discretion, or monarchical decision. So I once found it. We were on the beach, four of us; one physician, two surgeons, and a druggist. If we agreed physically—politically we were all at variance. Our boat was anchored on the shore; before us, two miles off, was our ship. Darkness was coming on; the wind sighed; the heavens scowled for a night of tempest; the surf broke upon the shore, mingled foam and sand. Three of us proposed to kindle a fire, and remain on shore for the night, not liking to venture. The fourth would not. He had passed the previous night under the bare heavens, and was resolved to go to the ship, whatever the consequence. I had been out too, but we consented; and a fisherman volunteered to push our boat for us through the surf, observing, at the same time, that it would not be a trifle that would tempt him to go to the ship in such a night. For two hours we toiled and contended with wind and wave, drenched with spray, and nearly exhausted with almost unavailing efforts to reach the ship anchored off William's Town. At no time had we been in such danger of losing our lives. We proved ourselves thorough republicans, all differing in opinion, all giving orders, or suggesting different courses for the management of the boat; all commanding, none obeying. Each of us was satisfied that his idea of our situation was the best, and the way to get out of it. Had our captain been with us, we should have obeyed him; the helm would have been given unanimously to his sovereign hand. He would have shaped our course, have made one our divided councils, and would have accomplished that in half an hour as a sovereign, which it took us two hours to accomplish as republicans. We escaped by accident; and, in similar gales, many in that very bay have lost their lives: Morris, Dellanoy, Mr. Walsh, a gentleman from Ireland, and his companions; besides others.

CONVICT PASSPORTS.

Some Australian settlers wish for the introduction of the pass into Australia Felix, or that it might be customary for workingmen to carry with them a magistrate's certificate of the settler, with whom, and where he had last resided, to put a stop to colonial vagabondism. Pro and con. there has been on this subject in the papers, betwixt Mr. Wills, of Mount William, and Mr. Hull, the Melbourne magistrate. The former for, and the latter against it. The first proposes what would be certainly a salutary check on a race becoming a great nuisance; and the last as strenuously advocates the liberty of the subject—the unimpeded movements of Englishmen. Some settlers think it would be well to charge just the cost of the food which, in outof-the-way places, they feel compelled to offer to wayfarers, when there are no inns; and, perhaps, that would be the best way of ridding themselves of men who seek work, yet ask exorbitant wages, and such as the squatter cannot give. Certainly passes are nuisances. The first I saw of the system, was whilst standing by Sibbald's Mill, at Launceston, where the Esk is crossed by a punt. By the river was a sentry-box. There, whilst I waited, a foot-traveller came to cross the punt; the constable asked him for his pass; the man pulled a strip of paper from his pocket; the official examined, and returned it. Whilst our ship lay in the Tamar, two of our passengers walked from Launceston to where we were, twelve miles down the river, and were just hailing us to take a boat for them, when a constable, thinking them bolters—run-away convicts—came up to them and demanded to see their passes. It was in vain that they assured him they were strangers in the colony—passengers of the very ship in sight; not being able to show him the passes —nor knowing any person who could identify them—they, like stupid fellows, went back the twelve miles to Launceston, instead of compelling the constable to go on board with them. They were, being ignorant of the country and its laws, in no small trepidation; and were too glad, on being identified in Launceston by some shipmates, to be at liberty again, to trouble themselves with any magisterial inquiry into the constable's officiousness.

This pass affair is a sore poser to run-away convicts, where it is carefully enforced, in penal colonies. One run-away, at Port Arthur I think it was, had to pass a narrow peninsula, quite a narrow strip of land, where Btood a sentry-box and a most watchful sentinel. He had approached under the cover of the neighbouring trees, and retired again in despair times and times —he always found the watcher vigilant at his post. A thought struck him: kangaroos were so abundant there, that he fancied were he to disguise himself in a kangaroo skin, he should be suffered to pass without notice. Immediately he became, to all outward appearance, a boomer, or large forester kangaroo, and jumped very leisurely into the sentinel's walk; but not unobserved. The gun was pointed immediately; and as quickly, like Balaam's ass, the kangaroo spoke—"Stop, don't shoot—I'm not a kangaroo—I'm a man!"

Another anecdote is told, and I believe truly, about the pass.

A magistrate, either the originator, or notorious for the strict enforcement of the pass; a man of an austere disposition, and common-looking; was met in the bush by a newly-appointed waggishly-inclined constable, who only just knew him by name and sight, and what was more, by his character. The policeman was one of that sort who must break a jest at whatever expense; and so he accosts the stranger with—"My man, where is your pass?" "What assurance," said the magistrate haughtily—"Get about your business!" "It's my business to see your pass," continued the official firmly. "Nonsense, fellow— get yon gone!"—here the magistrate hesitated a little, as though he would rather get rid of the man without making himself known; it was not pleasant to be thought to be a convict; but saw such resolution in the constable's face, that he exclaimed, "I'm Mr.—, the magistrate." "Ha, ha, ha! that's good, if it isn't. I should never have thought of that—that's capital!" laughed the constable; "or, you are Mr. Home, of Rossbridge, or Mr. Archer, of Norfolk Plains: any of the rich men, ha!" "You rascal!" stormed the enraged little man. But the man of the staff was resolute. "No gammon," said he; "your pass— or with me you go before the bench." And before the bench of magistrates, then sitting, they went. On the business being explained, there was fun enough; the magistrates laughed heartily, especially those who did not altogether like their unfortunate brother.

GLIMPSE OF THE BUSH.

Very pleasant is a ramble over hill and dale, or through forests and by streams in this primeval region; yet I must not compare it with England. So thoroughly am I what the Yankees term an Englisher, that I often pity the native white people of the colonies, who only faintly know what England is from the narrative or descriptive revelations of their parents. You see a bandicoot run, rat-like, before you to its rabbit-like hole in the ground; a hare would be the more graceful object. Near you stands an old gum-tree, called red from its internal colour, massy, gigantic, gnarled, and fantastically branched as the English oak; but, "O the difference to me!" not so venerable a tree, not "the grave senator of mighty -woods." A most stately, a most superb tree, august in the rich depth of its leafiness, is that adorner and defender of Britain. I sometimes see a very oldlooking young rich man, a native of New South Wales, who lives in an elegant house, and has a valuable estate about it; and I ask myself what kind of boyhood must that man's have been? He never saw the blue gleam of hedge-sparrow eggs in the fresh budding garden-hedge. What kind of flowers were his daisies and buttercups? Only to think that he never saw a cowslip or primrose; never wandered in a sweet English meadow; nor ever saw a bank of violets. All our summer sights and sounds are lost to him as completely as if he had been brought up in a vast city: nay into cities the shouting of the vernal cuckoos will often penetrate; and into them, garden-haunting nightingales will carry the soul of woods and copses. What idea can he have of a green rural English lane; or of a country village, with its old grey gothic church, and the grand harmony of bells? of rustic cottages, substantially capacious farm-houses, halls antiquely venerable? or of vast hoary stern castles? How utterly are lost to him the green freshness of small homesteads, with their shrubby line of flowery hedge-rows, and the deep rich shadowing of umbrageous trees. His native trees are scarcely worthy of the term. He doubtless had and has great advantages; is satisfied with the world, and with himself. Yet seeing what he was and is, and knowing well from what elements his youth has become manhood, what a nakedness of soul must he have! How far more rich in the best wealth is the poorest English peasant? whose education has been the song of birds; the breath of vernal blossoms; the daily aspect of ever-varying nature; the old traditionary legends; and the homely poetry of common speech. Alas for the manhood which has been built up in a dry-as-dust, post-and-rail country! whose education has been completed by a tour with the stockman to the Hume-river, the Goulbourn and the Murray; and whose conversation smacks of the parrot and the stock-whip. Howsoever rich such a man may be, I would rather, regarding real wealth and happiness, be Spencer Hall, in Padley Wood, or Hatherge Moor; most certainly I should be the gainer.

It is true there are rich Peter Bells in England, both in town and country, into whose souls nature could never find entrance; men who have decently the form of men—the outer temple without the inner capaciousness and adornments—bare walls, where there is neither altar nor incense.

What are the agreeable objects in an Australian landscape? Certainly there is little variety. With the endless range of a wooded country the eye is soon satisfied. Better it is to meet, as you do occasionally, with here and there ample openings of gracefully smooth country, with a shiac-tree only at intervals, or a clump of them; knoll and slope and glen sweetly varied with sunshine and shadow; and with the silvery gleam of blue waters, the green sward whitely dotted, far as you can see, with flocks of sheep; such scenery as you meet with amongst the beautiful chain of the Moonee ponds, in the neighbourhood of the higher flow of the Salt-water river, and beyond Mount Macedon. Then there are gay groups of magpies, with their rich lively voices, the most abundant of Australian birds. Perhaps a bronze-winged pigeon may get up before you and alight in some tree near at hand—a beautiful creature. The gorgeous colours of a flock of parrots may suddenly flash before your eyes, with rainbow hues, and then as fleetly with their shrill sharp cries vanish far off in the woods. White and black cockatoos are not disagreeable objects, but most harsh and discordant screamers. Very stately and pleasant is the lofty and deliberate flight of the larger kinds of falcons; and very grand is the coming from the immense forests and untrodden mountains, the soarings aloft, and stoopings from the higher heavens, of the large Australian eagle. Also very noble in its flight, and seen solitarily in bays and lakes, is the pelican of the wilderness. Splendid through dusky heavens is the caravan-motion of trumpet-toned swans. Very lively and animating, the dancing mass of plumage of the fleet racing emu: and not ungraceful, the plunging-gump-gump-gump of the kangaroos; filling you with sudden trepidation, as it bounces and flusters through the scrub.

WHAT RIGHT HAVE WE TO AUSTRALIA?

As it regards the Dutch or the aborigines? certainly both. First of the Dutch. If the Welsh allow us the honour, and the Irish, of picking up waif and stray countries, the Dutch will not dispute it. These below-water-mark people had once a portion of North America, and the English laid their hands upon it. New Amsterdam became New York, but that John Bull did not keep. The Cape of Good Hope, the East Indies, Van Diemen's Land, and New Holland, these were worth having, and we have them. We had hold, too, of Meinheer's Spice Islands; but had we a little bit of conscience, or did we pity the beaver-nation, that we let go our hold? Perhaps we had grasped enough. No nation can boast such an honest ancestry as we: our colonising is of the blood. The Romans were in Britain, and the Danes; they came uninvited if the Saxons did not. Milton considered those same Romans to be only a great nation of splendid thieves. Then the Danes, when they were paid to leave the country, never came back again—until the next spring. The Saxons saw the country was beautiful; they had been invited over, were hospitably desired to make themselves quite at home in it, and did so. Besides, they didn't like crossing the Channel, for ship-building was not then in great perfection. Then the Normans,—but we have said quite enough. We have the right blood in our veins; Roman, Danish, Saxon, and Norman; and nobody will dispute our title to one half of the globe. Our dominions, whatever quantity of night and darkness there may be in the world, are known to bask in perpetual sunshine. The Dutch will say nothing to us about New Holland; and, for the aborigines, they have reversed God's command to "increase and multiply." They are decreasing naturally, and have thus no right to the land. Nobody will dispute our title in this particular; we are not decreasing.

Well, all the crimes of our ancestors were sincerely repented of; and we are inclined to act, nationally and individually, in a becoming and Christian manner.

"Thank God," says the white man, as he draws near to a newly-discovered country, "that I was born in a Christian land! for these poor savages that we are about to visit know nothing, so great is their simplicity and ignorance about meum and tuum; and we shall be able for a few glass beads, or some trifling gift of knives or scissors, hatchets or blankets, to persuade them, like Esau his birthright, to sell the very land which they have inherited from their forefathers. It is very likely that they may not so much as know one syllable of our language; nor, indeed, understand the nature of the bargain which they make; still, the trinkets will be theirs and the land ours, for we have both the will and the power to take possession of it. Besides, we have other authority than purchase or force; the savages must be Christianized. If the wild people lose their old country, they will receive for it in return a new faith. Once plant the cross upon the shore, and the new land belongs to Christ and his people."

Perhaps the planting of the cross in the domains of these unapprehensive and silly beings is meant to typify, as it certainly was when so set up by the Spaniards, that, in the new scene of operations, Christ would again be crucified in the tears, the groans, and agonies, of outraged humanity; in the unutterable barbarities and atrocities to be inflicted on a timid and defenceless people.

Nothing is more necessary or just than that, as one country is over-peopled, the supernumerary inhabitants should distribute themselves over new and more thinly occupied countries. God, who said "replenish the earth," never, indeed, meant twelve square miles of the earth's commonly productive surface to belong, as in Australia, to one only human being; nor ever gave, save in one instance, any one country to one race of men exclusively. By cultivating the soil, solely, do we obtain any property in it; nor has any man a right to more than he can occupy with advantage to himself and his kind. Of the rest he is but a steward, and must give an account of his stewardship to the Universal Owner.

William Penn did right in again purchasing of the Indians the territory given him by his sovereign, although it neither belonged to the one or the other; for, by so doing, he satisfied his own conscience, and conciliated the goodwill of the old inhabitants of the woods. His sterling integrity, his Christian philanthropy, impressed a new idea of the greatness of man, and of his goodness, upon that wild yet intellectual people, immeasurably productive of good to both races through many succeeding generations.

It was a lesson that should not have been forgotten. Still, if we have given them, in the worst of our species, ill example, we have afforded to such of them as do not fall in mutual conflict before we understand each other, what they did not possess before our arrival, an opportunity of raising themselves in the scale of being; of embracing the arts and comforts of civilised existence; of acquiring the knowledge, by intercourse and comparison, that they are naturally something more than mere brutes, or capable of enfranchisement from that condition.

This right to Australia is a sore subject with many of the British settlers, and they strive to satisfy their consciences in various ways. We will listen now to what a settler says on the subject:—

"The feeling that most of us possess, is, that we have robbed the blacks of their territory; and that we are, in a moral and just view, debtors to them for the soil. To this I will reply; Europe, the wide and flourishing part of the globe from which most of us come, was, at one time, a vast mountainous and woody district; many parts of which, as Britain, Germany, Hungary, and the Northern states, consisted either of wide morasses or interminable forests, inhabited chiefly by wild beasts, and scantily peopled by wandering tribes, subsisting by hunting and predatory excursions.

"Such were its inhabitants when the Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Tyrians, increasing in population, began to send out parties, who, settling along the shores of the Mediterranean, advanced inland and laid the foundation of those mighty empires, the Grecian, Roman, and Venetian, &c., under whom religion was preserved, philosophy advanced, and the arts and sciences encouraged and perfected.* Were these colonists considered as robbers of the soil? Were they responsible for the evils and the bloodshed which these wandering tribes brought upon themselves by their aggressions upon the new-comers? for if they were not, neither are we, who have been led by the same providential hand to a continent little less in extent' than ancient Europe, and little more inhabited, to be looked upon as usurpers of a pre-occupied country. More than this; (for I look upon the question as one of vital importance) the blacks themselves bear among them so many distinct characteristics of different nations and periods, whose habits, language, and appearances, are totally distinct, and who seldom meet but to fight, that we may reasonably conclude, that they are descended from ancestors borne here at different times and from different nations, for the African and the Asiatic are most clearly distinguishable. Who, then, is to judge, to whom a territory so extensive belongs; or to say that wandering tribes, whom accident has probably thrown on these shores at different periods, are the rightful and sole owners of such a country?

"Considering, then, that the protectorate is a boon given to satisfy a feeling within ourselves; that we have robbed these natives with one hand, and must give them something with the other; and that it is also a salvo to stop the hue and cry of a body in the mother country, not inaptly termed humanitymongers; who, to use the words of an American writer, can sympathise with the remotest corners of the earth, while they are deaf to the cries of their starving countrymen: I contend, that we are in no way bound in justice, whatever pity for them might lead us to do, to keep up the expensive pageantry of a protectorate; while, if we examine into the ends proposed by the protectorate, we shall see of how little service they are.

"To feed and instruct the blacks 16,000l. a year is voted by government; but the blacks can find food sweeter to them than the richest dainties, where the white man would starve. The root that grows beneath his feet; the grub from which we turn in disgust; the snakes from which we fly in terror, all furnish a change of savoury dishes to the native, even when the kangaroo has fled the soil. Then, for their instruction, go witness the farce that occurs at the supreme courts, when one of these beings is brought up for trial; and watch the stupid stare of the culprit as the protector tries to stammer out some unintelligible jargon, and gives it up, in nine cases out of ten, without being one whit the wiser: proving how utterly incapable such people are to instruct, who show such slowness themselves in acquisition. And is it to be supposed that the blacks appreciate, and are grateful for, these benefits conferred upon them, and this charity exercised towards them? Ah, no! they see the glaring eyes of self-love, and selfprotection, lurking behind the mask of charity; and though charity they cannot appreciate, they give us credit for the sentiment secondaiy only to revenge in native bosoms—I mean fear. This, then, is the sentiment by which they must be civilised; not by cruelty, but fear. Dismiss the protectorate, and with the funds, or half the funds, organise such a body of mounted police that there shall not be a spot within the limits of location where their presence is not known and felt; and these, under the command of honourable and principled officers, will be the guardians of the black as well as of the white. Let gentlemen and men of principle be appointed magistrates in various parts of the bush, and let minor offences committed by the blacks or whites be tried on the spot where they are committed; then the blacks, knowing that they would be surely punished for their aggressions, would gradually (as they even do in Melbourne, where they are civilised by fear) quietly locate amongst the settlers, assist them in their toils, and receive such reward as their labour would permit." —Port Phillip Settlers' newspaper article.

The above is a very favourable sample of settlers' logic, abundance of which is published in the colonial papers. Were this settler's plan to be adopted, and the protectorate dismissed, what would be the result? A small island, smaller than Flinders' Island, would soon hold the diminished tribes of the whole Aboriginal people of New Holland. Our settler commenced his paper with the assertion (not quoted) that he would go to the root of the matter, but did not. He flings the country into "chancery," then takes possession of it as a matter of course. The real root of the matter is, Christianity. We must, as the wisest policy, do ourselves all the good we can, and the natives too; and we shall thereby acquire the only just title to Australia. How delicately the settler touched the wanton havoc made by his class on the native animals: "Where the kangaroo has fled the soil." As it regards the food of the aborigines found by them spontaneously produced in the bush, from my own experience amongst them I know that their old dainties of snake and grubmurnong, birnenberong, opossum, &c., are no longer luxuries; they have tasted other food; and now, bread, beef, mutton, potatoes, and tea, are "merri jig"—all very good. Then, the settler's system of fear has no instruction in it. A better code than this has been tried—thanks to Messrs. Tuckfield, Parker, and Thomas—"the law of kindness." Again, the settler expects the protector, who is compelled to locate himself with a tribe or two in a particular district, to be universal in his operations, and to know, by instinct, the languages of all the Australian aborigines. But the most remarkable passage in the selfish paper of this settler is this, that the natives cannot appreciate the justice or charity of the white people, and that these are therefore wasted. Most excellent! such a rigid code of economised mercy and justice would considerably lessen the worldly sum of mortal ingratitude!

SOME PEOPLE LOSE THEMSELVES, AND OTHERS ARE FOUND BEFORE THEY ARE LOST.

It is pleasant to range where you list in a new country, occupied and delighted with endless novelties. To know that without a license you are at liberty; that there is "ample room and verge enough." This was the feeling with us on first landing in Australia; prepared for a glorious outbreak by our long seaimprisonment. Any country is pleasant, even the old civilised lands, with their stringent enactments, to the long sea-weary. How much more so here,

"Where free to follow Nature was the mode;"

where there is yet little intimation of human intrusion; where, as yet, on the south side of the River Yarra especially, there has been no carving up of the country; none of it self-appropriated in some directions for hundreds of miles; and where the only danger is, to new pleasure-seekers, that they may most effectually lose every trace of civilisation, even of something to eat. Some in this manner lose not only their way, but their lives. They make the discovery that a compass is not always a sure guide, any more than the sun; for without good sense and observation, they will prove worthless. They find that in a country styled "The Happy" they may die of hunger, and their death be attributed to the savages. Captain Lloyd, a shipmate of ours, lost himself in the Tasmania woods for three or four days, and when found by a party of soldiers sent out in search of him, he was only just alive. Such instances are not rare. I was lost myself by the River Tamar, near Spring Bay. I was astonished how I could thus have become bewildered. Not knowing which way to go, I reflected that I had nothing with me, out alone in the densest wilderness, wherewith to kindle afire. It was lateish in the afternoon: and I must devise some expedient for finding my way to our ship, which was lying at anchor at Swan Point. I thought immediately on the flow of the river, down which we were going, and that instantaneously struck me as a joyful thought; but the pleasure as fleetly vanished again, when I reflected that the Tamar was subject to tides—to ebbs and to flows. Sometimes I hastened on in one direction—then turned again, and went on as rapidly in the other. The water, though wide was very tortuous—very labyrinthine—so that to see the vessel one must be close upon it. I lost much time to no purpose in this way, and expected to be out all night, at a time of the year when the atmosphere is cold and foggy, and more so on the flats near rivers. I at length resolved, right or wrong, to persevere in one direction, and if I went from the ship 1 should most likely find some woodmen's huts by night-fall, which would be preferable to a night in the woods without food or fire. On I went, steadily and briskly, not without a palpitating heart, and reached, after an hour's torturing uncertainty, the spot from which I had first started—welcome—beautiful Swan Point—and the ship—looking more home-like than ever. Of two people lost in the wilderness woods—one, just escaping with the life in him—was afterwards entombed in the ocean, his bones tossed about and whitened by eternal billows—and the other is here. Now for those who were found before they were lost.

A newly arrived emigrant, and his two friends, a few years ago, leaving Melbourne in the morning early, crossed the Punt, intending to pass a week of pleasure in the bush, shooting, &c. None of them had declared positively, like the Eastern monarch in Johnson's story, that it should be a week of happiness, yet tacitly they were willing that it should be so. All of them had guns—all had knapsacks at their backs, or blankets, should they be compelled to sleep in the open air, and roughly clad, looked a rather formidable company. On "their way towards Western Port they came unexpectedly upon the bush residence of a squatter, and modestly requested at the door of the hut water to drink. They did not apprehend themselves to be dangerouslooking people; had no desire to terrify anybody—the morning was delightful: they were quite at their ease, and enjoyed themselves wonderfully. They had no idea but that everybody were extraordinarily happy too. The people in the hut had a feeling the very opposite of this: three men with guns, strangers, and about so early. There was something menacing, they thought; at all events, mysterious, in the circumstance. They felt constrained to propitiate the strange-looking beings by the most liberal hospitality. Water? they supplied them with milk, set before them the best food they possessed; and after thanks on the one hand, and ceremonious attention on the other, our sportsmen went on their way, talking eagerly and joyously of the kindness and liberality of their entertainers. "They are bushrangers, that they are!" exclaimed one and all of the bushresidents, as soon as the backs of their visitors were turned, and the squatter rode off to Melbourne instanter with that intelligence.

All day the three friends sped along in open prospect of the Bay towards Western Port; and were now evidently, at nightfall, near some marshes covered with water-fowl, and the frequent cries of ducks gave new life to our sportsmen. They, therefore, kindled a fire in the neighbourhood, supped, spread their blankets for the night, and were almost as comfortably accommodated as native denizens of the wild, for whom the grass is bed soft enough, and a piece of bark a sufficient house. So they slept: whilst the mounted policemen, the same in number, were wakeful with the thoughts of apprehending the bushrangers in the morning, and what might be the casualties of the enterprise.

Singularly enough, the sportsmen had also their apprehensions of the bushrangers, and one, by turns, kept sentry, whilst the others slept: for it seems there were at this very "time, and in this part of tb&- country, three seamen who had taken to the bush, and by committing several robberies had filled all this part of the country with terror and excitement. Thus, attended by uneasy people, the adverse fires, in sight of each party, burned on steadily through the night: the policemen, who had tracked our company hither, confident of capturing them in the morning.

With daylight the sportsmen were busy: wild swans, geese and ducks were abundantly before them. They had just attained the luckiest situations, and were only waiting, two of them, for the third, who had removed to a little distance, that their fire might prove more effective—all was eagerness, and the certainty of great booty was the one predominant feeling—when up came the policemen, who hesitated a moment to inquire if there was not a third belonging to the party. On being answered satisfactorily, the two were knocked down, and their guns seized, unceremoniously. The third person was as easily captured.

"Now," thought the shooters, "we are taken to be robbed by the bush-rangers."—"How readily," the policemen congratulated themselves, "we have apprehended the bush-rangers."

The horsemen drove on the disconsolate foot-travellers towards Melbourne. The officials were triumphant—in high spirits; the sportsmen indignant, yet crest-fallen exceedingly.

A little while before they reached what is now the Brighton Estate, one of the horsemen rode forward to prepare breakfast for the party at the first station, and now an incident sufficiently ludicrous occurred.

Mr. W— set his foot unwarily on the head of a large snake of the most deadly kind, which writhed and lashed its tail about his legs fearfully. He, however, leaped to a distance from it safely. At this moment one of the horses took fright, either at the snake, which raised its head immediately erect, or at Mr. W—'s sudden movement; the policeman, unable to manage his steed, let fall a gun belonging to one of the captives, but the unruly horse galloped away with him. The third, and only remaining horseman, shot the snake, and was suddenly unhorsed for the exploit. Now had the fortune of war all at once chopped round into the opposite quarter. The guns lay on the ground, and were resumed by the captives merrily. Their keeper had discharged his piece, and was at their mercy. He, in turn, was taken prisoner. The other policemen returned, and called out to them, on seeing the new turn of affairs, to lay down their arms. They did so immediately, with unaffected good humour. "Do you still think us bush-rangers?" inquired the sportsmen. The faith of the policemen began to give way. Certainly the desperate character of the people for whom they were apprehended was not well borne out by them. "Well," said they, "we have our doubts; nevertheless you must go to Melbourne: must be examined by the proper authorities, and be dismissed by them."

Such, after a night spent in the Lock-up, was the result.

"It was an unfortunate mistake,—the policemen had done no more than their duty." And, of course, it was the duty of the sufferers, after a little grumbling, to submit.

A COLONIAL INCUBUS.

The high rates of interest paid by the colonists of New South Wales, especially to British money-lenders, and to which the borrowers were pledged in prosperous times, and to which good faith binds them in the present, is a grievous and ruinous affair, now that, on good showing, no employment of capital, whatever good fortune may attend it, can realise in return 10 per cent. The sufferers have petitioned the Legislative Council to protect them by a usury law; asserting that not only are they paying the interest of the borrowed capital, but are in such payment returning as interest the capital; not only, in fact, furnishing a just portion of the commercial growth and increase, but are tearing up the roots of the golden tree. This, no doubt, is true: yet the Legislative Council disregarded the petition, and justly, it being none of their business to interfere between the parties, leaving the matter to be decided by the usurers, on whose tender mercies the borrowers must rely, and to the influence of public opinion. The usurers will be wisest if they are reasonable, if they are merciful, and are satisfied without exacting the pound of flesh. That this payment of enormous interest is one of the most grievous drawbacks on the prosperity of the colonies cannot be doubted; the middle and southern districts of New South Wales having, it has been computed, to make up as interest no less a sum to British capitalists than £250,000 annually. This is almost as great a colonial curse as drunkenness.

A PEEP AT THE NATIVES.

Every person visiting the native encampments must be delighted with some things, if disgusted with others. There is something very erect and dignified in the attitudes and motions of the wild people. You perceive that their limbs have always had free play—unencumbered and unrestrained by the shackles of civilised garments. Their bare feet, uncramped by shoes, are like other hands to them. If a spear or bomerang is dropped, they pick it up with their toes, and, only slightly stooping, toss it up into the hand. It is not uninteresting to watch them at the vocation of miam-making: stripping off from the trees large and thick" sheets of bark, driving forked stakes into the ground to receive the cross-tree, against which they rear the bark, and complete the whole with a covering of green boughs. Then it is a great novelty to see them climb trees in the search for opossums; to see them cutting small holes with their tomahawks in the boles of trees, at regular intervals, into which they insert their toes and fingers alternately. In this manner they ascend trees of vast bulk to an amazing height. They first strike the tree with the head of the tomahawk to ascertain if it is hollow. Then they learn with the nicest skill whether there has been an opossum up into the tree recently; and know at once whether to climb or not. Good eyes they have, are keen of vision, and use them. How dim and uncertain to me seemed the marks of the opossum on the bole, yet to them how clear and palpable! Go wherever you will, you observe in the wilderness, on the trees, the native "his mark;" there it is, whilst the hand which fixed it there is dust. In Van Diemen's Land I first noticed them—the last lingering records of a vanished people. They were to be seen everywhere, but the native nowhere. His fire had burnt out in the forest. The country had obtained a new name, and was occupied by a new people. New dwellings were erected on the graves of a departed race. There seemed an accusing quietness in the woods. There seemed accusation, too, in the old native marks, and that it would be better if they were obliterated. Yet there they stand! appealing from the past to the present—from the dead to the living, to what there is of mercy in mankind—and to Christ.

Near the native encampments you are sure to find intimations of savage ingenuity—broken war implements, carved curiously; fragments of wicker-work, which surprise you with their beauty. Then you see groups of native children mimicking the employments of the elder natives: they have their juvenile battles, and are very noisy over their corrobories.

Besides these things, you meet at the native encampment, near Melbourne, a blind native boy, led by another native child—a sad spectacle. What will be his destiny? In civilised society the blind are a privileged people—how will it be with him? I felt, whilst looking upon him, that he might use Milton's words in a double sense, for he was peculiarly

"With darkness and with danger compass'd round,
And solitude."

When I look on the naked, unkempt, paint-smeared aborigines of Australia, I fancy myself for a moment living in ancient Britain; that I am a Roman; one fractional part of a vast, famous, and multitudinous race; and that the beings before me with wooden implements of warfare, resemble its aboriginal people: only less warlike, less athletic, and of a darker complexion. The truth is, they are as much inferior to that primordial race, as we surpass the Romans in science, the arts, in literature, and in these momentous energies of the modern world —Christianity, and the Press.

The Romans would seem gods in the eyes of the Ancient Britons, as Europeans did in those of the aboriginal Australians.

Ihe American Indians have waned away, and are become, as a people, less and less. So it must be with this inartificial and almost irreclaimable race. Rome is the dwelling of religious owls and bats—a race of dwarfs in arms, in civil and religious freedom. Britain is now something. We are all that the greatest nations of antiquity have been, and infinitely more.

This reflection naturally was awakened by the following anecdote:—

An old History of England was given to a native, or found by him, in which was a picture of the Ancient Britons, a battlescene, thronged with fierce countenances and implements of savage warfare. He stared at it with astonishment; he had made a novel discovery; there were other white people than those he had hitherto seen. "Ha!" he exclaimed with dilated nostrils, and head erect—"those are the wild white fellows!"

Another discovery surprised the Port Phillip blacks; there were other black fellows! Major Davidson brought from India with him some Hill Coolies, who were at one time employed in repairing the Melbourne streets. The natives eyed them attentively, evidently considering the Hill Coolie a creature of doubtful formation, a bungling imitation of himself, and pronounced him accordingly to be "no good black fellow that."

The natives are curious enough to thrust themselves into new buildings to see what is going on, and on some occasions they are surprised with novelties quite unexpected. At Manton's steam-mill occurred a ludicrous scene. The dark people just entered it when newly set in motion. There was the whirl and roar, the groan and clatter of wheels; the engine screamed, puffed and snorted; had the world been going to atoms they could not have been more horrified, off they ran like wild-fire! not pausing to look back until they thought themselves at a safe distance. Then pausing to describe what had terrified them to some persons they met, they imitated the noise of the engine; made motions to represent the whirling of wheels—then looked back and ran again.

Some years ago a portion of the Western Port natives meditated a murderous expedition against some distant tribe; but kept their design a secret from the protector; only declaring that they should be away many moons. A child, however, as children do, with grave simplicity reveals the secret: "Plenty kidney-fat by, by," said the little imp to Mr. Thomas, as they stood by a native fire. They would have plenty of the fat of their enemies before long! This incursion was for Gippsland— whence the long absent natives returned, after hard marching, almost dead with fatigue. They had murdered nine naked disfigured human abominations like themselves. It was twelve moons before the visit was returned by the Gippsland tribe, and the bloody debt repaid; and it was on this occasion that they first saw a white man and a white man's dwelling. They observed it with evident surprise; and not having any idea of a door, or its use, they tried to make their way into the house at the sides and corners, and through the roof, cutting a passage with their stone tomahawks. When in, they offered no ill-usage to the owner, Mr. Jamieson; and when he fired off a gun to intimidate them, they only laughed and danced round him as if delighted with the novelty. One of the blacks before entering saw a window, and through it something on a table, which, unconscious of such a substance as glass, he put forth his hand to lay hold of; he was astonished at the crash of the pane, and did not seem to relish the bleeding hand he got in consequence. He would think it magic! Sugar and flour they emptied out of the bags without remorse; the bags only being wanted, being, as they thought, a kind of cloth. The guns would not go off in their hands as in Mr. Jamieson's, so they left them as useless; but clothing of every kind they seized eagerly. In one part of the room were piled up a quantity of newspapers and Chambers's Edinburgh Journals; these they dealt out to each other liberally, taking them also for a kind of cloth. These, afterwards, on finding out their mistake, were thrown here and there; and were found by Mr. Thomas, who had been sent after the depredators, scattered abundantly about the bush for twenty miles, by this rather novel "society for the diffusion of useful knowledge."

COLONIAL STATISTICS.

The returns as prepared by the colonial secretary (for New South Wales) and lately laid on the table of the legislative council, have just been published. They contain a mass of interesting and important information relative to the progress of colonial wealth, compiled and arranged with industry and care.

SHIPPING INWARDS.

The totals only for each year are given:—

In 1842 there is a diminution of shipping, in number 86, and of tonnage, compared with the preceding year, of 39,875. It must be remarked that there was gradual progress up to 1841. Here is retrogradation; and there will be a still greater falling off for 1843.

SHIPPING OUTWARDS.

Here again was falling off. Clouds are gathering, and the shadows of coming misery cast themselves far on before. In August, 1843, Mr. Wentworth, in the Legislative Council of New South Wales, said that "the countrywas in a state of unparalleled distress—that it had reached a crisis such as had never before been witnessed since the foundation of the colony. If any man felt a doubt on this point, let him look at the richest of the landed proprietors, and what was their condition? Was it not notorious that nine-tenths had their houses and lands and their mansions, built in the days of their prosperity, mortgaged up to the eyes? Was it not notorious that the inferior landed proprietors were unable to pay the wages of their servants, were harassed in courts of law, and were balanced between the sheriff on one hand, and the Insolvent Court on the other— amongst the squatters, was it not notorious that gentlemen with 10,000 sheep were unable to get credit for a bag of sugar or a chest of tea? If they looked at the merchants, they were without custom; the traders were without business, and mechanics and artizans were pining for want in the streets. If they looked to the result of this wretched state of things, they would see an insolvent list, which, in the short space of fifteen months, had swelled to the amount of nearly two millions, upon which an average dividend could not be obtained exceeding the value of 2½d. in the pound sterling."

The enormous interest paid by the colony to British capitalists at 10 per cent., 250,000l. per annum; the one million sent out to fetch immigrants; the vast sums spent in wine, spirits, &c., were doing their work of ruin. These are the never-sated Leviathans, which swallow up without remorse mimosa bark, tallow, and wool.

The quantity of wool imported into England from British possessions in 1842 was 18,467,212 lbs.; New South Wales supplied of this 8,725,641 lbs.

Return of live stock in the colony of New South Wales on the 30th of September, 1843:—

SYDNEY, OR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT.

COMMISSIONER'S DISTRICTS WITHOUT THE BOUNDARIES OF LOCATION.

SOUTHERN OR PORT PHILLIP DISTRICT.

PORTLAND BAY, FROM NOV. 13TH, 1840, TO JAN. 5TH, 1844.

Exports—Bales of Wool, 4,517; value, 50,1092. Oil, 427 tuns; value, 10,075l. Bone, 15¾ tons; value, 1,958l. Cattle, 844; value, 6,950l. Sheep, 24,837; value, 11,790l. Hides, 270; value, 100l. Tallow, 13 tons; value, 319l. Beef, 376 tierces; value, 1,466l. Wheat, 414 bushels; value, 1042. Potatoes, 1½ ton; value, 18l.? Butter, 27 cwt.; value, 155l. Sealskins, 2 hhds.; value, 97l. Sundries, 428l. Number of vessels inwards, 165; tonnage, 17,679. Total wharfage, 431l. 12s. 7d. Total duties, 5,845l. 18s. Total imports, 50,863l. 7s. 9d. Total exports, 83,549l.—Extracted from the Customs' Books to January 5th, 1844.

LATEST STATISTICS OF PORT PHILLIP, 1844.

But a great part of the Port Phillip revenue having been collected in Sydney, it may fairly be assumed that the ordinary revenue has paid the ordinary expenditure. And even in the amount above stated, as expenditure, is included the cost of public buildings and public works, to the amount of 58,329l. 0s. 3d,; the New Gaol and Court-house costing 19,638l. 7s. 9d.; and the expense under the head "Aborigines" being 29,464l. 4s. 5½d. The public buildings which swell the expenditure so seriously, cannot be looked upon as ordinary expenditure; whilst the item under "Aborigines" properly belongs to the land revenue. The population and live stock in this column is the nearest approximation to the correct numbers that can be obtained. It will be seen in the preceding data that the Port Phillip ordinary revenue exceeded its supposed expenditure by 18,000l. This is remitted to Sydney.

The whole four years' government outlay, for the religion and education of the Port Phillip district, is as follows:—

Then only think of the array of judges, Crown prosecutors, Crown lawyers, &c., and their cost to the country for the correction of crime; besides police magistrates, constables, &c.

The Melbourne Gaol is a noble building; but where is the public school, which ought to be founded on at least as liberal a scale? It is indeed a wonder that so grand a prison was needed, and in so pleasant a region, too; so many years now that the "Proclamation against vice and immorality" has been read! Extensive education; room for health, moral and physical; and open spaces for country enjoyment, will do more for society than proclamations or riot acts, though written with bayonets, worded with gunpowder, or sealed with the new drop.

In Melbourne, a town of seven years' growth, the growth of hotels, spirit-shops, and ale-houses, has been as rapid; of these I have counted fifty. No wonder then that for duty alone on spirits there has been paid—

A dreadful extinction this, of a young community's means, in fire-water, and in smoke!

There can be no doubt but that the squatting system, by its uncertain tenure, greatly encourages drunkenness and dissipation; masters themselves are unsettled, and so are the men. Were the squatting stations converted into real property, the owners would hire most likely family men; there would be more of a feeling of fixedness in Australian society; and much of that money, which is now every six or twelve months lavished away in town debauchery, would be expended in a manner much more conducive to colonial prosperity. Still, even now, the squatters might do more for their own good, and the country's, by encouraging family men. It is for them to think of this, and to reflect whether the land can have greater enemies than "those of its own house." I must here say a few words on the condition of working men in the town and the country.

In England, the money obtained as wages is distanced by the working man's desires: he emulates those above him: whilst in Australia, appearances are nothing; and little money need be expended to keep them up. Comforts, which are not commonly in sight, soon cease to seem such; and the Australian labourer, especially in the bush, relinquishes his old English customary enjoyments without much repining: he does as others do, and thus finds like company help him to an austere content. Those who have exchanged the close, dirty, unwholesome alleys of the large manufacturing towns for an Australian cabin, will find in it purer air, and better food, although in a worse dwelling; still the change for them is for the better. But, alas! for the British peasant, who has left his cottage, in some country village, lane, or field; who has exchanged his brick or stone walls for split slabs, betwixt each of which he can see the daylight; who has left society for solitude; old friends and neigh bours for the untrusting and untrusted new; who misses the common greenness of his native land; who sees the Sabbath light, but hears no rich old harmony of Sabbath-bells.

Then the English peasant reads the newspaper of a more intelligent people, and the more frequently exchanged book. His news is about a land, too, and a people which are known to him, and in which he feels a lively interest. An English newspaper or book in Australian huts are read over and over again until they know them off by heart.

I have met with men in the Bush, solitary at a cattle station, and they and the hut, and their one or two well-thumbed books, have all had the same smoke-dried appearance, a kind of brownglaze, as though they had been there, a kind of country heirlooms, from old patriarchal times, and would last so, smoke embalmed, for ever.

I knew a mechanic in Melbourne, who once resided near Nottingham; and was a subscriber to the Artizans' Library. He was married two years before he left England: during which time he had lived very comfortably; had dived deeply into the marrow of books, old and new; had saved 141.; and now what is the exchange? He is getting a bare livelihood; seldom sees a person who knows anything of his old pursuits or enjoyments; a little talk of books, and a book, are become, indeed, to him most precious. Moreover he, in coming to the colony, is afraid he took a step which he shall never be able to retrace.

After all, men in Melbourne are not so listless and lost as out in the country. I have observed to shepherds and hut-keepers what a pleasant kind of life they seemed to have of it; the answer was a negative shake of the head. One man, a Scotchman, said, if he took a book out along with him, the hot sun, the hot winds or rain were sure to spoil his reading, if not his book, and, what was worse, he lost his sheep through book-attentiveness. The sun gets up too soon for them, and is too long for them wearily traversing the same everlastingly bare heavens. Daylight, tea, damper, and mutton; noon, tea, damper, and mutton; and tea, damper, and mutton at night; and so winds up the shepherd's day and his year; and he goes into Melbourne to exchange his 20l, order on the Bank, for a week or two's old drunkenness; a few days half-dead-lingering in the town, at the corner of streets, in the Market-place, and at the Registryoffice for servants. Then away again he tramps with bed and bedding on his back up some twenty miles into the country, or in a bullocks'-dray hundreds, to the Hume, the Ovens, or the Murray, to pass another year's mutton-and-damper solitary weariness; and, if he does not get killed and embowelled by the natives, to go down through many dull years into an unlamented, lonely Bush grave. Such is the Arcadian life of the Australian shepherd!

But I have known it otherwise; have seen how by the presiding genius of domestic life, a poor mud-floored-slab-hut may be converted, what myriads are not, into a really comfortable home. Enlightened are the squatters, and well it is for the land where such are patronised.

BUSHRANGERS.

These are outlaws run-away convicts. The more gentlemanly of them in Van Diemen's Land are there what Robin Hood and Rob Roy were in Britain. They do not find, like Robin Hood, many rich bishops or abbots to despoil of their wealth, but food enough on drays, going from the towns to outstations, and in the settlers' houses, when by necessity they are compelled to enter them. Of these famous robbers, none are so much talked of for their generosity, their invariable respect and tenderness for women and children, as Mike Howe, and more especially Brady. Their life is one of reckless daring, of hourly peril, for they are always liable to be shot or hung; yet out of all this they seem to draw a fearful satisfaction, a stormy pleasure. Year after year they pass in covert warfare with their kind; sometimes flushed with success, in triumph, and halfsatisfied with the dangerous freedom of their mode of existence: then depressed by the narrowest escapes, and with the certainty of eventual capture, that, exhausted with such miserable tension of mind,they are ready to deliver themselves up. Many have done so, wearied out with the war of the many and one, although they knew it was for certain death.

Howe had been for many years a most successful bushranger; yet through what circumstances he could first have been a convict and then a run-away, was singular: for, although a robber, his good qualities as a man won him very general respect. At length a magistrate, finding his capture impossible, made a proclamation that on surrendering himself to the magistracy he should have a free pardon. Glad was Mike, and gave himself up: but what was his astonishment when he was told that the offer of pardon was not legal,—was without Government sanction, and that he would have to take his trial. Yes, and was tried and sentenced to death; but on Mike's plea of the free pardon seriously and solemnly set forth, the judge decided to defer the execution of Mike's sentence, until his return from Sydney, whither he was bound.

Now it happened that the judge's servant was an old mend of the convicted bushranger, and Mike somehow conveyed to him the request that in Sydney, or on the way back to Van Diemen's Land, he would learn from the judge the final decision, and instantly make his appearance before the prison, and wear in his hat a black or white ribbon as the signal of death or deliverance. Mike, like Milton's hero,

"Would be at the worst: worst was his port,
His harbour, and his ultimate repose."

Often as the bushranger had weighed the benefits and blessings of life and death: often as he had decided in favour of, and prayed for the latter; and tormented as he had been by uncertainty, and sick of suspense; and even when on the day of the judge's return he congratulated himself on the indifference he felt as to the result, still he at the same time eagerly found his way to the top of the prison, whence he might more readily read his fate.

It was beheld soon enough—the black signal. All at once the wild energy and indomitable spirit of his old life animated him; and it must have been a strong prison indeed that would have held him. Whilst there had been a chance of pardon and of life, he was irresolute—but now energy was the whole man.

They looked for Mike Howe in the morning to lead him forth to execution; but the old eagle was winnowing the air with free pinions in the woods again.

Our other bushranger was a man remarkable for the manliness of his character, who gathered followers unto him, outcasts like himself, who almost worshipped, yet feared him. He was, as their leader, decisive, fearless, and resolute: he would be obeyed. As their comrade faithful: as their friend, all gentleness. For Brady, hunted like a beast, two or three hundred pounds were offered, and he was at length betrayed—though not by his own followers.

He had entered the hut of some person in whom he thought he could trust,—was deceived, and secured. Alone in the room with his betrayer, Brady thought of an expedient: they had no water in the hut, and so he complained of being excessively thirsty—begged as a last favour that his keeper would fetch him some. He complied. To the spring it was several hundred yards. There was no time to be lost—it was life or death—so Brady thrust his arms, which were tied together with cords, into the fire. It was a horrible resource, but the only one: it succeeded: the cords were, with no small portion of his flesh, consumed: he sprang through the door, and escaped.

Brady's capturer was at first suspected by the authorities to have connived at his escape, but was soon freed from that imputation. All who knew Brady and the circumstances, advised the man to make the best of his way into some of the other colonies; but he satisfied himself with the secrecy of some outof-the-way place. Anything but treachery in an old friend, and the falsification of hospitable confidence, Brady would have forgiven, but the sense of his wrongs had been burnt into him, and he did not fail, as soon as he could use his hands, to find out his enemy, and shoot him.

Mike Howe and Brady, as sooner or later it is the fate of all bushrangers, were at last taken and executed.

A BUSH ROBINSON CRUSOE.

Others there are that flee from the rigours of penal slavery, not to contend with their fellow-men for a maintenance, better pleased to satisfy the demands of nature by the labour of their own hands,—and of this class was Philip Markham. For the space of six years he had concealed himself at the back of Russell's Falls, in Van Diemen's Land, during which space he had seen but one human being, the shepherd of his nearest yet distant neighbour, but was himself unseen. He had in his solitude clothed himself with the skins of animals; had kept goats and poultry of the Dorking breed; had raised vegetables, had grown corn, and had by some means ground it, and made bread. He had, like his famous prototype, his little inclosures, and his snug castle. He was king in his little world—had many comforts about him: his retirement was sweetened to him by the remembrance of the bitterest slavery—yet he was not at rest. The sense of solitude weighed heavily upon him. He saw before him, illness without help, and death without burial, and gave himself up. He had three years' additional slavery awarded him for absence without leave. Again in bonds and bitter servitude, Markham indulged in day-dreams of his old sweet freedom, of his castle, his inclosures, his goats, and his other wealth—and sighing for his lonely happiness, tried to escape, but in vain. What a pity that some poor unfortunate runaway like himself did not find out Markham before he delivered himself up, to have served him faithfully as a Man Friday.

MESSRS. GELLIBRAND AND HESSE.

Twice in this volume these gentlemen have been mentioned. The murder, supposed, of the former: and his discovery, by a skull, noticed by Mr. Hawdon. Now, in 1844, he is murdered over again. Where so many have left the known portion of the district for the unknown, never to return, it is hard to decide; still the annexed, from a Port Phillip paper, may be correct:—

"It appears that the murderers of Mr. Gellibrand were two men belonging to a very small tribe, then residing near the spot where the murder was committed. The tribe never exceeded seven men in number, and is now reduced to five; but the two principals in the bloody deed are yet alive, and could easily be captured. As a Bill is about being passed to admit the unsworn testimony of the aborigines in certain cases, and the tribe make no secret of the murder, there would be little or no difficulty in securing a conviction; this point should not be lost sight of. Mr. Gellibrand's life, it is believed, was insured for 11,000l, which sum, after an interval of three years from the period of his reported death, the Insurance Company paid to his widow, now a resident in Hobart Town. Mr. Henry Allan, the discoverer of the skeleton, is the son of a deputy-commissary-general, for many years at the head of the Commissariat at Sydney, and has one or two brothers resident in this province. Mr. Allan has been residing on his present station about four years, and heard from the natives the report of a white man having been murdered when he first went to reside there, but placed little or no faith in its truth, till about five weeks ago, when he went to the place pointed out by the natives, and found the skeleton. The way the blacks fixed the date of the murder, was by pointing to a 'picaninny' of about six years of age, and stating it was born on or about the day Mr. Gellibrand first joined the tribe. It will be remembered that no horse was seen by the natives, which can be accounted for by the statement of Mr. Gellibrand that he had come through twenty miles of country, consisting of ranges and dense scrub. We have since heard from two gentlemen who have passed through this country, and been within a mile of the very spot where the skeleton was found, that it is customary for bushmen, on arriving at this scrub, to hobble their horses and proceed on foot the rest of the journey, as all attempts to penetrate it on horseback have hitherto proved unavailing."

COMMISSIONERS OF CROWN LANDS.

Of these gentlemen in Port Phillip, who have a great deal of discretionary power and good salaries, there are four. They are magistrates, and in their jurisdiction, under whichever tree they choose to tie up their horses, is a court constituted. It is their vocation to let out locations to squatters, at 10l. per annum; to settle disputes amongst the settlers, or to dispute with them, and, in fine, to fine them for being contumacious. If a squatter complains that a neighbour has sliced one hundred acres from his run, because the neighbour wanted to cultivate it, and the commissioner thinks the squatter's run was large enough before, the lord of Nature's heritage, to quiet the grumbler, fines him 5l. If a poor fellow puts up a temporary dwelling in the wild and is caught trespassing thus on Crown land, he is summoned before the monarch of the Gum-tree-court, fined, not in the twenty, but in the mitigated penalty of ten or five, and if, unconscious that he is in a court, he swears a bit to ease his heart, he is fined 5l. more for swearing. If a squatter forgets his license day, he is fined 10l., or in the lesser penalty of 5l.; and the squatters are a notoriously forgetful race, not knowing the Crown rent-day, or any other day in the year, especially if there be any money to be paid on it. Thus the commissioners are a good deal murmured at, sometimes, it may be, justly; for discretionary power is not always mercifully used.

Cowper sung:—

"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless continuity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit
Might never reach me more."

Now, begging dead Cowper's pardon, the very highway into the rumour of oppression and deceit, is the "wilderness" and "continuity of shades." An old military gentleman once said that he had been a great deal about the world: to the Cape of Good Hope, to the Indies, East and West, and in Sydney; and it vexed him to see, under countenance of the British flag—the flag which of all others he most respected—that there, petty men, "dressed up in a little brief authority," were notoriously despotic. "Sir," continued he, " the good warm blood round John Bull's heart couldn't find its way to warm the extremities; and I was always glad to get back from the outposts to headquarters."

"England, with all thy faults, I love thee still."

PUBLIC STREETS IN THE EARLIER DAYS OF MELBOURNE.

These are bad enough now; but on our first arrival it was said that one or two children had disappeared in them. In Collins'street, lined on both sides with splendid plate-glass-windowed shops, near goodly chapels, and at the very threshold of banks, drays have been bogged, and only got out by digging with unheard-of labour. In rainy weather, Bourke-street and Elizabeth street are, by the torrent roaring through them, rendered nearly impassable even yet. Once in the papers was an advertisement for a thousand pair of stilts, to walk the streets of Melbourne with. When the rains have cut for them good open ravines in the streets for sewers, instead of availing themselves of elemental assistance, they fill them up again. Many a time wearily did I toil along the miry streets, and to avenge myself, sung of them thus:—

A beautiful town is Melbourne,
All by the Yarra's side;
Its streets are wide, its streets are deep—
They are both deep and wide:

Escaping from one quagmire,
There's room enough for more:
Such a beautiful town as Melbourne
Was never seen before.

I've seen a stout old carter
Look round him in despair,
And curse his stars, and ask himself
How ever he got there!

Whilst in that place, and in like case,
Who faster grew, and faster,
Were many mo', too deep in woe,
To laugh at his disaster!

PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY.

(From the Southern Australian, July 20.)

The following very interesting communication on the recent discovery of a large tract of available land in W estern Australia, has been kindly furnished to us by Captain Parker of the barque Charles, and will be read with great interest:—

Albany, King George's Sound, 22nd June, 1841.

SIR,—As you have expressed a wish to be acquainted with some particulars relative to the two expeditions to the westward of King George's Sound, of which I had the charge, I have much pleasure in complying with your request.

Several parties belonging to Albany, who for some years past have followed the occupation of sealing along the coast, having reported that there was a deep navigable river to the westward of this port, with fine timber on its banks, and no other person having had the curiosity to ascertain the fact since the foundation of the colony, I was induced, in the month of March last, to volunteer my services to the Government Resident of Albany, J. R. Phillips, Esq., and was promptly furnished by that gentleman with a fortnight's rations for four men, which were afterwards repaicl to him by the Local Government. I engaged a whaleboat, and arriving at this new river, which is about eighty miles from Bald Head westerly, we found ten feet of water over the bar, and a noble estuary, called by the natives "Norlalup," and into which three rivers discharge themselves; one of them, which is fresh about four miles from the estuary, and has three mouths to it, comes from the west by south: another flowing from the east is likewise fresh a few miles up; and the third and largest river, commonly called the "Deep River," first flows into the large estuary or inlet from the eastward, then from northeast, and latterly from the north. We went up the west by south river in the whale-boat, the west river six miles, and the "Deep River" twenty-four miles, and were only checked in our progress by dead timber, flung across the streams by the silent operations of time, but which could easily be removed. These rivers teem with fish, and their banks were crowned with trees of the most majestic growth, chiefly of the genus Eucalyptus, the mahogany, blue, and white gum. Their girth and length is enormous, some rearing their trunks to the height of 120 and 130 feet, without a branch except at the top, and generally eight, ten, and twelve feet in diameter in the forest parts; others were admirably adapted for masts and yards of ships—straight as a gun-barrel. Many fine runs for cattle, well watered by freshwater brooks, were discovered at the back of these finely timbered hills. From this part of the coast I proceeded twelve miles farther westward by sea, to Cape Chatham, and travelling inland for eight, saw another large estuary, called in the map "Broke's Inlet," abounding in cattle runs, of luxuriant pasturage. There is an island off Cape Chatham, called "Cape Chatham Island," which is the resort of great numbers of the sooty petrel, commonly called mutton-birds, and in ornithology procellarea fuliginosa. They have their nests on the ground, and on their return from sea to their roosts at sundown are easily killed with sticks, and form no mean repast with salt meat. It is a curious fact, that these birds migrate to another part of the world in the month of May, and re-appear again in vast numbers in the month of October. The supplies of fresh meat which we obtained in this way, spun out our scanty provisions for nearly a month, when, finding it impossible to prosecute further research, we returned to King George's Sound. This expedition only roused further curiosity, and stimulated me to fresh exertions; and in April last I procured a five-ton boat, with a dingy inside, and having obtained a supply of provisions for two or three months, from a public spirited individual here, who cheerfully lent his assistance after all other means had failed, I again left the settlement with four able men and a competent boat-steerer, as the winter months were approaching, and coastinginan open boat is somewhat dangerous. After weathering Bald Head, we first put into Torbay, twenty-five miles in a westerly course, where a vessel of 150 tons, partly built by the individual above alluded to (Mr. Sherratt), is now on the stocks. There is a great deal of good cattle-feed around Torbay; plentifully watered, and a safe passage for ships into the large bay, keeping close to the west, Cape Howe on the eastern side of it. The harbour, protected by two small islands, is about five miles from the Cape. During a south-west or south-east gale of wind, the middle of the bay, being exposed to the force of the winds and swell of the ocean, is hazardous even for boats. From Torbay we proceeded to another bay, on the east side of Point Hillier, called "William's Bay," having an estuary near it, denominated "Parry's Inlet." This bay is by no means safe either for ships or boats, but being caught in a gale of wind we were obliged to make the best of it, and moored the boat inside of a reef of rocks, (which broke the heavy swell,) as safely as could be under all the circumstances: but I would by no means recommend it. During the prevalence of the gale, we explored the country around the inlet, and found that two rivers flowed into it, but the communication with the sea was choked up by a sandy bar, which was almost dry; the country adjacent to these rivers is chiefly of a flat description, having no less than six fresh water lakes within an area of fifteen miles, and abundant cattle-feed. Some very fine sheep-runs in the vicinity of undulating hills were also discovered. In one voyage from this place to the "Deep River," we saw the mouth of another large inlet, which we determined to investigate when opportunity permitted. We arrived at the "Deep River" at night, and swept over the bar with ease, and I now found that the average depth of water was two fathoms. There is an island about a mile from the bar, which we named "Saddle Island," from its resemblance to a saddle, with the flaps extended, under which there is safe anchorage for ships during all the year, as it is protected from all the winds, except partially from the east, which only blows in the summer-time, and seldom, if ever, with violence. It is protected from the north, north-west, west, south-west by south and southeast, with four, five, six, and seven fathoms of water on hard sand; on this island there is a copious spring of pure fresh water. Inside the heads of the river, but outside the bar, there are two other ship-harbours, completely protected from the winter winds, but open in summer to the south-east, and therefore at that season not very safe. After passing the bar, the water deepens to three and four fathoms, where small ships may lie at anchor secure as if in a mill pond. Being determined to explore the country to the source of the largest river, called by the natives (many of whom we saw) "Qua Koonllup," we sailed up for twenty miles from the bar; and disembarking, I took two of the men with me, and struck the country in a north direction, with a week's provisions. After leaving the boat, we found the river again broad and deep, at a distance of ten miles, passing over a country abounding in splendid timber and rich veitch and grass on the surface of the ground, the soil being generally a rich loam to the tops of the hills. On the second day's journey we perceived a very high double-peaked mountain towering its head in solemn grandeur amongst the adjacent scenery; and after a very long walk through much good land, we at last reached its base, around which, to our satisfaction, we found the river winding its course, but rushing over rocks in its bed in a brawling stream—our distance from its mouth calculated to be about fifty miles. We were two hours in ascending this mountain, which is composed of rich soil—magnificent timber, and green wattle trees at the very top twenty-five feet in height, until the traveller arrives at the foot of the bare granite summit, which is almost perpendicular, and requires severe toil to master the ascent. The view from the top of the peak is very grand; we saw the Parrongwip and Tulbehyp hills far in the interior, the high lands, about Rogenup, the "Mount Lindsey" of Dr. Wilson, and several large sheets of water along the coast, among which was the one we had observed between William's Bay and the Deep River. We thought that we had a fair right to give this mountain a name, and accordingly called it "Mount Sherratt," in compliment to the gentleman who fitted out the expedition: it is nearly four thousand feet above the level of the sea, and I think that the river has its source at or near its base, as from the top of the hill all trace of it was lost amongst what appeared, at such a distance, to be a vast level plain, the trees seeming to be scarcely shrubs. Not deeming it necessary to trace the river farther up, as we had ascertained that it was navigable for forty miles from its mouth, we directed our steps towards the large sheet of water which we had observed from the sea, between William's Bay and the Deep River, and encamped for the night on the base of the mountain, with the river running by our sleeping couches. We started at dawn of day in a S.E. direction, and about sundown, after a tiresome walk through an indifferent country, we reached the bank of a large fresh-water river, which tracing down soon brought us to a large sheet of water, called in the map of the coast, "Irwin's Inlet," but which has never been thoroughly explored. We found extensive runs of cattle-pasture in the lowlands, as usual, well watered, and fine ranges of sheep herbage on the adjacent hills, of sufficient extent to depasture large flocks. The inlet has a shallow communication with the sea of about two feet of water over a sand bar, but inside is capable of floating large ships. On this wide expanse of water, we saw great numbers of swans, ducks, and other waterfowl, especially in the neighbourhood of two islands adjoining the mouth. About three miles in a S.W. direction along the beach, we found a harbour never before discovered, completely land-locked from all dangerous winds, with a fine entrance into it for small ships, which, to all appearance, was perfectly safe and free from broken water or breakers. The accompanying sketch will convey a better idea of it than mere words. It is situated about three miles E. by N. of Point Raune, in the bight of a bay, and a stream of fresh water ten feet broad flows into it: the adjacent country is very fine, and extended to our head-quarters, the Deep River, distant nearly twenty miles. We afterwards pursued our voyage to Cape Entrecasteaux, distant fifty miles further, and anchored under the lee of an islet about three miles from the main, commonly called "Sandy Island." There is good anchorage here for coasting vessels, although not for large ships, as a great many breakers surround the island. We were detained some time on this barren spot by a heavy gale of wind, and on its abatement I landed on the main at Point Entrecasteaux, with two men, and explored the country between that part of the coast and our former station: the boat, with the three remaining men, was to meet us at Deep River. On the first day we saw extensive sheep-runs, and two fresh water rivers, flowing into the interior, not towards the sea. On the second day we struck a beautiful fresh-water river, with a very strong current, and luxuriant feed on its banks, and tracing it to the ocean, passed its mouth in three feet of water, quite fresh at the bar, by the impetuous force of the current which mingled its hue with the deep sea wave. I am of opinion, that when the passage is properly known, boats of considerable burthen may pass the bar of this fine river, and penetrate into the interior for a considerable distance. Exploring the country further on our route, we ascertained the fact, that Brake's Inlet (so called on the map, after a person whom nobody in this colony knows, but so dubbed by some fanciful Government officer, who only heard of it by report) is an inland water, about twenty-five miles in length, by ten broad, in several places, and receives a large river from the interior, which circumstances prevented me from examining or even seeing, except through a prospect glass. I can only state, that it employed us a whole day and a half to walk along the south-west shore of this large lake, which has an opening to the sea during the rainy season, and that its banks and surrounding hills more than realised our expectations as a cattle and sheep country, which we never had been led previously to expect, from the supineness of discovery hitherto exhibited in this part of the colony. Travelling between Broke's Inlet and the Deep River, in a straight course, with some deviations into which I was tempted by the beauty of the scenery, I cannot give my opinion regarding the actual extent of sheep pasture, but as there was several hours' walk by corn grass, and the same character of country extending itself right and left, and far into the interior, as I could judge from the top of a hill, it must form a space of no inconsiderable magnitude, well worthy the attention of large flock-holders. I speak of sheep merely: as for cattle, they may luxuriate everywhere throughout all these extensive runs. To the above remarks, I beg leave to add the following observations:—

1st. That stock may either be imported by sea into this newly discovered district of countiy by means of the two harbours, or driven from the port of King George's Sound by land.

2nd. The timber referred to in this narrative is most valuable for ship-building, and other purposes. Some years ago the Board of Admiralty gave an order to Sir James Stirling, the late Governor of the colony, for two hundred tons of Swan River mahogany (very inferior), which order has never been complied with.

3rd. Whales abound in the various bays. The fur seal frequents the islands, and the rivers and estuaries are full of fish, thus opening a noble field for future enterprise.

4th. There is abundance of surface fresh water in all directions.

5th. I am firmly of opinion that this fine country connects itself with the much praised district of Leschenault or Australind, and it possesses better harbours.

6th. A poisonous plant has been lately discovered in the Swan River districts, which is destructive to cattle and sheep, as tried by various experiments. Knowing this plant well, I carefully inspected the new country, and never found a blade of it to the westward of King George's Sound; nor is it to be seen at Leschenault, which I have visited twice in Her Majesty's Colonial schooner Champion.

I have the honour to be, &c.

WM. N. CLARK.

To Capt. Parker, barque "Charles."

I, at first, doubted whether I could with strict propriety quote the foregoing in a book that was not on Australia generally; but the enterprising spirit of the person whose exertions, unrewarded save by the exertions themselves, recorded in it; and the mention of some immense trees which he met with, even larger than those mentioned by me growing on Watt's River; this corroboratory evidence, and other, and deep interest in the paper itself, overcame my scruples. By such notices as these, it is made most evident what a great deal may be effected in the way of discovery by individual energy and enterprise. Major Mitchell, who accomplished so much for Australia by his inland expeditions, was knighted, and otherwise rewarded, very judiciously, by his country. Count Streleski, who discovered and explored the splendid range of country to the east of the Port Phillip Bay, beyond Western Port, a land of fine rivers, lakes, and glorious champaigne country, who only just escaped with his life,—I wonder if he was rewarded by the English government? for Sir George Gipps did not reward him, although he called the new region Gippsland! It would have been more fittingly denominated by the Polish discoverer, in accordance with Sir George's munificence, "Chipsland." The Colonial Legislative Council proposed to explore the northern country, and make a communication overland to Port Essington, Sir Thomas Mitchell offering his services to that end, but Sir George postponed the enterprise. Alas, that he who, by exciting a speculative spirit, has evinced so immense a capacity for mischief, should be powerless for any good! How different from Sir Richard Bourke, the previous Governor! under whose auspices most of Mitchell's discoveries were made! How grovelling compared with our great national interest in the enlargement of geographical knowledge. Our country is, I am proud to say it, not niggardly in its expenditure, even where the results are less important than the exploration and revelation of all that yet shrouds itself mysteriously in the immensity of Central Australia! Then wherefore such torpidity in the colony? Not only ought the Government to prosecute discoveries, but wherever there is a really serviceable exertion of individual energy, it ought to be rewarded, and will, no doubt, when our British heart and intellect are represented in New South Wales by a new and enlightened Governor. What a field will then open itself for Natural Science! The Mineralogist, the Geologist, and the Botanist, will be active; and in the department of Zoology much, I am convinced, has yet to be done. New, animals there are, and new birds. As an evidence of this, I may mention that in Gippsland has been found a kind of sloth, called by the working people "the Gippsland Monkey." Also, the natives talk about a kind of animal that burrows underground like a mole, leaving its haunts only in the night. At Mr. Thomas's request a native made a drawing of it with a pen, and were the creature anything like the representation of it, once brought to the Zoological Gardens it would excite the interest of all Europe. Birds were shown to me, which I was assured had not been seen by any naturalist from Europe; and this I can believe, for, until within a month of my quitting Australia, fresh birds, entirely new to me, attracted my notice.

EXTENT OF AUSTRALIA FELIX.

Westward the Glenelg is the boundary: but the river does not so exactly define it as is necessary, consequently there are disputes about some of the squatting stations, whether South Australian or Austral-Felician. Northward, the desert is the demarkation; eastward, the snowy-mountains. Looking at the map, the country seems to be from two to three hundred miles in length, and is occupied northward, in some directions, for two hundred miles. It is not, to say the least of it, less than England. The principal rivers are the Murray, in the north-west; the Goulburn to the north, the Hume and the Ovens; and the Yarra, eastward; to the south-west the Barwon. It has many smaller rivers, such as the Ex, the Weirebee, the Morable, the Plenty; Watt's River; lakes, chains of ponds, salt lakes; and of creeks flowing only in the winter, an incalculable number.

BAYS AND PORTS.

Port Fairy is small and dangerous. Many vessels are compelled to slip their cables, and stand out to sea in rough weather. Captains trading thither are recommended to take with them good store of anchors. Many vessels have there been wrecked.

Portland Bay is more capacious. It "is exposed to a heavy swell during four months of the year, which renders landing in it dangerous; but during the remaining eight months the winds blow off the land, when it is perfectly safe."

The soil in these districts is, to a great extent, of the richest quality. Belfast, in Port Fairy, and Portland in the other, are rising townships.

Of Port Phillip Bay we have said enough elsewhere; and will give, from the Port Phillip Patriot, communicated by a contributor, an account of the other ports.

"WESTERN PORT

Is situated in longitude 145° 30', latitude 38° 15', and is but a few hours' sail from the heads of Port Phillip. Although the soil and pasturage in the neighbourhood is such as to hold out abundant inducement to the intending settler, it has excited but little attention, and has attracted but few residents. Yet Western Port may be said to possess in itself many of the constituent elements of greatness; the land is of the finest quality for purposes of grazing, the bay abounding with fish of the choicest description; in the vicinity, coal of an excellent quality, fuller's earth, and various other minerals, are abundant. The fact, however, of its capabilities being but little known, and its resources remaining yet to be opened up, is before us: and the cause or causes of this neglect may perhaps hereafter form an interesting subject of inquiry.

"In 1827 a penal settlement was formed at Western Port by Mr. Hovell, under the auspices of the Government, but proving a failure after a few months' trial, it was abandoned. Alluding to this, Mr. Hovell writes as follows:—

"'Western Port affords safe anchorage for vessels of any draught of water.- The settlement lately formed by the Government, but since abandoned, was situate on the eastern side of the bay. This was supplied scantily, but with good water. The country from this spot to Bass's River, consists principally of a rich alluvial soil, interspersed here and there with patches of heath. The amount of good land in this part of the country seems to be about seven or eight thousand acres.'

"The following is extracted from Cunningham's 'Two Years in New South Wales':—

"'From Wilson's Promontory to Western Port the coast stretches along in a westerly direction round Cape Liptrap, about sixty or seventy miles, bounding an extent of country described as the finest ever beheld, and reaching apparently about forty miles to the foot of a very lofty range of mountains running parallel with the coast. In parts it resembles the park of a country seat in England, the trees standing in picturesque groups to ornament the landscape. The timber is mostly the same as in this island, but some of the species in that genial climate attain greater size and beauty. In other parts the eye wanders over tracts of meadow land, waving with a heavy crop of grass, which being annually burned down by the natives is re-produced every season. In these situations large farms might be cultivated without a tree to interrupt the plough. Various freshwater lagoons lie scattered on the surface, and about eight miles up the Western River a branch-stream intersects it. A second tributary stream falls by a cascade into this latter about five or six miles up, navigable for small vessels, where there is an eligible situation for a town. The mouth of the port is about thirty miles wide. An island, called Phillip's Island, occupies the centre, stretching about thirteen miles, leaving an entrance at each extremity. From the headland of the eastern main, a reef runs toward the island, leaving a narrow entrance for ships, but hazardous to one unacquainted with the passage. The western entrance is, however, safe and commodious for vessels of any burden. The best course is to keep within half a mile of the island on the starboard side, which has a sandy beach, called Grant's Rock, at the western extremity. This is more necessary, as a reef runs out some distance from the main.'

"An extract from the Notes made of the recent journey of Messrs. Morris and Kersopp, will also be found interesting

"'Phillip Island, lying east and west across the opening of Western Port, is generally low, covered with thick scrub. The scrub is composed of several varieties of beautiful shrubs. The mangrove is apparently identical with the mangrove of the tropics; the leaf resembles the olive, and, if the plant were not associated with the deadly malaria, might be considered handsome. The anchofage is excellent, and is well protected from the south and west. The largest ship can run from the westward into Western Port, by keeping along Phillip Island, and anchor with safety in from five to twelve fathoms water. The entrance is open and easy of approach. The anchorage off the north-east point of Phillip Island will, in future years, prove a valuable refuge for shipping. There is excellent water to be found by digging in the sand above high-water mark. In fact, two wells have been dug, and are now full of clear wholesome water. The shores of Western Port are low alluvial flats of clay, with hills rising gently back covered with tree and scrub. The charts of Western Port are not accurate.

"'Mr. Kersopp examined the eastern entrance to Western Port. He reported that he had examined the eastern passage, which he found easy and available for ships of 300 or 400 tons; that the depth of water in the shallowest part of the channel, at the lowest tide, was two and a half fathoms; that the inner entrance is about one quarter of a mile wide; but that the outer entrance, formed by Cape Woolamai and the opposite point of the mainland, extends a mile across. This is a lofty and conspicuous Cape, consisting of a mass of granite, along and under which there is sufficient water for the largest ship; the anchorage is protected from any wind at south-west. The inner part of the eastern passage forms a secure harbour, sheltered from the east by a long sand spit, which is dry at low water, and breaking the force of the wind, keeps the water at all times smooth.'

"In speaking of Western Port, I may as well touch upon a subject connected with this province. A writer on Australia Felix, commenting on the spirited overland journey performed by those enterprising travellers, Messrs. Hovell and Hume, asserts, that the credit due was somewhat diminished by a dispute that arose between them on their return to Sydney, 'as to the exact position of the southern coast they had so fortunately, and with so much difficulty, succeeded in reaching'—Mr. Hume asserting that it was at Port Phillip he had seen the sea, while Mr. Hovell maintained it to be Port Western; and further, that to decide the matter at issue, Mr. Hovell was sent in a Government schooner to Port Western, by His Excellency Governor Darling. This, in several conversations I have had here on the subject with Mr. Hovell, has repeatedly been denied; nor indeed does it seem very probable, when we consider that they had in their possession instruments for determining the longitude and latitude, which would at once have settled the question, had there been any in dispute. Mr. Hovell did go subsequently to Western Port, but not to ascertain the correctness or incorrectness of any former opinion, his object being to establish the nucleus of a penal settlement there; this was, however, in a very short period, from its ascertained ineligibility, broken up and abandoned.

"LADY'S BAY

Is a small securely sheltered cove, with a depth in many places of from seven to eight fathoms water, on the eastern side of Wilson's Promontory, about four or five miles from its extremity. It was named by Captain Wishart, who discovered it, after his vessel, the Lady of the Lake; that it is but little known is proved by the circumstance of Sealer's Cove, a much inferior harbour, only about a mile to the north of it, being usually selected as a place of anchorage by vessels taking refuge under the Promontory. Lady's Bay is so free from danger that the mariner in entering might touch the rocks with his vessel's broadside and still float in six fathoms water.

"From our position at anchor in Lady's Bay the Heads bore by compass as follows:—

"N. head, NNE.½E.
S. head, E.bN.

"The shores are rocky, exceedingly steep, and covered with dense impenetrable scrub—the rocks are principally of granite. Good water is to be obtained in this locality. Vessels rendezvousing here can procure an abundant supply of rabbits from an island a short distance from the Bay, known as Rabbit Island. The Bay, too, has the usual characteristic of unfrequented harbours on this coast—abounding with fish. A whaling station has recently been formed here by a person named Somerville, and the whaling party have erected huts, and the necessary apparatus for trying out, &c., on the shores of the Bay.

"SEALER'S COVE

Is a small bight, also on the eastern side of Wilson's Promontory. It, however, will bear no comparison as a harbour with Lady's Bay; nor, from its proximity to the latter, would its existence deserve notice, had not Lieut. Flinders, in his chart of this part of the coast, given its situation, while, probably from ignorance of the fact, he suffered Lady's Bay to pass unnoticed.

"CORNER INLET.

"Perhaps there is no saying more remarkable for the truism it involves than the simple one of 'It's an ill wind that blows no good.' The loss of that noble steamer the Clonmel, which at the time was productive of great inconvenience and injury to the traffic between this port and Sydney, may be considered as the primary cause of the discovery of a noble harbour, till then reported to be a shallow and unprofitable inlet of the sea. The means of opening up the fine country discovered by Count Streleski, before considered difficult, were by it rendered easy and secure.

"This harhour, from the recent period of its attracting attention, is as yet hut little known. The sand-banks which are situated at its entrance will, till it is better known, render it liable to be viewed with distrust by mariners. That it only requires to be known to remove this distrust, is evinced from the fact that not a single vessel despatched there but has performed the voyage in safety. It would indeed be a work of public utility, especially since Gipps'-Land has excited so much of the public attention, were an accurate survey of this harbour and its entrance taken and laid before the community.

"The general course pursued by vessels bound to Corner Inlet, is to coast along Wilson's Promontory till making the entrance; this may be known by a long low point, with a yellow bluff. The channel, on entering, winds considerably—it varies in depth from two-and-a-half to three fathoms. A few beacons have been laid down by a private individual. The Albert River, besides several smaller streams, discharges itself into the Bay. The township formed on the banks of the river already numbers a population of 100 persons. The following is an extract from a letter written by Captain Griffin, at present in command of the party employed by Mr. Grose in recovering from the wreck of the Clonmel:—

"'Vessels drawing above eight feet cannot enter by any other than the eastern channel, the least water on the bar of which is about fifteen feet; and so narrow is the ridge, that you seldom get more than one cast of the lead, before you are into 3, 4, 7, and 10 fathoms, cariying the latter until you arrive within the distance I have before stated.'

"Corner Inlet, even when it becomes better known, cannot be recommended as a port of refuge to mariners—not only from the sand-banks as before stated, situated at its entrance, but from its being situated on a part of the coast viewed with dread by all masters of vessels. With the exception of this harbour, that long bend of the coast from the Promontory to Cape Howe is without a single place of refuge for a vessel incautiously hugging the land, should the wind, which is often the case, chop round and blow dead on the shore. The cutter Midge, on a recent excursion made by her with a view of ascertaining if any harbour, as was reported, existed between Corner Inlet and Cape Howe, was caught in this way, and had it not been for her small size, close sailing, and the excellent way in which she was managed, she must inevitably have been lost. A large vessel in her place would not have had the same chance, for the bulk she would have presented to the storm would have caused her to drive bodily on to the coast,"

BRIEF SNATCHES OF LETTERS.

"Melbourne, New South Wales, May 12th, 1840.

"Melbourne is a wonderful baby town. Looking on the place, street after street of good brick, and stone, and wood houses, you cannot easily bring yourself to believe that it is the work of only three or four years. Launceston, which has been rising for the last twenty years at least, is not larger or so large. This is the very metropolis of land-excitement, of land-speculation—the very focus of mercenary fever—of 'who shall get and who shall keep.' The governor here says, and truly so, if a knot of people get together in England they are sure to talk politics; here about blocks and sections, and half-sections, and allotment of towns or country lands. I expect before we have been here very long, that we shall be infected with the land fever, and as a person here observes, be like the Melbournites, ready to sell one's own kindred at 75 per cent, profit.

"This place is not the perfect Paradise it has been represented. The land is certainly good, and the country pleasant enough now (in the winter), only that it is sometimes too cold. The changes of temperature are very surprising, sometimes fifty degrees in the space of twelve hours. It has been thirty in our tent at midnight, and by noon up as high as eighty. I think the thermometer has never reached higher since we have been here than ninety-two, and it did not seem extraordinarily hot. We have passed the time away very agreeably, both here and in Van Diemen's Land. When lying in the river Tamar, we made pleasant excursions on the water, fishing and shooting, and into the woods. If my former letters have reached you, much of our voyage will be already familiarly known. We were out at sea from Portsmouth to Launceston, from weighing to casting anchor, just eighteen weeks to an hour. In Van Diemen's Land we were eight weeks. We entered the Heads of Port Phillip on Sunday, the 5th of April. Twice in the day we were fast on sand-banks: the last time we were unable to get the ship off again until Tuesday the 7th, on which day we sailed to William's Town, fifty miles from the Heads. The entrance to the inland sea of Port Phillip is a wild mass of turbulent waters, only about a mile wide. Yet at so narrow a pass the vast bulk of tide water has to find ingress and egress, covering the immense space of twenty-live miles wide and sixty long. Well may it rush, and leap, and welter. It is terrifying, or would be so to persons unaccustomed to the sea. The first time we crossed to the beach, we took the nearest cut to town through a pleasant flat, covered thinly with white, blue, and swamp gum-trees, with she-oak, and many very beautiful Australian shrubs, large and small. The day after we sailed up the Yarra, a long tug for us in the boat. The country on both sides is low, and covered with tea-tree, similar to hop-poles, with a bunch of yew at top. Under these grow reeds, just the same as in England. The kingfisher that we saw flitting about among them, was even more vivid in its purple and crimson dress than the English one. We also saw a pelican, black swans, and wild ducks, very good each after their kind. We are encamped on the plains opposite Melbourne, with the pretty river Yarra, or Yarra-Yarra, betwixt us.

"The Bakewells, the Doctor, and the two Greeves's, had a boat built while in Portsmouth: this is our ferry-boat. In it we have many times gone both up and down many miles. The river at Melbourne begins to be wooded, and all the country upwards is rich, varied with plain and knoll very delightfully. Tom and I, sometimes the Doctor and the Bakewells with us, stroll up and down the park-like country in every direction for miles. We have also amused ourselves usefully in making chairs and stools, Crusoe-like, of a rude and antique character. Tom has also made a wheelbarrow and two ladders, very good ones. He yesterday killed a black cockatoo.

"Land in the town sells very high. In the principal situations the frontages for building sell at twenty-five guineas per foot. That is, if a plot of building land is twenty feet in front and sixty in length, you have the whole as twenty feet, taking the land through. In other parts of the town it is 5l. per foot, and in some less. The half-acre town sections are now put up by government at 150l. each. The suburban sections, eighteen or more acres, at 5l. per acre. The country sections, 640 acres each, or more, twenty miles from the town, or more, 12s. per acre.

"February 21st, 1841.—You will often wonder how we are going on, and think how differently life passes on here from what it did at Nottingham. There is indeed a great change, yet good and evil are so inseparably linked and blended, that no situation can be realised without a liberal quantum of both. We have no winter, but then we are done rather too brown by the summer. If we have no poor-rate collectors, nor tax-gatherers, we have fleas and mosquitoes, which bloodsuck us almost as much. If we buy land cheaper, it costs ten times as much tc cultivate it. In England, through the long civilisation, and by the blessing of more tender and Christian consciences, a poor man will work almost the eyes out of his head for one or two shillings per day, doing the hardest labour under the sun; whilst here, they do all kinds of labour very pleasantly, taking care not to kill themselves, at the rate of 8s., 14s., 16s. per day, according to the kind of employment.

"The labourers, hut-keepers, and working men generally, have been getting sadly too much money. I have heard of many instances when the prodigal expenditure of bush-labourers was perfectly astonishing. One man who had been up in the country about two years, came to his inn in Melbourne, having in his pocket more than 100l., his savings during that period—of this 10l. was spent that very evening in calling for dozens of the most expensive wine, and freely treating every person about him. In less than a fortnight all was gone. What would he naturally do next is the question. Why off into the bush again, to save and save for another such outbreak.

"We have had a man mowing near us on the unoccupied land, who goes out of Melbourne daily with one bullock in a small cart, getting bush-hay. A small load of this, easily collected by him in six or seven hours, he sells at home for 1l. Thus he frequently gets 6l. per week in fine weather. This money is entirely clear; he pays no rent; collecting his hay on open land, where he can find it. One Monday morning early, I overtook him on the road to Melbourne, with a load; how surprisingly early! but he confessed to me that for the first time in two years he had been tempted to go out a-mowing on the Sunday. He was not satisfied with the six days, but must also press Sunday into his service—6l. per week not being enough to spend. Still he did not mean to repeat the thing, for as he was returning, his load was upset, and being too late to re-load, he was compelled to sleep with it out in the bush.

"On Christmas eve, we were very much amused by a man with a horse and dray—the liquor had got into his head, and so he had got out of the road, and came down to our place. We put him right several times, in vain: he always came back, and kept going to and fro in the woods, and rumbling up and down in them. We heard him at intervals, until after midnight; first in one part of the bush, then in another, making a terrible rattle with his dray among the stones. We felt satisfied that daylight would show him the way home when it found him, if he had not killed himself and his horse before then, by driving from some of the rocky steeps into the Yarra. People here often get drunk, and reeling out of Melbourne, find themselves a mile or two in the country. A sailor came to us one day, to ask where he was. The last thing he could remember, was drinking at the Highland Laddie, in the town, and now he had just picked himself up at the foot of a gum-tree! Melbourne is a strange drunken place, and there are many temptations for working men, and one fiery impulse—the heat of the climate.

"Few days pass without us seeing four-wheel carriages, gigs, and horses, and horsemen in great numbers, go by near us from Melbourne to Ileidelburgh—both places situate on the Yarra, eight miles from each other; and our farm is about half-way. Whether the colony will maintain its position, and continue improving, is all yet speculation.

'There is no land like England,
Where'er the light of day be;
There are no men like Englishmen,
So brave and wise as they be.'

Yet this is a fine country: this Sabbath light and breezy, on which I am writing, has no equal in the finest summer's day in dear Old England—it is indeed a most lovely day. Our garden, only yet cultivated since the 2nd of October, has produced us potatoes, peas, beans, cabbages, carrots, parsley, melons very fine, and still larger vegetable marrows. The soil will do. The climate in summer is as hot as can well be endured; often 102° in the shade, and 120° in the sun. Doctor Lang says, 'The heat is never oppressive'—perhaps he means, does not entirely burn the life out of you! Y ou are enabled to get through it in some way. This summer has been here the most oppressively hot experienced, or rather endured, by the oldest residents in Port Phillip. I have walked to and from Melbourne when it has been 116° in the sun; but on coming home, had to strip off every thing, even my stockings, all wet through with perspiration. Fie, Doctor Lang!

"I have written very little verse since I came here, and that perhaps not poetry, having had other and more urgent employment. You used to say nothing would do here but spade-husbandry. There was some truth in your observation, yet we intend to try the plough. We used to talk about some person at Adelaide, who was nursing a cabbage for many months—yet after all worth nothing. This was surely the facetious story of some traveller. I have seen them in this country finer than could be grown in England. I wish we had some fruit-trees. We bought a dozen, but they were dead before we could plant them. Not one of the orange pips which I brought from England have grown. Whenever I quit this country, I shall often and ardently sigh after the climate for the sake of a garden and orchard. Here we have the climate without the trees—there we shall have the trees without the delicious climate. I have, as the phrenologists would say, the organ of locality in a surpassing degree. I am fond of our dwelling on the banks of the Yarra—our neat little two-roomed weather-boarded cottage—its curving slopes, and its prospect of silvery water, and old white birch-bark-looking gum-trees. The mimosas, three kinds of them, are beautiful and abundant, also the acacias. The insects of the country are a great nuisance—there are ants larger than a wasp, with a larger sting than it, and winged too, into the bargain. Indeed, we have ants in-door and out, of all sorts and sizes, in myriads. Of fleas it is the native country. Maggots or gentles, as honest Izaak calls them, are blown upon the meat alive and crawling. This I did not believe until I saw it."

"Port Phillip, Jan. 2nd, 1842.

"Dear Friend,—Although I have written to you months ago, there has been no vessel from this port until now—and now indeed I have two opportunities, one private, direct hence to London, the other through Van Diemen's Land; one missive therefore shall be despatched by each conveyance, that you may have two chances of hearing from me instead of one, or perhaps one instead of none. How mortifying it is not to be able to hold regular intercourse with those whom it is not possible to see, perhaps for years, if then. I am sorely afraid that many of my letters are lost, that to Tait, enclosed to S. G., amongst the number. This I shall regret, as I am told that it is contemplated by the Sydney or the Home Government to ruin this province entirely, by throwing open to purchasers, at a very cheap rate, the Crown lands in the neighbourhood of Melbourne, whilst Sydney and some other towns are, by special privilege, to be exempt from this infliction. I had, I think, clearly shown in that letter the oppressive injustice of such a measure, the bare expectation of such an event having proved suificient to paralyse already the onward march of this district; and were it to come into actual operation, I know not what would become of us.

"Lord John Russell's new instructions to the governor of New South Wales have already had the eifect of lowering considerably the price of land, and inasmuch as it puts a stop to over-speculation, would not prove unsalutary; but, as I have before stated, to reduce to 1l. per acre, adjoining allotments that have been sold by the same government for 42l. per acre, is neither honourable nor honest, however expedient; and I doubt its expediency. Sufficient land might have been surveyed to supply all possible demands, and opened for selection, and yet property might have been protected by a simple clause in any measure regarding this colony, and without which clause there will be ruin and confusion. But enough of this—no thanks to Lord John Russell. When I shall be able to get back, I cannot tell. I could have been very well content to have passed away a few years in Australia, were there anything like stability given to property, and anything like 'certainty in the price of any one article to be bought or sold in the colony. Now for instance, had we bought, as J. B. and others did, several yoke of oxen, they were selling at that time for 40l. a yoke; ten months after, when we bought, they were just half that price; and now, in the space of four or five months more, they may be worth 12l. or 14l. When we first arrived, sheep were worth 35s. per head; six months ago they were not worth more than 12s. or 14s.; now, or recently, they have been worth 20s. So much for fluctuation and downward tendency.

"It is not the country for agriculture; cheaper labour is obtainable in the penal colonies of Sydney and Van Diemen's Land, consequently they outstrip us. Had we begun sheepkeeping at the time of our arrival, and had we had good luck with them, which all have not, we must have more than sunk the increase, through the depreciation in value. * *

"One day this—nay, last—week, whilst I was busy writing, with the cottage-door open, in flew a very small bird, which 1 caught in the window, and it proved to be the diamond-bird. I knew it again, having seen a stuffed specimen in Melbourne. I should like much to take such a one with me to England, but did not like the idea of killing so beautiful a little creature, merely for so distant an uncertainty; moreover there would have been something inhospitable in the deed, as it came voluntarily. Yesterday, I saw the Australian spoonbill, a large white, heronlike looking creature; and Powers Smith (I wonderhow he is going on) would have been quite in his element amongst the beetles and cicadas which I saw in the bush.

"You have seen, when in some idle mood, you have been chatting to Mary, or Sarah, or Hannah, as they were busy ironing, in some comfortable winter kitchen, the thing called an ironing-blanket, scorched here and there to a ruddy brown with the hot iron; such now, only done brown universally, is the pasturage of Australia Felix, eaten bare by vast herds of cattle; the short herbage crisp as spun glass. Day after day, a man on horseback has gone down by our garden to the river, about noon, and after drinking and filling two quart bottles with pure Yarra, has ridden off again; perhaps he has had to come several miles for it.

"It is noon, burningly hot, and dizzy and monotonous is the loud discord of the cicadas, only equalled in September and October by the melody of frogs, marsh-frogs, tree-frogs, and bellfrogs. We have noise enough, if no music.

"One of the most unfortunate circumstances, as it regards epistolary intercourse with my friends, is the uncertainty I feel whether our postmaster burns or transmits them; for a gentleman, in corroboration of my own fears, has this week charged him with keeping back a letter. My having publicly charged him moreover with imposition (of which he has not taken the least notice) renders me suspicious that I am not safe as it regards my letters; so that since Tait's Magazine arrived here, I have not sent one letter through the Melbourne post-office. I therefore rejoice in these two opportunities of private conveyance.

"You make mention of my mother's death: thank you for the expression of your sympathy with me in this bereavement. It is indeed a bereavement. You have recorded feelingly your own sentiment on that occasion when the case was your own, in the very beautiful poem, 'My Native Cottage.' I, too, have partly expressed my feelings in a small lyrical piece, which I will copy out for your perusal:—

'OUR MOTHER'S GRAVE.

'Strew flowers upon the honoured grave
Where our lamented mother lies,
But let no gloomy cypress wave
Betwixt it and bright summer skies:
Let freshest verdure o'er it spread,
Let purest light upon it fall,
For these resembled most the dead,
In life, in death, beloved by all.

'Keep thence memorial works away—
Obstruct not Time's ethereal grace:
The Seasons there will tribute pay,
And Nature sanctify the place.
In solemn autumn, gladsome spring,
Mute things to her will reverence show:
And there the birds she loved will sing,
And there lier favourite flowers will grow.

'The sun from out the amber west
Will touch that spot with lingering rays;
The moon upon her place of rest
Will seem more tranquilly to gaze:
The wind that through the welkin sings,
Gently as dies a summer wave,
Will thither come, and fold its wings
To downy slumbers on that grave.

'Whate'er is in its nature fair,
Whate'er is in its spirit good,
Around, diffused through earth or air,
Or undiscerned, or understood;
With whatsoe'er she loved to tend,
On which she living love bestowed,
Will flock to their departed friend,
And cheer and grace her last abode.

'Let there no painful tears be shed:—
A cheerful faith was hers, is ours,
Of truth divine through all things spread:
Of love divine in simplest flowers;
Of goodness, like a sun above,
Diffusing light and gladness far:
The boundless confidence of love;
And knowledge like a guiding star.

'The "Life in Life" she made her own
By thought, and word, and virtuous deed,
Lived not nor died with her alone—
But will through future years proceed;
Whilst what she was on us impressed,
Is more to us than wealth or fame,
Will more conduce to make us blest,
And cause us most to bless her name.'

'July 18th, 1841.'

"If the sun-burnt appearance of the country was before appalling, what is it now, when there has been another overturning of the chariot of the sun? I wish Apollo would pay better attention to his task. I dare say he was busy twining a laurel wreath round his poetical brows, and thus we have to suffer for his vanity. Let him look better after his fiery steeds, or upset his vehicle in a moister clime. He cannot be aware of the mischief a fire does in the bush of Australia; once kindled, and driven on, Jehu-like, by a brisk wind, who knows where it will end? Far as the eye can reach, the scene is one body of flame, and smoke careers over the land like mists, wind-sped, over the lake-scenery of Westmoreland and Cumberland. I lay this kind of Swing-work to Apollo; others charge it to the credit of the blacks; one just as likely as the other. The fact is, the pipe of an old tar shook carelessly out, would be quite enough. For three hours was I hard at work waylaying the fire where the grass was shortest, and dashing it out with a green gum-bough; and by this means, and also by a road which cuts across from the Merri Creek to the Darebin Creek, was it prevented from getting to our corn, and the post-and-rail, all of which—no new thing—it would have burnt down. The day was one of our hottest. Then there was the suffocation of the smoke, the heat of the fire hotly breathed upon me by the wind: and add to these the exertion required to beat out the flames—warm enough of itself to have made tolerable a cold day. Coming from Melbourne last night, in the dark, I saw several old gum-trees which were burning like stars, and making more dismal, by their brightness, the double and intense blackness of the night and the burnt country.

"Present my regards to all my old mends, when you have opportunity. I believe I forgot to thank you in my other letter for the intelligence contained in yours, also for the London Journal, with the interesting account of Clare. Although I knew some of the particulars you mentioned, it is better to be told twice, than not to hear at all. I yesterday saw another of this country's splendid birds, here called the nankeen-bird, from its yellowish and ruddy colour. It is of the heron genus: I saw it at the bird-stuffer's. Good bye!"

When bush fires occur as above, vast flocks of crows, magpies, and smaller birds hang on the rear of the smoke, as if they took pleasure in looking on such devastation. Most likely, I think, it is, that abundance of insects are driven by the heat up into the air, and thus afford a liberal banquet for the feathered creation.

"Australia, June 10th, 1841.

"You say Mr. H., just returned hence, pronounces this country to be the place for speculative people; and indeed it is so: a very grand kind of emigration lottery, where your fortune may turn up a total blank, or a pretty tolerable prize; only the day is gone by when the best tickets were drawn. The wine has been very good, only it is now on the lees. Very handsome and sudden fortunes were made here at the commencement, when half-acre allotments were bought for 45l., and re-sold in a few months for 1000l. Solomon said, there was nothing new under the sun; so it seems there were no Melbournes in his day. The only thing now wanted is another fine tract of newly-explored country, and a new town, and joy to the land cormorants! There is a noise in this Austral world of this very new paradise being Gippsland, some two hundred miles to the south-east of Melbourne. There will be a new town, of course Gippstown: this will be, in the language of the land-spider-web-weavers, Eldorado. A fine cattle, sheep, and corn country; in fact, a fine everything. The very best of all colonies, until there is a new one.

"What of sheep? Only this—the owners of them are very sheepish. Only one gentleman of our party bought sheep and a station, and in fourteen months, with the increase, he has lost at least 1000l.

"What of land purchases? Ours is said to be a good investment. The land is good enough; but we are toiling with sad forebodings. The best resources of the English farmer are cut off from us: horses, cattle, sheep, and corn, can be furnished so cheaply from the cheaply-let Crown-lands, that we now, after a great deal of labour and outlay, ask ourselves why we have purchased land at all.

You say, turn cattle or sheep keepers. No; many would be glad to turn away from such vocations. The land is literally overrun with endless flocks and herds.

"Although late in the day for profitable speculation, should we fail of success, cautious as we have been, what must be the fate of continually-arriving emigrants; some of them thoughtless, and easily duped, and others reckless and profligate? Last week, 260 bounty emigrants arrived; and tiiis week there is another shipload of them; and others are daily expected. Cabin and intermediate passengers there are, too—monied people. What will they do? I shall return; alas! not to all I left. The world is full of disquietude, and we roam over it the more to disquiet ourselves. We would find that in other lands which we cannot in our own. Care is universal, and mutability. It seems not the same world we look upon. There is such ceaseless alteration; such decay, within and without. We die continually in our friends and nearest connections. We daily cease to be what we were. Perpetually do we look forward to the future, as to something valuable in the attainment, like voyagers to pleasant havens,—not taking into account the cares, the anxieties, and wrecks, attendant inevitably on the voyage. Year after year we are driven inward by the outward ravages of death; and as we become more thoughtful and meditative, whatever was pleasant and valuable in the past, we have to receive back again in such communion with the beautiful and beloved dead."

"Australia, Sept. 5th, 1842.

"I wonder what ever parents can be thinking of, when in the education of their children they compel them to be habitually, and from feeling, honest; not because it is the best policy, but from moral and religious principle. How can they expect them to thrive in the world, thus putting as it were their conscience in the stocks? O, for the good, careless Rob Roy, or Robin Hood feeling, where those strict and unaccommodating demarcations of civilised society, mine and thine, are dashed over as hedges are by a hunting party. Or rather, Conqueror-like, where trim civilisation becomes New Forest, and the world is one's farm, wherein to buccaneer it gloriously; without being annoyed and elbowed by that importunate busy-body, Right, or griped in the remorseful clutches of conscious wrong. The hunters of men, who make fortunes in the colonies, are not to be checked by trifles: cheerful-looking people, who love to live in the eye of the public; who roll about in carriages; are riders of fleet horses; who give grand suppers; yet of whom one reads in the colonial papers having failed for such sums as 50,000l. and 75,000l. This is the way to manage matters. These are your Rob Roys, Robin Hoods, and Will the Conquerors of trade and commerce.

"There are pastimes and active sports in these antipodean lands that would be relished by English dukes, lords, and squires: we have few rivers, to run enviously betwixt the huntsman and his game; no hedges for them to break their necks over; yet abundance of dead prostrate trees, over which to exercise their vaulting skill. What parks are there! and in them settlers thoroughly enjoy themselves in the most manly and healthful sports—in emu and in kangaroo hunting. It indeed requires a Squire Western sort of huntsman to tire down a kangaroo or emu."

"Australia, August 12th, 1842.

"You wish to know a little about my brother's whereabout, and also of our friends, the Bakewells. The first is located on a pleasant mount, called the Eastern Hill; the house, a neat weather-boarded one, with its verandah, trellis-work, and hung with vines, fronting, with its pretty garden, into the park-like country. From it, looking to the south-west, is the Port Phillip Bay; Melbourne just below; and eastward are the Snowy Mountains. My brother divides his time pretty equally betwixt his patients, riding amongst them (like Death, in the Revelations, on a white horse), visiting and visited by intelligent people, and amongst his old studies of insects and flowers; not neglecting his garden, which returns his attentions with delicious fruits; melons, figs, and grapes.

"At the river Plenty reside J. and R. B. The river is a small one, but as its name imports, never exhausted. The locality is at the commencement of the vast and sterile stringy bark forests. Part of their farm is consequently almost worthless, and the other, by the water-side, of the richest quality. Their weather-boarded house is situated beautifully on an eminence in the wild region, overlooking the river and its meadow. Winding down a foot-path, cut in zigzags, you descend to the Plenty-flat, in which is the garden, one of the best in the whole district; full of (for the time they have been planted) astonishingly large, healthful, and beautiful fruit-trees. Vines I never saw grow so freshly, so luxuriantly. Foreign shrubs and trees, amongst which I noticed cypresses, R. had raised from seed in abundance. The whole pleased me; but that which was the pleasantest surprise, was a largish clump of what in England we should not look for in a garden, yet what once filled in England the soul of Linnseus with delight, covered over with its golden bloom—gorse; the seed whence it was raised taken from a common near Nottingham.

"On May-day it was that I first visited J. and R. B. Iheir farm and ours are only six miles from each other; yet so thoroughly had I been absorbed by the demands of our own wilderness, that two years had elapsed before I found leisure to visit them. It was a pleasure to see them so pleasantly located. How neat and nicely fitted-up was their house! In it, with its thin walls and French windows, you seemed scarcely in-doors. It was the Sabbath, and on the table lay the Bible, and not far from it a Literary Souvenir. Guns were piled in corners, but which I dare say are now, the first country newness being over, seldom used. Of books there was also a good display; 'friends, substantial friends, and good,' in the forest.

"I wandered thence several miles up the river, or brook, as it would be called in England; for in ihis country the smallest ever-flowing streams are dubbed rivers, in contradistinction to creeks, which, whatever may be their size, only flow in the rainy season. You will imagine how solitary it was, wandering in this primitive country, over mountains and valleys; nothing to be seen but interminable woodlands; my guide and compass the sun only, by which I traversed and sought out the secret recesses of this wild region. Sometimes, as from Sugarloaf Hill, a fine bold eminence, beholding vast portions of the wilderness; the rim of the summer heavens resting on the blue waters of the bay —no cloud to dim the atmosphere, and with only here and there wreaths of cottage smoke, to indicate that it was at all a land of civilised residence."

"Australia, Jan. 10th., 1843.

"You would know a little of our social condition, and how far our colony, by its exemption from a convict population, is benefited. I reply, that we are too near the penal colonies to be extensively benefited. Such of the convicts as have been fortunate, poor men who have become rich men in the more prosperous times, have flocked hither, and have materially lowered the tone of morals, and have added considerably to the miseries of a too speculative people.

"Other effects the neighbourhood of the penal colonies have had. They have cheaper food, having cheaper labour; and with them, as they communicate this cheap food to us, with our free labour, we cannot compete. The convict is sent out, has his passage paid by England, and is thus presented as a gratuitous labourer to the Tasrnanian farmer, for whom he works, or did work, for a mere maintenance. The farmer of this colony pays 20l. to the British merchant for every labourer; and on his arrival pays in wages threefold what is expended on the Tasmanian labourer. It is true that in Van Diemen's Land, by the new assignment system, the convict labourer is now better paid; and more even-handed justice is by it dealt out to the other colonies as it regards labour; still the change has had its attendant disadvantages. By this return to the assignment system, labour, cheaper than free labour, has been abundantly furnished to the Tasmanian settlers, and consequently a grievous injustice has been done to a great class of free labourers, as the annexed paragraph, from the Portland Bay Mercury, testifies:—

"'The recent reversion from the probation to the assignment system, in Van Diemen's Land, a country before enjoying abundant and cheap labour, has rendered nearly two thousand prisoners eligible for private service. The assignment of these men will have the effect of throwing a like number of free labourers out of employment. It is therefore proposed that means be taken to meet the exigencies of the district by procuring a supply of the superfluous labour of Yan Diemen's Land. Sufficient inducement to re-emigration by the labourer, will, the subscribers are convinced, be found to exist in a reduction of the cost of transit from Launceston to Portland. They therefore propose as follows:—First: That every stockholder in the district shall contribute at the rate of 1l. for every thousand sheep in his possession, and proportionably for cattle; and that every resident in the township shall subscribe a sum corresponding to the number of labourers he employs, taken relatively to the number employed by holders of stock. Second: That the sums so collected shall form a fund for the payment of the passage money of labourers from Van Diemen's Land to Portland, and of the charges of the agent selecting them.'

Hear, ye working men of England, to whom fine stories of the flourishing condition and high wages of these colonies have been industriously told; before the return to the assignment system Van Diemen's Land enjoyed abundance of cheap labour; and that by this transition, two thousand free labourers will be thrown out of employment; after being induced by delusive stories to leave comfortable England, other hopes must be held out to them in other regions; and they who were to realise independences by their industry must be assisted by subscriptions to pass from land to land!

"Most certainly the employment of convicts as individual helps or hindrances is unjust, and vicious in its tendency. If they are unfit to remain in the society, and to breathe the air, of their own land, and if they have forfeited their personal freedom, the state to wbich it is forfeited should, by a separate maintenance and employment, provide that their labour shall be for the public benefit only, and with as little demoralisation to the colonies as possible.

"Respectable people in England do not ask magistrates to supply them with convicts as domestic servants and labourers; then why in the colonies? Unless it be a desideratum to provide for every domestic circle example and precept of the most demoralising character; unless it be desirable to poison the healthful waters of domestic life at their pure and holy fountain.

"I am thankful, on the behalf of Australia Felix, that it is not a penal colony. We have the disadvantage of their neighbourhood; still, a cinder or two now and then, a little noisome smoke and lava, is better than a closer intimacy with the volcano. Degrading indeed to new colonies is the transfer of the tilth and criminal scum of old countries; decidedly shutting them out from the pale of respectable residence. Most infelicitous, prospectively, would it be for our pastoral Arcady of New Holland, for its healthful colonisation, did the dome and fabric of its society rest on those pillars of dubious support, criminal slavery: how fraught with danger to the healthful growth and tendency of its present childhood; and with certain evil and demoralisation to its future advancement; to its condition as a nation, amongst the other moral, religious, and intellectual nations of the earth!

"Thank God! it is not so.

"A few words more about convicts. It is not well to reside amongst them, for many reasons. The constant sight of them lessens your self-respect; and you feel less regard, less of veneration for mankind generally. Too many of them are, in habits, manners, in aspect and intelligence, the commonest human animals; and strongly suggest to the sceptical the mere materiality of man. Creatures endowed liberally with a low kind of instinctive cunning, but wofully deficient, apparently, of any kindliness of disposition, any ennobling attribute of the soul. They seem, like the aborigines, imitative but unoriginative; the merest human blocks; as though they had been very recently fashioned by some Pygmalion, out of wood or stone. Of the earth, earthy—if they are allied to any kind of ethereality they give no evidence of it.

"For a moment, suppose that two brothers have been separated for years; the only sons, if not children, of their parents; and that they meet most unexpectedly in the remotest regions of the earth; would not such a situation affect powerfully both head and heart? What imagery, what early associations would rush upon them; how vivid, momentarily, would memory become; and how clearly in that excitement would the whole past—home life, home feelings, scenes, and persons, present themselves!

"On a new line of road, in New South Wales, leading into what was called the new country, were some twenty or thirty men at work, called the chain-gang, a kind of incorrigibles, the worst of a sad set. Every now and then they looked along the line of road, as a sailor would say, 'fore and aft,' anxious to see some new object; anything to diversify their dull and monotonous life. On this occasion there was a bullock-team and its driver, returning from the camp, Sydney, whither they had gone more than a week ago, for provisions. With these was a stranger, a convict, newly arrived in the colony, assigned as bush-labourer to the bullock-driver's master, and now on the way with him to the settler's station, out in the far-away bush. One of the labourers in the chain-gang and the new convict looked on each other coldly, yet with instant recognition: they were brothers. The old lagg, who had been in the colony four or five years, was the first to speak. 'Hey, Jack!' said he. 'Well, Bill!' was the nonchalant rejoinder. So, most likely, they would accost each other in London, after only a week's absence. So they would, it was said, have passed each other, only that there the bullock-driver had to stay for refreshment and rest, which afforded them an opportunity for a little interesting conversation. 'How's father?'—'Stopped,' was the laconic reply, meaning that he was hung. 'And mother?'—' She's in quod!' (in prison); 'and Poll' (hissister), 'how's she?—'On the town.'— 'And Kit?' (the other sister). 'She's gone off with a soldier!' What striking family-likenesses!—quite a family picture-gallery!"

"Australia, July 14th, 1843.

"This is a singular portion of the globe; more so if what geologists say of it be true. Still, how far they have conjectured correctly of its crustaceous condition, future researches must determine; for as yet there has been, compared with the rest of the earth, little close examination of it. Certainly, the decision of the learned as it regards Australia should cause all good Europeans gravely to consider what they are doing, before they venture to set foot upon it; most especially so, if it be only yet in its oolitic state, and has had—

'a sleep and a forgetting;'

whilst the rest of the globe has had its shivering-fits, its fevers, and convulsions, a much more advanced and full development, vegetable and animal. If this be so, Australia must have had a sort of paralysis, which has detained it nearer the dawn of organisation, or a later infancy, and is yet swathed in the swaddlingclothes of that later birth. Its fishes in their structure may exactly correspond with the fossil ones of dim, distant ages; and, though not yet ascertained, its marsupial animals,too; nevertheless, it has been distorted considerably by volcanic action; has in its bosom vast mineral wealth; although perhaps not such ages of fossil history as are clearly recorded in the crustaceous formations of the other and better known regions of the earth. In this view of things, it is an awful reflection, what a vast series of organic changes have yet to take place in Australia; what animals of large structure have to be produced in it, and to deposit themselves, age after age, in a fossil state, before this behind-hand, younger child of Nature has made up for lost time. This theory certainly determines that colonisation in Australia's present state is an intrusion; that man is taking precedence of animals which have yet to occupy it. The whole history of creation, shown in its vestiges, as far as they have been examined, clearly make it certain, and time and science unite to give the inhabitants of the new Austral world 'notice to quit.' Perhaps Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney will be destroyed; other Mastodons, other immense Dinotheriums, must shake the earth, as they tread over the inhumed cities, in which our friend, Dr. Greeves, with his geological hammer by his side, may sleep as a fossil intruder, for ages and ages, in the earlier tertiary formations. I trust that it may not be so; that Australia has been, ages before the old-world animals appeared on the earth, and were deposited in it, an island; that there were consequently none of those monsters in it; that it has had its whole and fitting organic changes like the rest of the earth; that it has had its monster kangaroos, and, I believe, bones of such were found in a cave in Wellington Valley; at all events, larger than its present race. Still, if nothing will satisfy geologists that Australia has undergone all the common organic changes, except the discovery of the earth's universal fossil depositions, I trust they will yet be found, and that we poor Australian people may be permitted to sleep in security.

"It has been sportively conjectured, so little does Australia resemble in its animal and vegetable productions other countries, that it fell originally from the moon. Certainly, if so, it is recovering from the fall, as any one may trace oil the beach of the southern coast, by Port Phillip Bay. There a vast space of the sandy shore is laid regularly, parallel with the waters, breadth after breadth, like broad-ploughed lands, where you may clearly note how by low and high tides the sand has been left in just gradations, age after age, by the slowly but surely retiring sea. You see at once that no sudden elevation of the land has there taken place; but you have spread out before you the silent, undeviating history of the lapse of centuries, written by an unerring pen, for your observation and instruction.

"Of our mineral productions I must say little, leaving them to geologists. Copper ore has been found in Port Phillip; and other metals there are, no doubt. Coal there is at Western Port, and will be found elsewhere when sought after, and when it is more needed. Good freestone, gritstone, and sandstone, besides volcanic stone, are abundant, as the well-built and handsome edifices in Melbourne and its vicinity testify. Limestone of good quality there is, also. Clay, for bricks, is liberally diffused through the land. Recently, beds of slate have been discovered, but not in convenient situations. The bosom of the earth contains, if we may judge from what it has revealed, immense wealth. In some parts of the country there is, or has been, in the soil a petrifying quality, converting wood into stone. Dr, Howitt has in his possession three kinds of wood thus mineralised; all of them curious, especially the fossil red gum.

"Of trees, those of the Eucalyptus class are the most generally diffused and abundant. The red gum is gigantic in its proportions, taking precedence of others, like the oak in Britain. There is also the swamp gum, white gum, stringy bark, and the box. The leaves of all these are willow-like, and thinly sprinkled over the trees, casting little shade. They have a dim and faded appearance. Nature is, however, just; where there is little shade, little is needed. As far as my own observation goes, the sun in Australia, however fierce, does not compel beasts or birds to seek coolness under trees, but raises, by the rarification of the atmosphere, a breeze far more refreshing. The cedar is next in importance, for its timber. The she-oak, as it is called, is not an oak at all—rather a kind of pine, for it is covered over with cones; and its pendant branches are gracefully hung with leafless twigs, most like drooping masses of coarse hair. In some parts of the country you find this tree, and another kind of it, called the forest oak, with its twigs erect, the only kind of wood within the range of the horizon, where, grouped and scattered as it is, with the landscape undulated beautifully, the spectacle is grand enough. You do not regret the absence of other trees; the vision is complete in itself; it is rich beyond comparison. The wild cherry-tree, leafless also, is pea-green, and seems a most beautiful, overgrown shrub. The mimosa, famous for its bark, is the greenest tree in the Australian forest, and surprises you, where it grows abundantly, with its similarity to copses of young oak. The silvery wattle is another of our trees, remarkable for the exuberance, beauty, and fragrance of its golden blossom; the green wattle being only inferior to it in these respects.

"Of shrubs, my favourites are the Australian hawthorn, covered over with very similar blossoms—in fact, for the English it is a good substitute; the native indigo, with its purple flowers; and a kind of gorse-resembling shrub, never found by me before I saw it near Mount Macedon, with its spines, and profusion of golden blossom. Of flowers, I may mention the orchises as a very beautiful and extensive class. One of them like a miniature daifodil, with its three and four yellow flowers on one footstalk. The Macquarrie arbor-vine has fleshy, periwinkle-like leaves; its flowers, large clusters of seemingly sky-blue violets. Sun-dews, geraniums, speedwells, convolvuluses, these are, the latter especially, very beautiful. Then, how many others there are new to the European visitor, that have no common appellation, only yet having been dubbed by modern scientific Adams with learned names.

"Our animals are too well known to need mention. Kangaroos of three kinds, the largest sometimes weighing 140 lbs. This is called the forester, and is frequently as large as a young heifer. The bush kangaroo is about the size of a sheep; and the wallaby is a little larger than the hare. Other kangaroos there are,—the kangaroo-rat; and the smallest—and a curious little animal it is—the kangaroo-mouse.

"A recently-discovered animal there is in (iippsland—a kind of sloth. In the stringy-bark forest is a small animal, called a bear; perhaps it is the wombat. Opossums we have of several kinds. Wild-cats, too: the tiger-cat is as large as the domestic cat. The other two kinds are considerably less, and with their sharp noses and keen sparkling eyes much resemble ferrets. One of them is black, and the other a ruddy brown, both being prettily marked with white spots. Two varieties of flying-squirrel only did I notice in Port Phillip; others there may be. There is also a rat-like animal, with a swinish face, covered with ruddy coarse hair, that burrows in the ground—the bandicoot. It is said to be very fine eating.

"The whole of the kangaroos, the mouse not excepted, are marsupial animals. All carry about with them in a bag or pouch, from a very early stage of its formation, the young; and continue so to do until it is far advanced towards its full growth. Of this class also are the opossums, flying squirrels, wild cats,and bandicoot. The native dog is Australian, but is supposed to be originally an intruder.

"The platypus, or duck-billed water-mole (Ornithorhyncus Paradoxus), is a very singular animal, combining in its nature beast, bird, and fish. It is seldom to be seen in the daytime sporting in the water, save in very retired places. Up in the Yarra, near the Eastern Mountains, I have seen three and four at a time, keeping one position, with their heads against the stream, as if gathering their food in the freshets. This curious creature lays eggs like the duck, hatches them in the same manner, and then suckles them like the mole. The fore-legs are armed with spurs, it is said, that are poisonous.

"Our largest birds are the pelican, the emu, and the black swan. The wild turkey, or more properly bustard, is a fine creature, sometimes weighing seventeen pounds. The eagles and hawks are noble birds; the white hawk, peculiar to this country I believe, is a most graceful bird. I never saw many of them together; indeed, the first I saw, not knowing before of its existence, was a pleasant surprise. The lyre-bird lives in the Port Phillip mountains. Of the other commoner birds, such as I know by name I will mention: geese; ducks, of several beautiful varieties; divers; coots, gorgeous creatures, sky-blue in plumage, with vermilion-coloured legs and bill, and part of the head; the nankeen-bird, belonging to the heron tribe; magpies of three kinds; bronze-winged pigeons, bush and ground. Other varieties of the pigeon are found to the east, in New South Wales. They have the avoset, too, but I think it is not in Port Phillip. The native companion is our tallest bird, a kind of crane; white, and also pied storks; the bittern; a large white spoonbill; the jay or laughing jackass; the crow, but no rook that I could hear of; a snipe, large as the woodcock; quails, half the size of English partridges, very much like partridgechickens; a very small water-hen; herons; the spur-winged plover; the satin-bird; the wattle-bird; the soldier-bird; the honeysucker; curlews; owls; the moth-owl, called the morepork, a beautiful bird, similar to the dorhawk; bell-bird, a green bird about the size of the green linnet, with yellow bill and legs; the kingfisher, two kinds; swallows and martins, rather smaller than the European; and swifts, that are not as they are called provincially in England, squealers, for, like the Australian lark and redbreast, they are silent; parrots, very many varieties, exquisitely beautiful in shape and plumage; cockatoos, black and white; the razor-grinder, fitly so called from making a grinding noise as it wavers in one position a foot or two from the ground; the diamond-bird; the titmouse. Most of these I have made acquaintance with; but others there are, a very numerous catalogue, principally small birds, which I know by sight only. The coachman, or whip-bird, so called from its note resembling the crack of a whip.

"We have many a peal of bells rung for our entertainment, if we have none in churches, by the bell-frogs; but a much livelier peal by the bell-birds. Many a one has been startled from his musings by the crack of a whip, but on looking round with surprise has seen nothing but a bird. In like manner the person for the first time hearing the razor-grinder fancies he hears a whizz that sends sparks out of the stone, and is astonished that the sound is made by a bird.

"The winter in England is oftentimes a bond of social union, drawing closer together the lords of the creation and the free denizens of thewoods and wilds,between whom there exists littlegood fellowship in the more genial seasons of the year. Wood-pigeons, hares, pheasants, and partridges, visit village gardens and farmyards, displaying little of their customary wildness, being tamed by the severity of the weather. Still there are household creatures, whose sociality is not the result of suffering or experience, but apparently the act of neighbourly feeling; co-inheritors of the same localities; instinctively confidential; and hallowed in the light of ancient usage; a kind of sub-tenantry, who charm us into good humour by their social neighbourhood, and pay their quit-rents with songs and pleasant flittings to and fro. Redbreasts, swallows, and martins; the former our winter, and the latter our summer, household familiar friends. And the house-sparrow, tolerated for his pleasant impudence.

"But if winter in England is a collector and uniter, it is also a severer and disperser. The flowers disappear; the leaves drop away; and amongst other birds of the migratory kinds, swallows and martins assemble and vanish. In Australia the martins and swallows are with us all the year, perpetually skimming to and fro, owing to the similarity of the seasons, with abundance of insect food; there being in fact no long continuance of severe weather.

"I have been reminded of these things to-day by observing— and how pleasantly English it looked!—more than a dozen martin-nests, stuck familiarly in a row, under the eaves of the elegant Club-house in Flinders Street, Melbourne. Perhaps the birds were only imitating the gentlemen of Port Phillip, who meet there together in the most agreeable fellowship.

How strange, that these old denizens of the primeval forests should at once become social, imitating unconsciously their antipodean kindred! Where could they build previously? is the natural query. Not certainly under the eaves of the black-fellow's house, but where they would have to dispute and divide possession with opossums, tuans, bats, and owls, in old hollow gum-trees.

"These birds seem in their instinct to possess a nobler heritage than the native's reason; they bnild a better house than his miam, and have benefited, which he has not done, by the coming of a superior kind of house-builder."—(From MS. NoteBook, Jan. 15th, 1843.)

"Of reptiles I must say a little. Snakes we have of three kinds, all of them deadly; black, brown, and diamond. Others there are said to be; a green snake and the death-adder. I never saw more than three kinds, and was satisfied. The death-adder, if in Port Phillip at all, is far north. These are a dangerous pest, for they often lie under your feet, and seem too careless to move away. They enter houses, too, and have been found even in beds. Still you hear of few deaths occasioned by them. When we had been here but a few weeks, I one day near the cottage saw our dogs walking stiffly about with bristling hair; the birds screaming, and darting down to one particular place. I went towards it, and there saw coming with the most stately deliberation, a large black snake, his head raised about six inches from the ground. He appeared to be inquisitive what change had taken place in his old haunts, and what kind of innovators we were. I stepped back, and fetching the gun, answered him promptly. He was nearly six feet long, and the same number of inches in eirth.

"Scorpions I never saw but two; but of tarantulas—triantelopes, as the people call them—these were of immense size, in abundance. Towards dusk they came out, and crawling on the windows, fly-catching; a few of such drab-coloured giant spiders would cover a large pane.

"Of insect nuisances, the ants are of all others the worst. Those of the large black and red kinds, though vicious, and painful with their stings as wasps, are more easily guarded against than the myriads beyond all calculation of smaller ones. They visited us every day, rainy ones only excepted, and the cavalcade, like a black line, of comers and goers, might be traced far away into the bush. Their place of resort, next to their own nest, was the safe in which meat was kept, or the sugar-bag. They are not such pests in brick or stone dwellings as in wood ones, such as ours. To keep them out of the house, we poured kettles full of boiling water on them; we also tried pepper, and hot ashes: it was in vain, and we grew sick of the slaughter. We suspended our safe by a string from the cottage-roof: it succeeded for a few days; then down from the roof by the string they came in millions. At length we tarred the string, and the safe was no misnomer. When wearied, often far away in the bush, wanting to rest, I have looked on tree after tree, lying along the ground; but so thronged were they with highways and by-ways of the ant nations, it was impossible to sit down.

"You are sometimes startled by the serrate-backed, ashycoloured guanas, that lie still, near you; then, when they move, go with a scuffle to the nearest tree, on the bark of which, from similarity of colour, they are scarcely discerned. Lizards of all sizes run about in abundance—the largest kind six or eight inches in girth, and about a foot long. It will stay in your path for you to touch it with your stick, and will open a wide, disgusting, sky-blue mouth, and bite very pettishly. I believe it is harmless."

"Australia, Jan. 25th, 1844.

"We have been busy for the last week or two, preparing to quit this far-away country—this wrong side of the world; but fortune, or the demon of perversity, who have many a time and oft before given us hard rubs, are not content that we should depart without a stirrup-cup memento of their spirit; thus, when we most anxiously desire fine weather, the winds beat up big drums in the west, and bring up rain over the land incessantly. The corn, b£ this rain and the warmth of the weather, has grown in the sheaf sooner than in England you would imagine.

"My nephew has only been able to get 2s. 6d. per bushel lor his barley, as it had been stained by the insects; for his wheat, 4s. We disposed of our bullock-team, the beasts, dray, &c., which cost us 90l., for (some of the beasts were lost) 13l. I must name a few prices of farm implements. Drays, two years ago, were 28l., now, 8l. or 10l.; ploughs, 2l. to 3l.; harrows, 32s. to 2l. per pair; working bullocks, 6l. per pair; yoke and bows, 10s.; bullock chains, 5s. each; horses, 10l. to 20l. each; new calved cows, 1l. 10s. to 2l. 10s., the calves given in; sheep, 5s. per head; mixed herds of cattle, 1l. per head.

"Price of farm produce:—Oaten hay, 1l. 10s. to 2l. 10s.; barley, 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. per bushel; oats, do. 1s. 6d. to 2s.; wheat do., 3s. 6d. to 4s.; colonial cheese, 8d. per 1b.; butter do., 6d. to 9d.; potatoes, 2s. 6d. per cwt.; mutton, 1½d.; beef, 1½d. per 1b. Wages:—Domestic servants, 8l. to 12l.; labourers, 15l. to 20l. per annum, and rations; mechanics, anything they can get, when they can get employment."

"Australia, March 19th, 1844.

"We have taken our passage for England. This may reach you (by another vessel) if we do not. On shipboard I had a feeling again of Old England; felt indeed as though I were already in the London Docks. I turned on the sand to look at the "goodly ship, which is to carry us over the ocean; and then fancied I could hear the seamen chanting merrily some national ditty. Here, in our temporary abode, in Spring Street, Melbourne, which is yet only half a street, having the bush before us, where all is tranquillity above and around, I fancy again I hear the same strain: it must be this:—

'HURRAH FOR ENGLAND.

'Why keep we all this canvas furled?
Why, dead to joy, thus linger here?
There's but one home o'er all the world;
Hurrah! for England let us steer.

'Great Caesar, who such feats had done,
Thought nothing of them all, 'tis clear,
Till he one little isle had won;—
Hurrah! for England let us steer.

'Napoleon, long to battles used,
Who conquered nations, year by year;
To conquer Britain long time mused:
Hurrah! for England let us steer.

'Its ships arc in a thousand ports,
Its name the farthest wilds revere;
Waves are its walls, and Love its forts;
Hurrah! for England let us steer.

'Our little isle, an halcyon's nest,
To man, to God, to freedom dear!
Our home—a babe on woman's breast:
Hurrah! for England lot us steer.'"

* Shiac is the native name—vulgarised to she-oak.

* Is it improbable that this skull may be that of Mr. Gellibrand, or of Mr. Hesse, who were lost or murdered at no great distance from this neighbourhood?

* The rent was never paid.

* A real character.

* Religion! What? Arts and sciences perfected? I should like to know when and where!—R. H.

THE RETURN VOYAGE.

ON the 30th of March, 1844, I left, in the Aden for London, the Heads of Port Phillip, after four days' lingering and illness in the bay. The winds not being altogether favourable caused the delay; and the change of temperature—from warm to cold, from land to water—an attack, after three years' good health, of my colonial enemy, the dysentery. Sea-sickness I had not, nor ever had. Good health soon returned, however, and was mine the whole voyage.

I did not leave Australia without regret: some fibres of the affections, if not roots, had struck deep into the alien soil. In my heart I bade an affectionate farewell to the not always gentle and friendly Yarra; to the one small cottage on its banks—our tranquil home of many seasons, and endeared to us—it and its few surrounding fields—by toil and difficulties, as the child of our industry in the waste wilderness. Ties of kindred there were, too; likewise kindred spirits, which had sympathised with us, and with which we had sympathised; and for these, in my heart there lived, and were now breathed forth, warm wishes and warm farewell benedictions.

But I am growing serious—as farewells generally are. The land of Australia was receding—the land of blacks, black snakes, black fish, and black potatoes; all of them, say the natives, very excellent eating;* to the quality of the two latter only I can bear witness—the land of kangaroos, fleas, and grasshoppers, which jump abundantly, though not with my inclinations—the land where trees sink and stones swim; where the birds dress very handsomely—very angels in their plumage, but at the antipodes in their voices—the land where Whitsuntide wraps herself in a woollen mantle, forsaken of daffodils, peonies, and lilacs; whilst Father Christmas cools himself with a fan under verandahs, wreathing his sunburnt brows with summer blossoms, and dressed in the finest of fine linen—the land which, as God made it, is a fine land; where whatever there is in it miserable is mostly of man's making—a land of abundance of food; wherein there is room and rest for the elbowed and o'erwearied of the densely-populated old European nations, when they shall be permitted to taste it—a land, wonderful in its infancy and gigantic in its promise.

It was fading in the afternoon from our sight; and in the words of Campbell, than which, as applied by him to Australia, none are more appropriate, I bade adieu to its

"Mountains blue, and melon-skirted streams."

The Mary Lloyd, of Liverpool, had followed us from Port Phillip Bay, and seemed disposed to sail with us in amicable companionship. Some few hours she had been satisfied to follow; now she came forward and sailed with us in an even course. We had heard that our captain was a sea-Jehu, a furious sailer, and we rather wondered at the complacency with which he took her approaches. It was only for a short time, however, that he dallied: other sails soon fluttered to the breeze; our companion soon lost that friendly relation—was gradually left, and the next day was behind too far for our observation.

We saw in the evening the north-east point of Van Diemen's Land—sailing betwixt it and Flinders' Island. We saw with great interest the high mountains in the latter, from which one of the natives of the former, there expatriated, had had his own country pointed out to him, and towards which, with outstretched arms, and a voice toned by the deepest melancholy, he exclaimed, "My country! my country!"

Never were there more propitious gales, never finer sailing, than fell to our lot for three or four days as we left the Straits and sped on prosperously towards the islands of New Zealand. A change we experienced too soon; stiff winds sending us sadly too much to the south-west. Then came a dead calm of a week's continuance. Then, with gentle breezes, we went softly forward, speaking with two vessels; one, the Enterprise from Hobart Town, the other, the Adelaide from Launceston; both, like us, bound for London. Both were brigs—small crafts compared with ours; of not more than half the tonnage. Yet adventurous indeed they were; for they had to traverse the wintry regions of storms and icebergs, and had to contend with that lion on the ocean path—Cape Horn.

What I have to say of the voyage from this part of the ocean will be best given in a letter, written long afterwards, but which I had no opportunity of forwarding.

At sea, near Rio Janeiro, June 17th, 1844.

To GODFREY HOWITT, M.D., Melbourne, Port Phillip.

DEAR BROTHER,—Having now been on board the Aden twelve weeks, and having made but miserable progress compared with what we expected, it will indeed be very long before you can receive intelligence of our arrival in England; more especially so, if the remaining portion of our voyage prove as tedious as the first. On this account I judged you would like to hear of us from this part of the world, should there be a ship for your port in Rio.

We are here contrary to the intention of our captain, who is going into Rio very much against his will; the winds having left us no alternative, unless that by going eastward we would consent to complete thus, for no purpose, the circle of the southern hemisphere.

We are off Cape Frieo, on which is the lighthouse, at the elevation, it is said, of 18,000 feet. We first saw the light on the evening of the 15th, at about 11 P.M.; at 12, we bouted ship and went back four hours; after which the captain again tried to retrace his way to the light, but being driven forty miles to leeward, by winds and currents which run here strongly, we are to-day working hard to make up lost sea-way.

We have met on the voyage with delays many and vexatious; have lost much time through calms and head-winds; have had some timber blown away also in heavy squalls: the sail-maker, as well as the carpenter and joiner, has been well employed. Fortunately, we have lost no masts; although yards, fore and main, and booms, thick as a man's middle, have gone in pieces, snapping like small sticks.

We went southerly to latitude 57°, and when we were in the latitude of Cape Horn our longitude was 165° 6' east. We then run off the east longitude to 188°, and from 188° the west longitude to 70° to Cape Horn; consequently, we sailed in the winterly region of the southern hemisphere 125°. On went the ship, day after day, and week after week'—all of it cold, dim, dismal weather. Onward for ever were we blown by the same strong wind; the sun and moon and stars seldom visible, or seen as are weeping eyes; the air tempestuous, and driving before it, with a wail and whistle, rain, sleet, hail, and snow—drifting to corners winterly heaps, and glueing ice to ropes and shrouds. Many of the stoutest seamen had chilblains on their hands and feet; some of them were laid up quite ill, being compelled to go wet and cold to their hammocks and to rise in the same condition. The ship-boys—sad was it for them, with their red-raw bare feet, walking the wet decks, or climbing the icy rigging. Some of them slunk into their berths and lay there for days, fireless and foodless; not to be compelled thence by hunger or by threatened punishment. Some were seriously ill, and others feigned it to shun the cold; so much so that it was feared we should lack sufficient men for the management of the ship; and "the Cape Horn fever" became a proverbial byword.

When dissipated young men are, as a last resource, put apprentice (some of them of good families) to the sea-service in our merchant vessels, little know affectionate mothers what their children must undergo. They have all the roughest duties to perform, the dirtiest work to do, and the worst of food to eat; all this falls to their lot, without the wages; nay, they have to pay premiums for their many and supereminent sea advantages.

The sea, too, like other prisons, is a poor school of morality; and must continue so whilst the scale of rewards and punishments is grog. If a seaman does anything meritorious he gets additional grog; and for any dereliction of duty the outcry is invariably, "Stop his grog." For grog, many a sailor will do anything and suffer anything; it is his heaven. Yet, amongst seamen you meet occasionally with men of other temperament— sober, thoughtful men, who are great readers in the holiday of trade-winds, very chatty about seaman-craft, and who, from having seen much of land and sea—much of novel climes and situations, are very companionable. How enthusiastic are these about sea novels! and their especial favourites, I found, were the "Land and Sea Tales," "Jem Bunt," and Captain Marryatt's "Poor Jack." That I knew personally the "Old Sailor," and could tell them a little of his history, raised me wonderfully in the estimation of these reading tara. Good fellows are they, many of them—kind-hearted, full of cheerfulness and hope.

Now, from seamen let us return to the sea and its icebergs. The first of these we saw on the 1st of May; a most enormous one, and of vast altitude. My old and common idea of icebergs was that of immense plains, or undulated floating masses, but a little raised above the surface of the water. I did not expect a grand spectacle of snowy mountains crowned with turrets, like those of old gigantic castles, snow-mantled, or with snowy cones, domes, and pinnacles, and mimicking farm-houses or other buildings. It is a pure and astonishing sight, and filled us mutely with admiration: one day we saw eleven of them. Only to think, that they had been floating there, and thus, from the creation—temples of purity and silence, moving on quiet as eternity, unconscious of wars and earthquakes, untroubled by convulsions of the earth or amongst mankind, waxing a little in the winter and waning a little in the summer, whilst hundreds of millions of mankind had risen out of the earth and sunk into it,—as waves beat idly upon their bases, to fall away again.

It was anything but pleasant, when in the night-watches we awoke from fitful slumbers, to hear, as we did constantly, the look-out (and there was a double one kept) exclaiming, "Iceberg on the lee bow," "Iceberg to windward," "Iceberg right a-head, Sir! "Then our anxiety was increased by the energy of the captain's or mate's voice, as their commands grew louder and quicker, as "Lough, lough, lough!" and other orders repeated almost breathlessly. There was on many occasions great danger from detached pieces of ice; more so than from the large white masses, as the latter were more plainly seen. It was a fearful time for all on board; most so in the dark nights; and our situation was dangerous enough when, as it occurred three times, we were driven along by stiff, squally winds. Darkness, gales, and icebergs form a rather serious mixture.

What a contrast is the present weather with the past, Cape Frieo and Cape Horn! This has been a most delicious day: from the earliest dawn the sky was covered with the loveliest clouds, warmed with the richest tints. Vast ranges of mountains are in prospect, with here and there solitary hills of great bulk, rising steeply from the sea; and rocky capes, with their snug coves and bays. Also, there are four vessels in sight, indications of the neighbouring port.

I keep quitting this vocation of letter-writing, to catch fresh glimpses of the South American coast. Now I must defer it altogether, for I can no longer keep from the fresh air and animation on deck.

June 18th.—Another day. We have had a calm, and now the wind comes a-head; we are, if either, gone back since yesterday. No entering the port until to-morrow, if then. An orange has floated by the ship: a kind of hint of what sort of country we are approaching. Is it only fancy, or do we really inhale the fragrance of citron and orange groves?

We are vexed and tantalised lingering thus near the land. I, however, rejoice that we have been compelled, however roughly, to put into port; if the result be a glimpse of a new region, an opportunity of traversing Rio Janeiro and its neighbourhood.

Who that saw the sun rise this morning, all the softest vermilion and gold diffused over the heavens; the air bland; the sea rippling like silver; would think that we were in the neighbourhood of negro slavery,—of man trading in the flesh and blood of man? To me such manifestations of the Almighty's presence, in earth, and sky, and ocean, seem fraught with a benignant influence, a liberalising spirit; as though the glow of rising and setting suns should melt into the gentlest feeling of fellowship all human nature. But so it is not, for man and nature are indeed different.

"Nature ne'er could find the way
Into the heart of Peter Bell."

19th.—A fine dawn; and, what is new, we have not gone backward. I began to think our sailing quite a Penelope affair; unweaving at night the web of our day's progress. We have been becalmed: now the breeze is freshening favourably for us. We expect to be in Rio this afternoon. Before us, and on the starboard-bow, are vast alpine ranges, with summits of various outline, cleaving the clear heavens far above the long strips of silky, fawn-coloured clouds. What a warm, gorgeous sunset we had last night! the earth, the heavens, and the ocean steeped in the richest colouring.

We are in Rio harbour. We passed at the entrance three small beautiful islands, having on our left the conical hill called the Sugar-loaf, and on the right the first of three well-fortified forts. I have not seen the lakes of Switzerland, surrounded by their magnificent mountain scenery, but they cannot possibly surpass the grandeur and the grace of this. Not only is the bay divided romantically into several bays by the loveliest sprinkling of fair isles, but on all hands are hills of various tones of colouring, rising up distinctly, crowned with their white chapels, monasteries, and churches; the background rising more boldly into vast alps, clothed with a rich drapery of clouds, with fleecy masses sleeping in the deep alpine hollows; then in the pure heavens, far beyond all strata of clouds and mists, what pyramids, sharp wedges, and domes, rise upwards; how grandly, how sublimely! All the beauty of all the scenery I have ever seen, and more—for I have seen nothing so vast—is here concentrated. Matlock, Dove-dale, the English lake scenery, are here more gracefully represented, and made more fascinating by the graceful sprinkling of tropical shrubs and trees. This must be, as it is generally admitted, the noblest harbour in the world, and as it regards scenery, the grandest panorama. There are subjects for fifty splendid pictures, from the present position of our ship. Rows of houses, mostly white, line the bay. We have cast anchor, the new moon and Venus brightly looking on. Now the evening fires of San Sebastian in a row line the shore, reminding us of Brighton as seen from the sea. A little further up the bay, and on the opposite side, is a lesser line of lights, those of Rio Grande.

20th.—This morning the Brazilian metropolis has been gazed upon by very inquisitive eyes. Its appearance interested us much; its religious edifices, one of which with a modern antiquity appeared in ruins, the Palace, and the general aspect of the city delighted us, seen from the vessel. Towards the shore citywards, were throngs of crafts; near us were scattered about canoes, with their two and three negroes in each of them, flitting to and fro by the help of paddles; one, and sometimes two, in each canoe fishing. Then, beyond us, apparently in the further division of the harbour, arose what a goodly forest of masts! Men-of-war, of many European nations, and American, too. Merchant vessels there were almost innumerable, representatives of the commerce of all lands. Genteel, slim, French officers, we saw in their war-ships; bluff Admiral John Bull in others; and not the least satisfied with himself, and with his eagle and many stars of liberty, Jonathan, who beats all other nations in the build of his ships for lightness and fleet sailing "bya long chalk."

We went on shore, and soon found—

"'Twas distance lent enchantment to the view;"

for on entering the city, we were much disappointed with it. The generality of the buildings are dull and heavy; the streets narrow and dirty. There seems a great scarcity of glass in many places; many of the shops having no windows, but high open doors, at which are displayed all kinds of the richest merchandise. The aspect and dresses of the whole people had a kind of ancientness about them. The carriages in which the richer inhabitants roll about hang apparently in leather springs; whilst the drays and carts, drawn by negroes, make, by their clumsiness of wheels fixed loosely on their axles, the oddest kind of vacillating motions, and the lettering of names completes the drollery: letters of all sizes, and falling all ways.

The inhabitants themselves are a motley generation,—from the olive complexion of the Brazil-Portuguese, all shades included, to the bright ebony of the slaves. The city is a fac-simile of the old continental ones; only with the added dirt and darkness of negro slavery in it. Mules and their riders; slaves in groups, with loads of coffee on their heads, moving briskly through the streets, tuning their motions to a song; negro women carrying on their heads large wide baskets of fruit; and other negro women standing along the streets, with their stalls and heaps of oranges, plantains, and other tropical luxuries, are the objects which everywhere claim your attention. Our greatest treat next to seeing from one of the mountains the beautiful bay, with its isles, hills, and shipping, and the town buried in trees hung with golden fruit, was the great entertainment we had in seeing shop after shop full of the splendid birds of this part of the world; and their feathers, manufactured by the nuns into the most exquisite buds and blossoms. I shall never forget the purity and beauty of those least artificial of artificial flowers. Solomon must indeed have let in the bees to have aided his decision as to their sweetness and reality.

Our great exultation in these things was however soon soberised; for we paid a visit to the city slaughter-house. O, ye flesh-pots of Egypt and Port Phillip, what a sight was that! Some fifty or more of the leanest of lean beasts were there slain. "What for?"—Surely only for the skins, or to save them from dying of starvation. We that day dined on fish; for neither in the whole city of delicious oranges and bananas was there a bit of good beef or mutton, or a good potato.

The negro dirtiness, the want of good animal food, and of our favourite vegetables, caused us to reflect with no small satisfaction on the land which we had left, and on our nurse, kind, beneficent, abundantly-blessed, ancestral England.

Another spectacle, too, made the delicacies and grandeur about ns poor: we saw a negro, old and blind, grinding in a mill. All the misery of slavery seemed in that one object concentrated. I moved on, saddened by the sense of Sampson's blindness and of this, repeating to myself—

"A little onward lend thy guiding hand
To those dark steps—a little further on."

One object we saw in Rio that reminded us, after four years' forgetfulness of such beings, that there were beggars in the world; and the only beggar which we saw there, was a purple, pimple-faced Englishman,—an incorrigible vagabond.

Other Englishmen we saw, of a different stamp,—plain, hardworking Cornish miners, just arrived, a large company of them, going up into the country five hundred miles, to the mines of this new region. They knew us at once, as we them, for Englishmen. Whilst we talked to them, he of the purple face, with lamentations of beggary, put in his claims for acquaintance.

Shall I forget that we entered cloisters and chapels, one of them chartered with the foundation of the city; the royal chapel not the least splendid? Shall I overpass the tesselated marble floors, over which we were courteously led by the most attentive of religious people, and where angels with profusion of golden wings, and holy mothers and children, all very costly images, impressed us with the wealth of the land, but not with the taste of the people? Yes, these I can only just glance at, and at the Palace, immense, but uninteresting.—Adieu, yours, &c.,

R. H.

The heavy squall off the River Plate, which broke at one fell swoop the pinions of our fore and main wings, leaving us to drift at the mercy of wind and wave day after day, like a wounded bird, towards the South American coast, lengthened our voyage at least a month. Soon after that calamitous circumstance, there occurred on board,

A FUNERAL AT SEA.

One of our passengers, a Colonel W—, had served his country in various climes for thirty-nine years; nine of them in India, His eldest son, following in his steps, had embraced that profession also, and was in the service of the East India Company. His other and younger son, whom he had been out to Australia to settle there, was located on a creek, a tributary of the Goulburn. Then it was, after two years' residence, that he perceived his constitution beginning to give way, and his thoughts turned anxiously to the home of his youth, when being encouraged by his physicians, who assured him it was possible he might endure the voyage, he determined to re-visit Ireland, set his affairs in order, and expire in the arms of his only daughter, left solitary in the paternal mansion. When on board, during a few brilliant days that we were becalmed to the south-west of New Zealand, supported by his faithful servant Mickey, he left his cabin, and sat in the cheery sunshine on the quarter-deck. Thence we sped along, driven on, day after day, and week after week, towards the South-pole—and in the rough weather the veteran was no more seen. On we went through the Southern Pacific—sometimes surrounded by numerous and immense icebergs—driving amidst them through storm and darkness—a sublime, yet dangerous situation. We were plenteously visited by rain, hail, sleet, and snow—in that winterly region. Again, after rounding Cape Horn, after passing the Falkland Isles, we were approaching the more genial atmosphere of tropical latitudes; and once more the grey-headed warrior, resting his hand on Mickey's shoulder, came forth, and basked in the sunshine of the quarter-deck. In that weary, chilly, and anxious time, how much he Was changed for the worse! Pale, thin, and haggardlooking, you felt he could not survive long. Again he was confined to his cabin, grew gradually worse, and expired in the night of the 6th of June. Intelligence of his death spread swiftly and sadly through the vessel. Early orders were given by the captain that the whole crew should be neatly dressed, and orderly attend at noon the funeral on the quarter-deck. At twelve the ship's bell was leisurely and solemnly tolled, and four seamen carried the corpse from the cuddy, on a portion of the hatchwaytop, sewn up in canvas, and covered with the ship's colours for a pall. On the gangway of the lee-side of the ship the body was placed; a numerous, reverent, and respectable assemblage surrounding it; whilst the beautiful and impressive burial service was most appropriately read by a venerable Scottish gentleman, Mr. Erskine, of Alva. The morning had been bright, the wind gentle, the sea softly glittering in the sun. Now, in the deep silence, and the sound of that one only voice,—the sun as if purposely retired behind a cloud; the wind sighed amongst the cordage; the very sea-birds, petrels, and albatrosses, seemed to move about the ship on noiseless pinions, in that profound hush of the intensely solitary ocean. How powerfully were impressed upon you during this scene the mysteries of life and death! Always seemed to me most sublime and touching the church burial-service, even where the stir of life is densest in thronged towns; solemnly beautiful in the homely rural quiet of country churchyards; but at sea, when human life seems a thing of accident—the plaything of wind and wave—how infinitely more impressive. At the words, "we therefore commit his body to the deep," there was a sudden motion of the hatchway-top; a chilling sensation was felt by all present; and the body was launched into the ocean. A lady on the poop saw the body float on the water for a moment, then disappear for ever. Powerfully impressed by the circumstances of this funeral, I composed almost immediately the following poem:—

THE SOLDIER FINDS A SEAMAN'S GRAVE.

A thirst for fame, his native coast
He left for India's burning strand,
To combat with the alien host,
With dauntless heart and desperate hand.
Often he fought, as often he
Returned with joy that victory gave,
Who here this day, on the lone sea,
Has sunk into a seaman's grave.

Where thick the bolts of death were sped;
Where men in festering heaps were strewn:
Unscathed 'midst storms of carnage dread,
He safe returned unto his own.
Returned with Fame to Love—to be
Of Love and Fame the blessed slave;
Who here this day, on the lone sea,
Has found at length a seaman's grave.

The honours paid to young and old,
To warriors dead, he must forego:
The drum in mournful measures rolled—
The march, the music dirge-like slow:
His comrades armed, his charger led,
Round which war's trappings sadly wave;
With the last tribute to the dead—
How different from the seaman's grave!

Beloved was she who hailed him lord,
And bless'd were those who called him sire,
The sharers of his festive board,
The brighteners of his evening fire;
But years glide on, and fast will flee
The things we most would bless and save,
As well he knew who on the sea
This day has found a seaman's grave.

And what are love or fame to him
Alone upon the sea who dies:
Where none support the languid limb—
With none to close the dying eyes?
His kindred he no more may see,
Divorced from love by wind and wave;
Unmourn'd, unwept of all where he
The soldier finds a seaman's grave.

A DIGRESSION.

Many poets have sung about the joy of grief, as though really there were some pleasure in it; others declare that "our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought," and it may be so. No wonder, then, that murders can be extremely interesting in the relation, and that shipwrecks have great contentment in them for the world generally: sailors have a diiferent idea of them. Still after any danger, or during a gale, the working of the sea seemed to shake loose all their stormy recollections. One had been on board a whaler for years, and had grown familiar with other dangers besides shipwreck; another had his story of pirates, and after robbery of wreck; and of being taken insensible from a floating fragment of a mast, after three days' contention with wind and wave. Even the ship-boys had known great sea hardships, and had survived (one could scarcely believe it) many youthful comrades, swallowed by the remorseless deep. I fancied myself, when surrounded by these narrators—this remnant spared by the great battle of the sea—to have seen, and known, and endured nothing. I had found the ocean quite another element, and had, indeed, circled it for little. The poem of "The Shipwreck" would seem dull to us were it not enlivened by the fact that the author of it was afterwards lost at sea. Half of the charm lingering about the "Faery Queen" is the great satisfaction you feel that the other half of the poem was lost in the Irish Channel. Camoens, too, imparted a great interest to "The Lusiad" by swimming with it to the land; saving it at once from the ocean and Lethe. I felt, on considering these things, that I was rather unfortunate in not being shipwrecked, as it would have added considerably to the charm of this narrative, and to the reader's satisfaction. We will have our shipwreck, nevertheless: for when so many of our seamen keep interesting journals, it would be a shame to go without one. That of Harry Thomson must serve our turn; given as nearly as possible verbatim from his "Voyages to Various Parts of the World," in MS. When wrecked, he was the ship's apprentice, and sixteen years of age.

"LOSS, BY SHIPWRECK, OF THE 'VISCOUNT MELBOURNE.'

"The ship Viscount Melbourne (800 tons register) left London, bound for Calcutta, Oct. 26th, 1840, and arrived safely in the March of the year 1841. Thence she sailed in April for the Mauritius, with a cargo of rice, arriving in June at Port Louis. Then she returned in ballast to Calcutta; and after lying there three months, finally started for China, laden with cotton, rice, and saltpetre.

"We had light variable winds for the most part, down the Bay of Bengal and through the Straits of Malacca, and reached Pulo Penang, or Prince of Wales's Island, in fourteen days.

"We lay here three or four days, taking in water, rattans, and fire-wood. The next place we touched at was Singapore, about a week's sail from Penang. During the run, one of the Lascars, quite a boy, deliberately jumped overboard, because he had been kicked by a proud, upstart youth—our fourth mate, and sunk before a boat could reach him.

"At Singapore, Mrs. Dare, passenger, and two children, came on board; one child scarcely two years old and the other at the breast. Also Lieut.-Col. Campbell, going to command the 30th Regiment, stationed at Macao.

"We left Singapore on Christmas night, at 12, with light, changeable winds and squally weather. On New Year's Day commenced a heavy gale, which lasted three days. This was supposed to be the primary cause of the loss of our good ship; for the strength of the gale, in the first place, carried us out of our course; when it falling calm, with light airs at times, the strength of the current drifted us into the dangerous reef of coral, known by the name of the Luconia Shoal, about seventytwo miles from the Island of Borneo.

"It was on Wednesday, January 5, 1842, at 4, A.M., that I was called to keep my watch. I had hardly got on deck before I heard Mr. Small, the chief mate, sing out, 'Stand by your top-gallant and top-sail halyards,' and at the same time there was a rushing sound as of approaching wind. I said to the youngest apprentice, Hughes, whom I had just relieved, 'Is that a squall coming on?'-'think so,' he replied, 'for I have heard it these ten minutes;' yet at the time there was hardly wind enough to fill the sails.

"The chief mate had just relieved Mr. Penfold, the second officer, when the man at the wheel said he heard breakers to leeward. The mate ran to the lee side, and immediately exclaimed, 'Good God! the breakers!' The captain was called instantly; the ship the while fast drifting on the reef. We tried to tack, but vainly. 'Clear away the larboard anchor and let go!' but it would not hold, the whole of the chain being paid down in the locker. 'Let go the starboard anchor!' but that was worse; for the small-stream chain, which we used in working through the Straits, was paid down on the top of all in the locker also. Whilst we were clearing it, she struck; and continued bumping and tearing on the coral, unable to get free. The second stroke unshipped the rudder; sending the wheel and the man holding it headlong to the lee side of the ship. 'Cut away the mizen-mast,' was the next command (in order to lighten the ship aft); and the noble mast fell over the side, carrying along with it yards, sails, and gear, smashing in the cuddy skylights as it fell. This lightened her considerably astern, but to no purpose: the ship was now fixed immoveably.

"All hopes were now given up of saving the ship, for the water was gaining upon us fast; and it was well known that when the cotton got wet it would swell, and inevitably blow up the ship.

"Preparations were made to get the launch out; the sheep and goats were thrown out of her, and she was hoisted over the ship's side, together with the three cutters and the jolly boat. The chief mate now called the Europeans aft, and exhorted them to be sober and obedient and all would yet be well; to all of which they answered readily and willingly that they would. A dram of grog was now served out to all hands; and the mate, to keep the men as he had exhorted them to be—sober, rolled the grog cask into the lee scuppers and upset it.

"The butcher was ordered to kill one of the finest of the English sheep, and the cook to cook it, together with twelve fine hams, to be distributed to the boats' crews.

"At 11, A.M., we went to breakfast; and the store-rooms being thrown open, a fine breakfast we might have made. There was bread, cheese, i salmon, meat, pickles, pies, fruits, and liquors of all descriptions; but few of us could eat anything. The Lascars killed fowls, ducks, &c., and dry-curried them for their own use. They were very busy packing their things quite unconcernedly, for they did not feel the danger of their situation as we did. We next set about getting water, provisions, &c., into the boats; we had plenty of tins of preserved fruits, meat, and vegetables; whilst the cook was going round, throwing boiled hams and large pieces of roast mutton into each boat, beside raw salt meat, in case we should run short. We filled our boats' breakers with water, besides two puncheons of eighty gallons each, which we lowered into the long-boat.

"Each person was allowed to take a small bundle of clothes.

"Arms were next distributed amongst the crews,—guns, pistols, cutlasses, boarding-pikes, and tomahawks, with ammunition.

"I had one look round before I left the ship, and a more deplorable sight than our once clean and orderly decks presented, cannot be imagined. Below, the gun-deck was strewed with clothes of all descriptions,—chests, beds, and hammocks, which we were obliged to leaye.

"The store-rooms were opened, and cases of wine, gin, and brandy, with fruits and preserves, were lying about the decks. Here I could not help laughing to see the butcher and the cook, both drunk; the butcher holding on by one of the stancheons to keep himself steady, and reviling the cook for being drunk on such an awful occasion (the cook at the time lying on the main hatches), when, just then losing his bold, he fell with his head through one of the panels of the store-room opposite, where he stuck fast until extricated by one of the crew.

"On the main-deck it looked still worse. The decks were littered with hay and straw; sheep, goats, pigs, and poultry, all in the greatest confusion, running about fore and aft without control.

"Aft, in the cuddy, were strewn uniforms belonging to the officers, and clothes of every kind, mixed with papers, refreshments, and baby-linen. In the midst of all this sat Mrs. Dare, a beautiful woman of not more than twenty-three, with a child at the breast; the other little fellow sitting on the knee of Colonel Campbell: (she was accompanying her husband, captain of a vessel now in China, but was obliged to be left at Singapore to be confined, and was now going to him). The captain was speaking to her, and, considering the sorrow of her situation, she endured it with the utmost fortitude. She made no lament, nor spoke, except to the child, which was crying because it could get no milk; but whilst she looked upon the child, tears trickled down her cheeks, and she gave the babe into the captain's arms, unable to endure it longer, and retired into her cabin a few minutes before she went into the boat.

"At about 1, P.M., all having left the ship, we started in the following order:—

"1st. The long-boat, containing—

"2nd. The first cutter, containing—

"3rd. The second cutter, containing—

"4th. The jolly-boat, containing—

"5th and last. The gig, containing—

Twenty-one Lascars.—Total leaving the wreck, twenty-six Europeans and forty-five Lascars.

"We towed the long-boat out clear of the coral reef, and then she made sail, steering for the coast of Borneo. We received orders to steer S.E. and to fire a musket occasionally if we parted company during the night. Half a pint of water and a dram of grog were served out to each person. We kept as near the launch as possible all night.

"Thursday, 6th.—At daylight we were ahead of the launch and close to the cutters. At a signal from the former, we bore down towards her, the captain desiring the attendance of all the boats' crews at the funeral of a European, a sailor of the name of Puzzack, who died during the night: (he had long been ill of the dysentery).

"The captam read the prayers for the burial of the dead, and the body was launched overboard, wrapped in a sheet. We then made sail; but had not gone one hundred yards from the body, before we saw several tremendous sharks, pulling and tearing it to pieces.

"Half-a-pint of water, with some mutton and biscuit, was dealt out to us three times in the day. Light airs and sultry weather.

"Lat. at noon 4° 45' N.—Long. 113° 27' East. Saw no more of the ship since six, A.M.

"Friday, 7th.—At daylight saw the land bearing E.N.E. and S.E. by S. In company with the launch. During the day light breezes with a fiery sun: and having nothing wherewith to shelter ourselves from it, it began to raise large blisters on our hands and faces. The same water as yesterday, but no allowance of biscuit. Mr. Dainty, who had charge of our boat, kindly offered to share his clothes with me. I thanked him, but declined, thinking myself as well off as he in that respect.

"Lat. 4° 50' N.—Long. 113° 10' East.

"Saturday, 8th.—At daylight all the boats in company stood in for the coast. Mr. Small in the first cutter, told Mr. Penfold that he would run in and look at the land, and return to us by sunset; but from that time we saw no more of him or his boat.

"The launch anchored this night by means of a grapnel, with one of the carpenter's large augers lashed athwart for a stock, and we hung on astern of them. We kept firing signals during the night, but no cutter did we see. The gig, full of Lascars, that was towed by the long-boat, cast off secretly, and without a word, deserted us, and pulled for the shore.

"Water as before, with ham and biscuit and a bottle of porter.

"Lat. 4° 45' N.—Loner. 110° 55' East.

"Sunday, 9th.—Last night was the most miserable one I ever spent; it rained and blew with great violence through the whole night. Mr. Dainty and myself had to keep watch alternately, for fear of going adrift. About two, A.M., the rope by which we were made fast to the launch parted; but luckily we caught hold of the second cutter as we drifted past, or we should have all been lost, for the wind and current were so strong, we should have been driven right out to sea.

"About six, A.M., as we were all assembled in the launch, hearing the captain read prayers, we saw a proa bearing down towards us.

"The captain ordered us to take the Serang (boatswain over the Lascars), along with us, and speak them, to learn if they were friendly; for we much feared they were pirates. If there was danger, we were to hoist a signal, and they would come to our assistance. We accordingly started to meet them; we waved a white cloth in token of amity, and they did the same. When we got alongside of them we spoke, the Serang acting as interpreter: they said that they came to conduct us safely in-shore, and that our boat was there already. So by this we suspected that they had taken them prisoners, and wished to entice the rest of us to the same fate. They now said that they wished to see the captain; so we pulled back, and they soon came up with the launch, where all were ready, cutlass in hand, to receive them, in case of treachery. They tried all they could to persuade us to go with them, and finally began to make fast to the launch with a rattan rope. When they found that we would not go with them, they assumed a very threatening aspect; so, there being so few of us who would fight, and our fire-arms being useless on account of the preceding rain, the captain gave orders to cut and run. The cook with one blow of his cutlass severed their rope, and we all made sail. When they saw this, they made sail in chase of us. We gained upon them at first, when, to our surprise, they opened fire upon us, first from their rifles, and finally from a swivel, the last shot passing through a blanket that was rigged as a screen from the sun at the back of the captain and passengers. It passed betwixt the captain and Mrs. Dare, and then scraping a piece off the skull of one of the Lascars, who sat in the bow of the boat, it buried itself in the water. Another shot cut away the leech of the second cutter's lug. They gained rapidly on our boat, we not being so well manned or skilful as the rest. When within a few fathoms they made signs for us to desist pulling, at the same time taking aim at us. Mr. Parkhouse, who was pulling the next oar to me, when he saw the rifle pointed towards us, dropped his oar, exclaiming, 'Good God! there is one of us gone.' It was of no use persisting farther, so they ran alongside.

"The proa was about the size of a sloop, neatly built of teak, but cleverly covered with matting and bark, to make her appearance as lubberly and clumsy as possible. She had two long straight poles for masts, and a large lug made of matting to each. Besides this, they pulled fifteen sweeps a side. When they first ran alongside the launch, there appeared to be only five or six half-naked fellows, who were fishing; but now her decks were crowded with Malays, armed and dressed in fancy costumes. Creeses, very dangerous crooked poisoned swords, clubs, spears, and guns, altogether made them have a very ferocious appearance.

"They jumped into our boat; seized upon us; and would I think have despatched us at once, had it not been for the interference of one who seemed to be their chief, who, dashing away the swords of the most forward, ordered all but two to get into their own craft, and to proceed in chase of our other boats, which by this time had got pretty far in advance. They accordingly set their sails, and stood for the other boats, whilst we were obliged to steer for the land.

"Our preserver, a gentlemanly thief, was still with us, and he now began to lay his hands upon every thing, tying them all up in a blanket. But when those in the proa sawthis, they, thinking I suppose that they were sent after a shadow, whilst he was making sure of the substance, turned back, and running alongside, began to clear the boat of every thing—clothes, provisions, and even our drop of water, about two gallons, for the sake of the keg. As they took our muskets, pistols, and other arms, they repeatedly jumped for joy, exclaiming, 'barguish' (very good). When they came to our sextant, they seemed much puzzled to know what it was, and made signs to me to show them the use of it, which I did. We repeatedly made signs to the chief to let us go after the boats, which by this time were nearly out of sight; to which he nodded his head assentingly, and shook us by the hand. Mr. Parkhouse now very foolishly pulled a small bag from his pocket, containing a fifty rupee note and some silver, which he gave to the chief, at the same time pointing to our other boats. Directly he got this, the rest began to strip us for more. They took his watch, Mr. Dainty's watch and ring, but on me they only found a Dutch stiver.

"There was a case of herring-paste, which they made me taste of before they would take it. They also threw our bag of biscuit into the water. When having taken every thing, they now, to our great delight, told us we might go. They gave us a small basket of sago, and about three pints of water. The chief politely shook hands with us all; then stepping on board the proa they made sail towards the shore.

"Luckily for us, one of our boats was just in sight; that containing Mr. Penfold, who had offered the captain, if he would give him six Englishmen, he would rescue us, or share our fate, for they never thought we should return. Guess then our joy, when we saw him lying-to, though a great way off.

"We made sail, and stood towards him, pulling, at the same time, with all our might, uncertain for some time whether we gained upon them or not. Had it been night, we should have missed them, and must, unprovided as we were, have died a miserable death; worse, indeed, than the one from which we had escaped. We came up with him fast, and in two hours from leaving the proa, ran alongside of them, and pleased enough they were to see us.

"Just as we reached them, away went our mast, and the cutter took us in tow. We soon came up with the launch, when the captain welcomed us heartily. Our boat not being worth repairing, was condemned. Half of our crew went in the second cutter, Mr. Dainty and myself into the launch. The sails and oars being taken out of her, she was scuttled, and cast adrift.

"Monday, 10th.—Pleasant breeze during the day: steenng N.W. for Sambas, a Dutch settlement on the S.W. coast of Borneo. Mrs. Dare fretting very much for her babe, being unable to give it suck. The little boy, full of fun and mischief, throwing overboard everything in his reach. Set to, and made weatherboards of some spare canvas, to keep out the spray, which occasionally broke over us.

"The same allowance of water, with bread, ham, preserved meat, &c., three times a-day. During the night parted company, by accident, with the second cutter.

"Tuesday, 11th.—Strong breeze from the northward. The captain finding the water getting short, had it measured, and found, that by going upon short allowance, we should have enough to last us to Singapore direct, so we were put upon three wine glasses a-day. The little boy very troublesome, continually crying for water. The heat of the sun is unbearable, the skin beginning to peel off my hands and face.

"Wednesday, 12th.—Stiff breeze, with a high troubled sea; shipped a great quantity of water, which damaged some of our bread. Lat. 4°. 40' N. Long. 111° 10' East.

"Thursday, 13th.—Steady breeze from the northward, with heavy sea. At half-past four, p.m., we saw the Great Natimas Island, bearing from West to S.S.W. Hauled our wind to go to the northward of the island.

"At sunset, the extreme of the island bore N. and W. by S.

"Friday, 14th.—At day-light, the island yet in sight. Pleasant breeze from N.N.E. At two, p.m., passed Saddle Island. At four, the island out of sight astern.

"Saturday, 15th.—During the day, the sun very oppressive. Steering W.S.W. Lat. 4° 13' N. Long. 106° 20' E. Caught a little rain-water during the night.

"Sunday, 16th.—At daylight, saw the Anambas, bearing S.E. half S. The captain read prayers. Had a glass of champagne each after dinner. At three, p.m., saw Pulo Aoue S.W. by W. Pulo Penang W. half S. Fine weather throughout, with smooth water.

"Monday, 17th.—With daylight, beheld the main-land of Malacca. At six, saw Bintang Hill. At twelve, boarded the Mary Irvine, of Liverpool, bound for China. The captain was very kind, offering us provisions; but expecting to be in Singapore in a few hours, we took nothing, except some water and pine apples, which were a great treat to us.

"We arrived at Singapore at about three, p.m., after being twelve days in our boats. The second cutter had got in early in the morning. Nothing heard of the first cutter.

"Now came a carriage for Mrs. Dare, and thankful enough she was.

"Mr. Penfold, in a hired schooner, was then going to search for Mr. Small.

"Mr. Dainty having engaged his passage home in the barque, Manilla, for London, procured places as seamen for me and the other apprentice. Thus, on Saturday, the 22nd, we went on board; on Sunday, the 23rd, we weighed anchor, and started for England, where, after a long and tedious voyage of five months, during which we were nearly starved into the bargain, we arrived in London, after an absence of twenty months.

"The first cutter did not get into Singapore until a fortnight after we left, having been to Sambas. The Lascars, who deserted us, had been taken as slaves, and did not regain their liberty until twelve months after."

Thus far Harry Thompson: thanks to him, for holding the pen in one hand, whilst using the oar with the other. Yet, had it not been for Mrs. Dare and the children, the other creatures might have shifted for themselves, and the journal might have mouldered unmolested in that old weather-beaten chest, which had timed its creakings to the roll and dash of many a wild sea billow.

It was on the 23rd of June that we weighed anchor, and stood out from Rio for the sea, to again have a recurrence of our old fortune, the head-winds. Day after day we were either becalmed or the wind was against us: and when at length, wearied of seeing the Cape Frieo Light, we rounded the projecting angle of coast, the half-only favourable breeze kept us still near the South American shore. It was on the 6th of July that we perceived, by the colour of the water, that we were approaching it too closely: soon sprigs of sea-weed were seen abundantly; then palpably, in several places, the faint outlines of land. Our vessel was hauled close to the wind; and there being fortunately a change in it, we were enabled to sail eastwardly, and saw no more of the South American coast.

On the 9th we again, about seven o'clock in the morning, made land, which proved to be a small island, used as a prison by the Portuguese—the penal island of Fernando de Norhouna. As we approached, and sailed past it in the afternoon, we could plainly descry many buildings upon it, some of which were conspicuously white.

The Equator we crossed on the 11th, two weeks and a few days after leaving Rio Janeiro.

In this part of the ocean I saw, with considerable interest, the everlastingly-recurring lines of sea-weed, like brown footpaths, intersecting the vast meadows of the ocean; and through them we continued to sail for a thousand miles. Such they were when they first met the wondering eyes of Columbus; and cheered him in the deepest despondency with the certainty of the unseen and anxiously-expected land. At this sight, all the day-dreams that Columbus had indulged in, about new lands and their discovery, came into my mind; all the delays and delusive promises of which he had been the sport; all his lingerings in courts—the scorn and contumely he had endured for presuming to think that he knew more than courtly sages and cowled clerks; then of the few and miserable vessels in which he ventured on such a voyage, and the still more miserable crews, on whose caprices depended his success; the hopes, the anxieties, and the whole projects of his life. He was here saddened by uncertainty; was in the power of weak and mutinous people; in, as yet, an unknown sea; but here this sea-weed cheered him; then a bough with leaves and berries; land-birds in their Hight; canes curiously carved; and, lastly, the moving lights shifting about by night upon the land. All this I felt most livingly, and thought that it was something to have sailed through the same sea, and to have visited the new lands, with which, though unblest himself, his discoveries had blessed and enriched mankind.

The remaining portion of the voyage may be given in the annexed letter, addressed to our friend, Spencer T. Hall.

"Lizard Point, August 25th, 1844.

"DEAR FRIEND,—In letters to my English friends I have made such frequent mention of my purposed return from Australia, and have been so long expected by those interested in my coming, that my actual arrival will scarcely be believed. It is true, however, that I set sail in a homeward-bound ship from Port Phillip on the 30th of March, and after a long and tedious voyage, am now in prospect of the old and famous land of the white cliffs; and although it has been to me the scene of various fortunes, and little of it good, I do not gaze on the fine old country again without emotion. Death and change have wrought a difference in it since I left it—and 'O! the difference to me!'—yet I do not doubt to meet with much that I left unchanged—a preponderance of good in the old haunts and 'the old familiar faces.' Such is hope.

"I trust that all our mutual friends are well. To find them so, will be a pleasure.

"I shall say little of the voyage—as we can, when we meet, which I trust will be before long—talk that over together; only this—that we sailed for more than a thousand miles amongst, the icebergs of the Southern Pacific. That we rounded Cape Horn on the 16th of May; performing that portion of our voyage in fine style, sailing in twenty-eight hours 305 miles—going from Diego Ramerez, a small island, which we saw, to the Falkland Isles, in little more than a day. Then our ship rested herself in the profoundest calm for several days, in prospect of the snowmantled shoreland slopes and mountains—a scene sprinkled darkly with trees. Thence we had head-winds, with occasional variations, quite tantalizing. One day our captain was for making St. Helena, to take in stores and fresh water, our stock getting low—then came the wind ahead again, and being driven perpetually nearer and nearer the South-American coast, we were for touching at Pernambuco—but were, through the rude kindness of squalls, which did our rigging no small mischief, compelled to put into Rio Janeiro: a thing which I did not regret, as it was the place of all others that I anxiously desired to see. We left Rio on the 23rd of June, having as much difficulty to get away as to reach it, our old enemies the head-winds perpetually besetting our ocean-path. The Line we did not cross until the 11th of July, for, during most of the way, our adverse winds have ever been strong and the favourable ones light. We saw the island of Fernando de Norhouna, a Portuguese convict region, which was the last land we beheld until the 8th of the present month, when we again refreshed our eyesight with the prospect of a small village in the midst of green fields,—spread out before us like a map, in the small island of Flores, the most westerly of the Azores or Western Isles. If we were in danger before from squalls—here we narrowly escaped being wrecked amongst the rocks and breakers. Our ship missed stays when she should have gone about, and any person in the fore-part of the vessel might have cast a biscuit on the precipitous shore. The people of Dalgado, as we afterwards learnt, set up a shriek of horror as they in groups beheld our danger. My nephew ran to his box and transferred his cash to his pocket, expecting, as did our most experienced seamen, that the ship would go to atoms. Contrary, however, to all expectation, the vessel was what sailors term weared round the other way just in time to save her. We were thus rescued from the most perilous situation we had been placed in during the whole voyage. To add to the disagreeableness of our situation, sharks were about us abundantly, and they kept sailing with their top fin out of the water, along with us. We touched at this place to take in, once more, provisions and fresh water—famine having more than once stared us in the face. Our most hard-hearted winds always relenting before we were driven to extremities. We have had on the voyage a good deal of sea-gossiping—three instances of which only I must mention. We spoke and boarded the Cuba, an American ship, from Boston, U.S. Amongst other stores we procured from her a bundle of newspapers—the mind not being forgotten any more than the body. In these we read English news to the month of May; of the Queen's birth-day, and her attainment of her 25th year—of O'Connell's sentence, fine, and imprisonment—and of what concerned me most, and which I read with regret, the death, at Bath, of Beckford, the author of 'Vathek.' We spoke this ship on the 20th of July,—out for the west coast of Africa; from Boston twenty-nine days. About the beginning of this month we again applied for provisions to the captain of a small French vessel from the island of Martinique to Marseilles. He politely relieved the necessity of us poor waywearied wayfarers of the ocean, expressing, again and again, until our people were out of hearing, his regret that he could not do it so thoroughly as he wished. This took place a few days before our visit to Flores.

"On the 16th, we met and had intercourse with 'The Queen of the Ocean,' a large ship bound from Liverpool to Quebec, out thirteen days. From her we obtained relief gratis, and only one newspaper, more than a month old; the most important intelligence being, alas! an account of the funeral of the poet Campbell. Thus departs star after star. Since I left England Allan Cunningham, Southev, and now Campbell, have vanished from the living, to live henceforth more fully in the popular mind.

"On Sunday, the 18th, we had been on board 147 days— twenty-one weeks!—and we had been confidently assured before we set out, such was the captain's reputation for despatch, that we should reach England before the June roses had utterly vanished from the hedges. Such in Port Phillip was the Doctor's expectation. They, however, who commit themselves to the keeping of wind and wave, if they lack patience, must nerve themselves for a stern endurance.

"On the 19th, eleven days after taking in water at Flores, we were put for the second time upon short allowance of that element,—and of wine too. From that island to this it is considered ordinarily eight days' sail.

"You will think our seafaring managers thoughtless and improvident, and such they certainly are. Before we had left Rio a month, we began to be menaced with scarcity of flour, bread, sugar, and other stores. Now in the Brazils, whence we had come, these articles were amazingly cheap: Flour, 9s. per cwt., and fine sugar, 12s.; wine, 8d. per bottle. On being supplied with three small casks of flour by the Yankee of the Cuba, twenty dollars was charged for them: of sugar, none could be obtained, and but a limited supply from the French ship. Had that twenty dollars been laid out in Rio, it would have purchased abundance of necessaries for a much longer voyage than even ours thence. This will be allowed to be anything but a pleasant situation for about sixty people. The reflection that our progress might be wholly arrested, and that no new circumstance, by a month's or two months' heavy gale of wind, had nothing in it consolatory.

"Then, in addition to this evil, we lost much good time through the necessity of lingering, sailing after, and boarding ships.

"Where Giant Prodigality is passenger, some others of his disagreeable family, such as Scarcity leading in by the hand Short-allowance, are sure to introduce themselves; whilst Famine looms largely in the distance, every day drawing nearer and nearer.

"On the 20th we were becalmed, as we were indeed very frequently; and when a gentle breeze did spring up, it came seldom from the right quarter. In sight were seven vessels, some outward, and others like ourselves, inward bound. Two of them passed us early in the morning before our ship coiled herself up to sleep; both, so declared our seamen, were American vessels; one a New Yorker. This last was so near, that we—their people and ours—could see each other hanging over the bulwarks.

"Sometimes we were sailing towards Ireland, then towards France, making little progress except amongst our provisions, of which only a few days' supply were said to be left.

"I think the rats, of which the ship had abundance, were hungry, having eaten the collar of a new shirt of mine and the horn buttons of my nephew's great-coat.

"On the 21st, going the right course with three ships in sight, —one outward bound, the other holding on with us for the English Channel. On the morning of this day we were visited by the first land-bird—a water-wagtail. Its appearance diffused animation and cheerfulness over the whole ship. For myself, there lived in the sound of its voice a world of old associations, lanes, and meadows, and brooks; its haunts and ours in happy boyhood.

"The sea!—the sea! O the monster!—it has, with its concerns, swallowed up the whole of this letter, and much must remain unwritten, intended not to have been so when I commenced.

"P.S.—It is a bright Sabbath morning; the hills and headlands of Dorsetshire are in the distance, and on every hand about us are vessels in the Channel; I have counted 39."

Five years had elapsed, and we were again in London—and on the very day of the month and of the very month that we had left it for Australia. Autumn, with the sobriety of its hues, was upon the land; yet how deliciously green was the whole country; how rich and deep seemed the leafiness of oaks and elms; how level and smooth the roads; how small and exquisitely neat the hedgerows; the fields so beautifully cultivated; and the whole region so rich in towns, villages, and hamlets; and so augustly decorated with halls and churches. Then the Thames, to our thinking large enough when we left it for its commerce, but now inconveniently small for its overgrown traffic; with its vessels running against each other perpetually. Full of steamers, bearing the names of all gems, and their decks fearfully crowded with their thousands of welldressed people; these passed each other every five minutes, at a rapid rate. Of several ships, which left Port Phillip at the same time, two, ours and another, had their bulwarks smashed in through collisions in the Thames. A little danger there was, but how much more pleasure, in contemplating all this bustle and throng of business and pleasure! a spectacle nowhere in the world to be equalled, and most especially certain to fill with animation and pride the heart of the long-absent and home-returning Englishman.

And here I was again in England, where our forefathers, sleeping generation after generation, in the bosom of their green and beautiful land, where they age after age not only fashioned for themselves, by their industry, comfortable homes of rural enjoyment and rest, but bequeathed it to their descendants, better cultivated, a more wealthy and habitable country. The labour, affection, and cares of its myriads of sleeping benefactors, who toiled, adorned, and fought for it, have made it what it is, conspicuously the glory of all nations, a paradise of love, and joy, and liberty. Not, alas! wholly exempt from crime, and woe, and want, and disease; but animated by a quick spirit of Christian philanthropy, every day rendering the sum of these less and less.

Full of these sentiments, and strongly impressed by the sense of our national greatness, and unwearied activity in the diffusion of universal good, I blessed the land in my heart; and was satisfied that the most singularly earthly good fortune, the greatest honour that could fall to the lot of mortal man, was to have been BORN IN ENGLAND; and the truest earthly wisdom, TO ENDEAVOUR TO LIVE IN IT!

THE END.

LONDON:

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

* A Port Phillip native was heard to say, "White man no good to eat; white man salt; black fellow good as bullock."