AUSTRALASIA — 8th ed. (1853

AUSTRALASIA,

Introductory observations. IX modern geography, the fifth great division of the earth's surface.

The learned and intelligent President de Brosses was the first writer who suggested that all the lands and islands in the Austral world should be divided into three portions, corresponding with the three great oceans, the Indian or Ethiopic, the Atlantic, and the Pacific; those in the Indian Ocean and to the south of Asia to be named Australasia; those in the two Pacifics, from the multitude of islands, Polynesia (a name first used, we believe, by De Barros); and those in the Atlantic to the south of Cape Horn, and the Cape of Good Hope, Magellanica. The last, however, became unnecessary, as soon as it was ascertained that the Terra Australis incognita had no existence.

The two divisions of Australasia and Polynesia will be found to comprehend, with sufficient convenience, all those islands that cannot with propriety be referred to any of the four continents of the globe. Nor is there any difficulty in drawing a line of separation between these two divisions; though it is not quite so easy to mark the distinct boundary between the Australasian and the Asiatic islands, where they melt

into each other, about the equator, at the N.W. extremity of Papua or New Guinea. In a geographical view, the small islands of Waygion, Salwatty, Batanta, Mysol, and Timorlaut, ought strictly to belong to Australasia; but peopled as they are by Asiatics of the Malay tribe, and under the influence of the Dutch settlements, it may perhaps be more proper, in a moral and political point of view, to consider them as belonging to the Asiatic Islands; more particularly as we shall then have all the Australasian population with very few exceptions, marked with more or less of the African or Negro character. But, in fact, all geographical divisions are and must be to a certain degree arbitrary.

If, then, we take the equator as the northern boundary from the 132° to the 175° of east longitude; continue a line on the latter meridian to the 55th parallel (bending a little to take in New Zealand) for the eastern; another line along the same parallel to the 65th degree of east longitude for Plate C. the southern; and a slanting line to the point on the equator from which we set out, so as to include Kerguelen's Land, and pass on the eastern sides of Timorlaut, Ceram, Mysol, and Salwatty, for the western boundary; those lines

Australasia will circumscribe the whole of the Australasian islands. We have included the uninhabited islands of Kerguelen and St Paul and Amsterdam, because they cannot properly be considered as African islands, though arranged, we believe, under that division by Pinkerton; they are of less importance to geography than to geology.

Australasia, then, may be subdivided into the following groups and islands:—

1. Australia, or New Holland.
2. Van Diemen's Land, or Tasmania.
3. New Guinea, and the Louisiade Archipelago.
4. New Britain, New Ireland, and neighbouring islands.
5. Solomon's Islands.
6. New Hebrides.
7. New Caledonia.
8. New Zealand, and isles to the southward.
9. Kerguelen's Islands, or Islands of Desolation.
10. St Paul and Amsterdam.
11. Numerous reefs and islets of coral scattered over the Australasian Sea.

Australasia, or New Holland. I. The first attempt to explore this island, which, from its size, may be considered as the fifth continent of the earth, is unquestionably due to the Dutch; for although some part of the northern coast may have been seen by the early navigators of Spain and Portugal, there is no direct testimony in favour of such a discovery. There are two charts in the British Museum which belonged to the Harleian Collection; one French, without date, which was probably the original; and the other English, apparently a copy: the latter is dedicated to the king of England, and bears date 1542. In both of these charts is marked down an extensive tract of country to the southward of the Moluccas, under the name of Great Java, agreeing more nearly with the position and extent of New Holland than any other land. The form given to the N.W. part of the coast in these charts approaches nearest to the truth; a part, indeed, which may have been seen by those early navigators who visited the Moluccas long before the date of the English chart. It is a singular coincidence in geographical nomenclature, that, on the east coast of the French chart, something like a Botany Bay should be designated under the name of Coste des Herbaiges. The Abbé Prévost, in the Histoire Générale des Voyages, and the President de Brosses, in his Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes, are not very happy in advancing a claim in favour of Paulovier de Gonneville, a French captain, to the discovery of this Terra Australis in 1504. It was the coast of Madagascar upon which Gonneville was driven, as is evident by their own accounts.

The best and most authentic abstract of the Dutch discoveries on the coasts of New Holland is contained in the instructions given by the governor-general of Batavia to Commodore Abel Jansen Tasman, and published by Mr Dalrymple in his Collection concerning Papua. From this document it appears that the Dutch government of Bantam in 1605 despatched the Duyfhen yacht to explore the islands of New Guinea. Returning to the southward along the islands on the northern side of Torres Strait, she came to that part of the Great South Land which is now called Cape York; but all these lands were then thought to be connected, and to form the southern coast of New Guinea. "Thus," says Captain Flinders, "without being conscious of it, the commander of the Duyfhen made the first authenticated discovery of any part of the Great South Land, about the month of March 1606." About the same place, and in the same year, Torres, a Spanish navigator, being second in command to Fernandez de Quiros, saw the Terra Australis, but had as little knowledge of the nature of his discovery as the commander of the Duyfhen. He passed the strait, however, which divides this Terra Australis from New Guinea, whose existence was not generally known till 1770, when it was rediscovered and passed by our great circumnavigator

Captain Cook. Of this, and his other discoveries, Torres addressed an account to the king of Spain, and, as it afterwards appeared, had taken the precaution to lodge a copy of it in the archives of Manila; for, when that city was surrendered to the British forces in 1762, Mr Dalrymple snatched from oblivion this interesting document of early discovery, and, as a just tribute to the enterprising Spanish navigator, he gave to this passage the name of Torres Strait, by which it is now universally known.

In 1617 the Dutch sent a second expedition, but "with little success;" the journals of which were lost. In 1623, the yachts Pera and Arnheim were despatched from Amboyna, under the command of Jan Carstens, who, with eight of the Arnheim's crew, was treacherously murdered by the natives of New Guinea; but the vessels prosecuted the voyage, and discovered the great islands Arnheim and the Spult. The Arnheim returned to Amboyna; the Pera persisted, and ran along the west coast of New Guinea, as they thought, but in reality New Holland, to Cape Keer-veer or Turn-again, and from thence explored the coast farther southward, as far as 17°, to Staten River. "In this discovery were found everywhere shallow water and barren coasts, islands altogether thinly peopled by divers cruel, poor, and brutal nations; and of very little use to the (Dutch East India) Company."

The next expedition sent by the Dutch was from Banda in 1636, when Gerrit Tomaz Pool proceeded with the yachts Klein Amsterdam and Wesel, and nearly at the same place, on the coast of New Guinea, met the same fate which had befallen Carstens; but the supercargo, Pierson, continued the voyage, and discovered the coast of Arnheim, or Van Diemen's Land, in 11° S., and sailed along the shore 120 miles, but without seeing any inhabitants.

Abel Jansen Tasman sailed on a second voyage of discovery from Batavia in 1644; but no account of this voyage was ever made public, nor is it known to exist. No chart bearing his name is now known, but there is little doubt that the N.W. coast of New Holland was first explored by him; and it is singular enough that Dampier should say he had Tasman's chart of it. Tasman is also supposed to have sailed round the Gulf of Carpentaria; an opinion which Captain Flinders considers to be strengthened, from the names of Tasman, of the governor-general, and of two of the council, who signed his instructions, being applied to places at the head of the gulf, as well as that of Maria, the governor's daughter, to whom Tasman is said to have been attached. Tasman had sailed, on a former voyage, from Batavia in 1642, for the Mauritius; whence steering south and eastward upon discovery, he fell in with land, to which he gave the name of Anthony Van Diemen's Land, in honour of the governor-general, "our master," he adds, "who sent us out to make discoveries."

The last voyage undertaken by the Dutch for the discovery of Terra Australis was in 1705, when three Dutch vessels were sent from Timor, "with orders to explore the north coast of New Holland better than it had been done before." The account, however, given by the President de Brosses is so vague and imperfect that very little satisfactory information is to be obtained from it. It is on the west coast that the Dutch appear to have been most successful. In Tasman's instructions it is stated, that "in the years 1616, 1618, 1619, and 1622, the west coast of this great unknown south land, from 35° to 22° south latitude, was discovered by outward-bound ships, and among them, by the ship Endragt." Dirk Hartog commanded this ship, and seems to have made the coast in latitude about 26° 30' S., and to have sailed northward along it to about 23°, giving the name of Landt van Endragt to the coast so discovered; and that of Dirk Hartog's Road (called afterwards Shark's Bay by Dampier) to an inlet on the coast a little to the southward of 25°. A plate of tin was found in 1697, and again seen by

Baudin in 1801, on one of the islands which forms the roadstead, bearing an inscription that the ship Endragt of Amsterdam arrived there on the 25th October 1616. After this several outward-bound ships fell in by accident with different parts of this coast.

The Dutch made little progress in any other part of the extensive coasts of New Holland. The instructions to Tasman say, "In the year 1627 the south coast of the Great South Land was accidentally discovered by the ship the Guldee Zeepard, outward bound from Fatherland for the space of 1000 miles." From the circumstance of this ship having on board Pieter Nuyts, who was sent from Batavia as ambassador to Japan, and afterwards appointed governor of Formosa, the name of Nuyts' Land was given to this long range of coast.

The first English navigator who appears to have seen any part of New Holland is the celebrated William Dampier, who, in his buccaneering voyage round the world, in January 1696, touched at the N.W. coast, for the purposes of caching his vessel and procuring refreshments. He made the land in latitude 16° 15', and ran along the shore to the N.E. till he came to a bay or opening fit for the purpose. In 1699 Dampier a second time visited the north-western coast of this Terra Australis, being now legitimately employed in making discovery in His Majesty's ship the Roebuck. Of this part of the coast little more is yet known than what has been described by Dampier, and that little is due to the exploration of Captain King.

It was left for our celebrated navigator Captain Cook to complete the grand outline of the fifth continent of the world. The reign of George III. will ever be distinguished for the liberal principles on which voyages of discovery were undertaken, and their results communicated to the world. The Endeavour was fitted out to observe, at Tahiti, the transit of Venus over the sun's disk; on her return, in 1770, Captain, then Lieutenant Cook, explored the whole E. coast of the Terra Australis Incognita, from Cape Howe to Cape York, not minutely entering into the details of every part, which would have been impossible, but laying down a correct general outline. "He reaped," says Captain Flinders, "the harvest of discovery; but the gleanings of the field remained to be gathered." In his passage through Endeavour Strait, between Cape York and the Prince of Wales' Islands, he not only cleared up the doubt which till then existed, of the actual separation of Terra Australis from New Guinea, but, by his accurate observations, enabled geographers to assign something like a true place to the former discoveries of the Dutch in these parts.

In 1777 Captain Cook, in the Resolution and Discovery, visited Van Diemen's Land; but as Captain Furneaux, in His Majesty's ship Adventure, had preceded him four years, and Tasman and Marion had examined the coast, little was here supposed to remain for discovery, except in detail. It was long subsequent to Furneaux's visit that Van Diemen's Land was ascertained to be an island; a discovery which may have been retarded by that officer having given an opinion "that there is no strait between New Holland and Van Diemen's Land, but a very deep bay." The existence of such a strait was, however, suspected; but the various attempts to ascertain it, without success, by different navigators from both sides of the coast, seemed to have decided the question in the negative, when Mr Bass, surgeon of the Reliance, having observed, as he ran down the E. coast in an open whale boat, that a heavy swell rolled in from the westward, was satisfied in his own mind that such a swell could proceed only from the great Southern Ocean. To ascertain whether this was the fact, was a point of great importance to the new colony on the eastern coast; and for this purpose Mr Flinders, together with Mr Bass, was sent on this service in a small decked boat. At the end of three months they returned to Port Jackson, with an interesting account of the

survey of the coasts of Van Diemen's Land, which they had completely circumnavigated, and thus confirmed the conjecture of Mr Bass, whose name the strait deservedly bears.

The French are entitled to the honour of some partial discoveries on Terra Australis. Captain Marion, in the year 1772, was despatched from the Isle of France with two ships, the Mascarin and Marquis de Castries, on a voyage of discovery, one of the objects of which was that of the supposed southern continent. He touched at Van Diemen's Land, quarrelled with the natives, and finding no fresh water, and the weather being stormy, he set sail for New Zealand, having added very little to the prior discoveries of Tasman.

In the year 1792, Rear-Admiral D'Entrecasteaux, having been sent out with two ships, La Recherche and L'Esperance, in search of the unfortunate La Pérouse, made the S. coast of New Holland, which he explored as far as the Termination Island of Vancouver; the deficiencies of whose chart he was able to supply, by the state of the weather permitting him to keep the coast closer on board than the English navigator had been able to do. Termination Island was found to be the first of a large group laid down by Nuyts, whose accuracy is praised by the Admiral, he having found "the latitude of Point Leeuwin and of the coast of Nuyts' Land laid down with an exactness surprising for the remote period in which they had been discovered." This liberal acknowledgment did not, however, prevent him from giving to the group of islands, which he only saw, but did not survey, the name of Archipel de la Recherche. But the most important discovery of D'Entrecasteaux was an inlet on the S. coast of Van Diemen's Land, which was found to be the entrance into a fine navigable channel, running more than thirty miles to the northward, and there communicating with Storm Bay; containing a series of excellent harbours, or rather one continued harbour the whole way, from beginning to end. "The charts," says Captain Flinders, "of the bays, ports, and arms of the sea, at the S.E. end of Van Diemen's Land, constructed in this expedition by Messieurs Beaufort, Beaufré, and assistants, appear to combine scientific accuracy and minuteness of detail with an uncommon degree of neatness in the execution. They contain some of the finest specimens of marine surveying, perhaps, ever made in a new country."

In 1800 Captain Baudin was sent out with two armed vessels, Le Géographe and Le Naturaliste, on a voyage of discovery nominally round the world, but actually, as appears from his instructions, to examine every part of the coasts of New Holland and Van Diemen's Land. The first volume of the account of this voyage was published by M. Péron, one of the naturalists, in 1807; the second never appeared. All the old names of the capes, bays, inlets, and islands, were unblushingly changed to those of Napoleon, his family, his marshals, and members of the Institute; and to 900 leagues of the southern coast, comprehending all the discoveries of Nuyts, Vancouver, D'Entrecasteaux, Flinders, Bass, and Grant, was given the general name of Terre Napoleon, while not 50 leagues of real discovery were effected which had not been anticipated by Captain Flinders, who, after losing his ship, and proceeding homewards, was scandalously detained as a prisoner in the Isle of France, "to give time for the previous publication of the voyage of M. Baudin, to prepossess the world that it was to the French nation only the complete discovery and examination of the south coast of Australia was due."

Flinders, however, ultimately triumphed. After an unjust and cruel captivity of seven years, he arrived in England in 1810, and in 1814 published his discoveries in two volumes, accompanied with an atlas of charts, which may be regarded as models in maritime surveying. At this time not a single chart of coast, bay, or island, of Captain Baudin's discoveries had appeared, though shortly afterwards an atlas was published by Freycinet, the first lieutenant, differing in their form

and structure very little from those of Captain Flinders, but bearing the names recorded in M. Péron's first volume. The frontispiece to this atlas affords an instance of that almost impious adulation which Buonaparte was in the habit of receiving from his creatures. An eye, having an N within it, darts its rays through a dark cloud overshadowing a globe with the southern pole uppermost, on which is drawn the outline of New Holland, with this inscription, "Fulget et ipso."

To Captain Flinders we owe the completion in detail of the survey of the coasts of New Holland, with the exception of the W. and N.W. coasts, which he was prevented from accomplishing by the loss of his ship. To him also, we are indebted for the very appropriate name of "Australia," which is now universally adopted to designate the entire island-continent, instead of the old Dutch name of New Holland. Dampier had said, in anchoring near the south end of De Witt's Land, behind Rosemary Island, which was one of an extensive cluster, "by the tides I met with a while afterwards, I had a strong suspicion that there might be a kind of archipelago of islands, and a passage possibly to the S. of New Holland and New Guinea, into the Great South Sea eastward;" but whether it might be a channel or strait, or the mouth of a large river, he seems not to have made up his mind. Flaming saw an opening 12 miles wide near the same place, and could find no anchorage. It has now been ascertained that there is no outlet into the Great Ocean eastward, nor into the Gulf of Carpentaria, nor into Bass Strait; but the geographical problem yet remains to be solved, whether the opening in the coast behind Rosemary Island be not the mouth of a large river. Le Géographie and Le Naturaliste, under Baudin, stood along this coast, examined in a very slovenly manner some particular points, but assisted geography less than they perplexed it, by unwarrantably changing every old name for that of some of the upstarts created by the French revolution.

In 1829, when the settlement at Swan River was effected under the governorship of Captain Stirling, R.N., it was expected that our knowledge of the harbours and rivers on the W. coast of Australia would be considerably enlarged. In this expectation, however, geographers were much disappointed, no naval discoveries of any importance having been accomplished under the auspices of the government. It was not until 1837 that the anchorages and harbours in the immediate vicinity of the settlement were correctly laid down; in which year detailed charts of the coast from King George's Sound to Melville Harbour were furnished to the colonial government by J. C. Wickham, commander of H.M.S. Beagle. That excellent officer was entrusted with the duty of conducting a minute survey of all the Australian coast which Flinders had left unsurveyed. He was succeeded in 1839 by Mr. Stokes, who continued zealously employed in this important duty until 1843; assisted by a staff of meritorious and scientific officers. The result of their investigations was not only a considerable addition to natural history, but a complete topography of the bays and harbours on the N.W. and northern coasts; besides the important discovery of four rivers of considerable magnitude. The largest of these, the Victoria, flows into Cambridge Gulf in Lat. 16°, which Stokes explored towards its source for a distance of 140 miles. He also discovered in Torres Strait a safe channel through the inner passage, at the extreme N. of this vast territory; while at the extreme S. he rendered the charts of Bass's Strait as safe for the mariner to navigate by, as those of the English Channel. Having circumnavigated the island, he and his predecessor left no harbour or estuary unsurveyed, which previous navigators had passed over; and doubtful positions of capes and other headlands they finally assigned to their correct latitudes and meridians upon the map. The detailed outline of the Australian coasts may now therefore be considered as complete, so far as maritime discovery is concerned. It is from the interior that we must look for further explorations of the many streams which are known to flow into the bays on its extensive shores.

For 25 years after the settlement was effected at Sydney, the Blue Mountains, which are visible from the heights around Port Jackson, formed the barrier to the government surveyors in their explorations to the westward. And it is a fact which serves to illustrate the difficulties which beset the progress of the Australian explorer, even at the present day, that during this period all the country beyond the inlets and their ramifications on the coast, and the course of the Hawkesbury River in the interior,—a semicircular section of land about 50 miles across, and comprised within the present county of Cumberland,—was a complete terra incognita to the settlers. This range of mountains, which forms a section of the great Australian Cordillera, was at last surmounted by Mr. Evans, a government surveyor, and a path found through the forest in 1813. This discovery led to the occupation of the pastoral lands to the westward; since known to all the world as the Bathurst gold-fields. Three enterprising colonists named Wentworth, Lawson, and Blaxland, were the first to occupy that region with their flocks and herds. They ascertained that it was not only better watered, and had more permanent running streams than the country on the eastern flank of the main range, but possessed a cooler climate, with richer alluvial soils, and was altogether better adapted for agricultural operations than the poor lands and warm climate nearer the coast. Forty years have since then elapsed; and not only has that western country become densely peopled on every side, and a road carried over the mountains, but even in the trackless wilds of the interior, intrepid men, braving all hardship and peril, have explored the recesses of this vast continent.

Of these explorations it will be necessary to give a brief abstract. In 1813 Mr. Evans prosecuted two successful journeys across the Blue Mountains, to the distance of about 300 miles W. from Sydney. As he ascended the range towards the sources of the eastern streams, he came upon the Fish River, to which he gave its name in consequence of the great number of fish his party caught in it; and descending on the western side of the watershed he traced the course of the Macquarie River through the Bathurst plains. He was surprised also to find fish of a large size resembling trout in this river, some weighing as much as fifteen pounds. On the plains, unusually large herds of kangaroos were met with, besides numbers of emus. Some aboriginal women and children whom he encountered, were so terrified at the appearance of the white men, that they fell down with fright. Governor Macquarie, who subsequently visited the plains, considered them an eligible site for a township and the centre of a district. He accordingly planned out the present town of Bathurst, by the banks of the river.

In May 1815 Mr. Evans was despatched a second time across the Blue Mountains to follow the course of the Macquarie River still further into the interior. On this occasion he traced it for about 115 miles from its source, and then returned; reporting as his opinion that the river crossed the entire breadth of the island to its north-western extremity, a distance of 2200 miles in a straight line. This is an instance of the erroneous speculations of surveyors as to the course of unexplored streams, of which another example was lately given by Sir T. L. Mitchell, with regard to the Victoria. Had Mr. Evans pursued his survey about as far again as he had gone, he would have found that his supposed Australian Mississippi lost itself entirely in a marshy plain.

In 1816 Mr. Oxley the surveyor-general of the colony, in penetrating into the interior across the Bathurst plains in a S.W. direction, came upon a fine flowing stream which he named the Lachlan; and which has since been found to be one of the great tributaries of the Murray. He followed its course down to 34° S. Lat., and 145. 20. E. Long., and

Australasia. traversed the undulating prairie lands to the southward; besides exploring the western flank of the Peel range, or Coccopara Mountains. On his return in January 1817, he recrossed the river in Long. 147. 15. E., and encamped in Wellington valley, through which the Macquarie runs. From thence he traced that river down its course for about 190 miles, where he found it disappear in what is now termed the marshes of the Macquarie; although scarcely 20 miles before it terminates it is a clear flowing river 50 yards wide, and from 7 to 16 feet deep. Retracing his steps, Oxley struck right across the country in an easterly direction from Mount Harris, Lat. 31° S., until he reached the sea-coast. In this journey he encountered many obstacles; and at one time his progress was arrested by the dense vegetation, when he entered the impenetrable country on the western side of the great dividing range. He succeeded, however, in crossing to the eastern waters, when he came upon the Hastings River, which he traced to its outlet at Port Macquarie, about 200 miles N. from Port Jackson.

That part of the Bathurst country traversed by Evans and Oxley was but thinly peopled. The natives were the same as those of Sydney, but more docile; they wore their kangaroo and opossum-skin rugs with the fur inside, indicating a colder region at that altitude, which averages about 1800 feet above the level of the sea. They exhibited the usual terror of savages at seeing a man on horseback for the first time, imagining Mr Evans and his horse to be one animal. Beyond Bathurst plains, the country was even superior to that first explored. The grassy undulating downs showed a fertile soil; while the kangaroos and emus flocked in hundreds over the sward. A saccharine exudation from the trees, resembling manna, attracted Mr Evans's attention. He also passed mountains composed entirely of blue limestone, and picked up topazes, rock-crystals, and agates, on the very same streams and hills where the gold-fields are now worked.

Oxley, 1823. In 1823 Mr Oxley was despatched to make a survey of Moreton Bay, 500 miles N. from Sydney. He found several considerable streams flowing into the bay; the largest he named the Brisbane, after the governor then in office. This river is navigable for 60 miles, and presents one of the finest deep-flowing streams on the eastern coast. Proceeding further N. he entered Hervey Bay, and explored Port Curtis, where he found a considerable stream, which he named the Boyne.

Hovell and Hume, 1824-5. In 1824-5 explorations were actively pursued to a like distance southward. Messrs Hovell and Hume, two enterprising settlers, who had driven their live stock over the ranges to fresh pastures on the Yass Plains—through which the present road from Sydney to Melbourne passes—animated by the spirit of discovery, pushed on, single-handed, to explore the southern regions. During their journey they passed over a most extensive range of country from the junction of the Murrumbidgee and Yass Rivers to the western shore of Port Phillip. They were the first travellers who crossed the main branch of the greatest known Australian river, which was deservedly named by the colonists after Mr Hume. On its further exploration, however, by Captain Sturt in 1830, when he descended to its termination in a boat, that gallant officer named it the Murray, in compliment to Sir George Murray, who presided over the colonial office at that time.

Cunningham, 1825. In 1825 the indefatigable but unfortunate botanist, Allan Cunningham, prosecuted a successful exploration up the valley of the Hunter, and through a gap in the Liverpool ranges, which he called Pandora Pass; where he discovered a fine country, through which a western stream flowed in a northerly direction. In 1827 he crossed the same range of mountains at the source of the N. branch of the Hunter River, and travelled in a northerly direction over the beautiful table-land known as the Liverpool Plains. Continuing

his course a little more to the eastward of that region, he traversed a fine grazing country at the elevation of 1500 feet above the level of the sea, which he called New England. Farther N. still, he discovered the verdant prairie-lands of Darling Downs, proceeding onwards until he reached the Lat. of 28. 10. S., having discovered a greater extent of grazing land in New South Wales than any explorer before or since. Making a detour to the eastward, he ascertained the direction of the great dividing range, and retraced his steps. During the following year, and in 1829, he proceeded to Moreton Bay, and prosecuted a successful journey to the source of the River Brisbane. He likewise discovered a pass on the E. side of the range which divides Darling Downs from Moreton Bay district.

Sturt, 1828-9. In 1828-9 Captain Sturt travelled from Wellington Valley, Sturt, along the banks of the Macquarie River, and skirted the marshes which absorb that stream—the same which Oxley had deemed interminable—until he found an open and verdant country to the N.W., with several small streams flowing in that direction. Continuing his course westward, he ascended "New Year's Range," and descried some high table-land and grassy plains to the N.W. His further researches were rewarded by the discovery of the Darling, the greatest tributary of the Murray; its source being within tropical Australia. Having ascertained the course of this important river, which he followed down as far as 30. 20. S. Lat. and 145. 40. E. Long., he returned, impressed with the idea that it, as well as all the western streams, flowed into an inland sea; a favourite hypothesis of geographers at the time.

With a view to determine this point, and the course of the Murrumbidgee River, or the outlet of its waters, this enterprising officer started a second time in January 1831; and the result has been, that instead of the Darling and the Lachlan, and other streams that run to the westward, falling into a great inland sea or extensive marsh, as was conjectured, their united waters constitute a large river, which, under the name of Murray, was found to turn to the southward, and empty itself into an extensive estuary, 60 miles in length, by 30 or 40 in width. The river, near the point where it fell into this lake or estuary, was about 400 yards wide and 20 feet deep. The whole country on both banks was composed of undulating and picturesque hills, at the bases of which extended plains and valleys, within sight of many thousand acres of the richest soils.

The mouth through which the waters of the estuary communicated with the sea was in Encounter Bay, in Long. 139. 40. E. and Lat. 35. 25. 15. S., a little to the eastward of the Gulf of St. Vincent, and round the point named Cape Jervis. The river was well stocked with fish, and its banks more populous than any other part of the country that had been traversed. Some accounts state the total number of aborigines seen to have amounted to at least 4000. They could scarcely be brought to believe that the discovering party were of the same genus as themselves; they placed their hands against those of the strangers, in order to ascertain if the number of fingers on each corresponded. Nothing surprised them more than the act of taking off the hat, believing, it would seem, that the superstructure of felt formed a part of the strange animal that had come into their country.

In 1831, while these explorations were opening up a Banister, knowledge of Eastern Australia, the government of the new colony of Swan River in Western Australia, despatched Captain Banister to explore the country between that settlement and King George's Sound. This journey he accomplished at the risk of death by starvation to himself and his party. He has represented the country he passed through as of the most inviting description for settlers, both for grazing and agriculture. Several other expeditions were subsequently prosecuted to the N.W. of that territory by

Captain Grey and others, which added much information concerning the coasts and bays up to that time visited only by Tasman, Dampier, Baudin, and King.

In 1832 Major (now Sir Thomas L.) Mitchell, surveyor-general of the colony, was instructed by the government to proceed on a journey of discovery to the N.W. of Liverpool Plains, in search of a great stream reported by a captured bushranger to exist in that direction. No such river could be discovered. The party, however, explored a large tract of indifferent country on the upper branch of the Darling River, which, no doubt, was the great stream of the bushranger, called by him the Kanula. The ability and energy displayed by Major Mitchell in this expedition, induced the government to fit out an exploring party under his command upon an extensive scale, having for its object the thorough survey of the Darling and its tributaries. The expedition started from Bathurst in 1835, more fully equipped for the journey than any which had started previously in the colony. Major Mitchell was ably seconded in his scientific arrangements by the assistance of the botanist Allan Cunningham. Within a few weeks, however, of their departure, that estimable man fell a sacrifice to his scientific enthusiasm. While the leader and his men were surveying the Bogan River in about Lat. 32. S., he was lost from the main body of the party in his ramblings for plants through the interminable wilderness; and from subsequent facts which came to light, there is every reason to believe that he was murdered by the natives. In memory of his sad fate and invaluable services to the colony, the government have erected an obelisk in the Botanic Garden at Sydney. Major Mitchell reluctantly left the spot where his companion had been missed, and traced the Bogan River down to its confluence with the Darling. Below this junction he erected a stockade which he called Fort Bourke, and from thence surveyed the Darling as far as Lat. 32. 34. S. The fort he found useful as a resting-place on his return homewards.

In 1836 Major Mitchell accomplished a still greater journey into the interior from Bathurst; he followed the course of the Lachlan along its northern bank. After surveying its junction with the Murrumbidgee, and tracing the latter stream to its confluence with the Murray, as previously explored by Sturt, he followed that river in its N.W. course till he found its clear waters mingling with the turbid stream of the Darling, in Lat. 34. 10. From this point he traced the Murray River upwards, crossing the stream to its southern bank a short distance below its junction with the Murrumbidgee; after which he continued surveying upwards to Lat. 36. S. From this point he left the Murray and its tributaries, and journeyed in a S.W. direction across several small streams which he found flowing to the N. In Lat. 37. 10. he came upon a considerable stream flowing to the S. This river he navigated in a canvas boat down nearly to its outlet in the sea; and named it the Glenelg River (in honour of the colonial secretary, Lord Glenelg), which will be found on the map to be situated in Victoria, crossing the boundary between that colony and South Australia, and disemboquing itself into the sea a few miles farther to the west. After surveying this outlet he proceeded eastward towards Portland Bay; and was surprised on his journey thither to encounter two gentlemen driving "tandem" through the beautiful forest lands as leisurely as if they had been in Hyde Park, where he expected to meet with no inhabitants but hostile aborigines. These travellers belonged to a whaling station at Portland Bay, which had been established in 1834 by the enterprising Brothers Henty, merchants and bankers of Launceston, Van Diemen's Land. Since that period it has risen into a flourishing government town. Mitchell's further discoveries to the eastward were likewise forestalled

by information he received, that a number of settlers from Van Diemen's Land had colonized the shores of Port Phillip during the previous year. On his journey back to Sydney, however, he explored that magnificent territory—the garden of Australia, which he denominated Australia Felix, from its agreeable aspect and fertility. All this extensive country southward from the River Murray to the coast is well watered; and the Snowy Mountains not only temper the climate, but they afford a supply of moisture throughout the summer to the large rivers to which they give birth; while the Great Southern Ocean on three sides throws up clouds of moisture, which descend in abundant rains. Extensive downs occur, which are covered with the best kind of grass, or are gracefully wooded. From Mount Macedon Major Mitchell says he reconnoitred Port Phillip at the distance of 60 miles. "In this region," he adds: "the party crossed ranges of granite, others of trap-rock; the woods forming open forests, which only partially covered the country. This, even in its present state, seems nearly all available for the purposes of agriculture and grazing; and being almost without any aboriginal inhabitants, it is consequently in the best state for the reception of British emigrants."¹ The region described so graphically in this extract is the recently discovered gold region of Victoria; Mount Alexander being the Mount Byng of Mitchell.

In 1840 Count Strzelecki, an adventurous traveller of great reputation in other lands, and devoted to geological pursuits, made a successful though harassing journey on foot from the Murrumbidgee River southwards through the Australian Alps, and across the Gipps' Land district to Alberton in Corner Inlet; from whence he penetrated through the densest and widest "scrub" or brushwood in Australia, which had hitherto baffled all the settlers and surveyors. His Physical Description of New South Wales is at once the most scientific work on Australian geology and mineralogy, and the most practical treatise on Australian agriculture which has hitherto been published.

In 1840 the government of the new colony of South Australia despatched Edward John Eyre from Adelaide, overland to King George's Sound, through the territory denominated Nuyts' Land on the map. He and his party accomplished the journey, after encountering great privations and disasters, some of his party having sunk through sheer fatigue, and their aboriginal guide having been lost. In 1841 he likewise conducted an expedition of discovery towards the interior from Spencer's Gulf. From that point he found a shallow marshy lake, about 20 miles in breadth, extending, in a serpentine form, 400 miles into the interior. This substitute for "the great inland sea," so confidently expected by geographers, he named Lake Torrens. After reaching 29. S. Lat., he returned without crossing the Tropic of Capricorn, the main object of his expedition.

In 1844-5-6 the great purpose of inland exploration, to ascertain the nature of the country in Central Australia, was determined by the "father of Australian discovery," Captain Sturt. From Adelaide he penetrated due north into the very centre of the island; and his account of the desolate stony region he found in the interior, proves beyond a doubt that the vast terra incognita of Central Australia is a desert, a second Sahara. He found it depressed in some places below the level of the sea, where, in the rainy season, extensive marshy lakes are formed, which, in the dry season, become parched up, and fringed with incrustations of salt; upon the surface of which vegetation is blasted and animal life is unknown. The sufferings which this undaunted old man encountered uncomplainingly, and the privations which he and his party endured from thirst and hunger under the rays of a sun which frequently raised

¹ See Account of Major Mitchell's Expedition into the Interior of Australasia. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. vii. 1837.

Australasia. the temperature to 157°, and the scorching winds of the Austral sirocco, are unparalleled, except in the history of the African expeditions of Park and Lander.

Explorations in the interior. Leichhardt, 1843-4-5. In 1843 an unobtrusive botanist of the name of Dr Ludwig Leichhardt arrived at Sydney from Moreton Bay—where he had been devoting himself to Australian botany and zoology—and solicited the public support to fit out an expedition for the purpose of crossing overland from Moreton Bay to Port Essington. A similar project had, a short time previously, been laid upon the table of the legislative council for the sanction of the governor, by Sir Thomas Mitchell. The legislative body approved of the undertaking, but Sir George Gipps, the governor, referred the matter to the home authorities before he would grant funds for such a purpose. Meanwhile Dr Leichhardt was successful in obtaining for his enterprise public subscriptions of sufficient amount to fit out himself, five Europeans, and an aboriginal native; which ultimately were increased by another volunteer, and a black man, making in all eight individuals; who with a most slender equipment started from the Darling Downs on the 30th September 1844, to prosecute this distant journey through an unknown country for 3000 miles. After hairbreadth escapes from perils "by flood and field," and no less dangerous savages, who killed one of the party, this gallant little band reached their destination on the 17th December 1845, after a journey of fifteen months. The briefest abstract of this indefatigable explorer's additions to Australian geography would extend the present article beyond its limits: they are to be found modestly recorded in his ably written and scientific journal.¹ The volume itself comprises the details of one of the most remarkable enterprises ever planned by human sagacity and executed by courage and endurance.

Mitchell, 1846. In 1846, while the intrepid Leichhardt and his companions had been given up for lost by the people of New South Wales—who were not apprised of his success until his own return by sea on the 29th March of that year—the sanction of the home-government had been obtained to fit out the proposed expedition of Sir Thomas Mitchell, for the same purpose. Sir Thomas altered his plans upon learning the result of Leichhardt's expedition. Keeping to the westward of Leichhardt's route he came upon what appeared to be the source of a large river flowing in a north-westerly direction; which he felt convinced was the upper branch of the Victoria, discovered by Wickham and Stokes, flowing into Cambridge Gulf. After tracing this stream towards Central Australia for about 150 miles, our sanguine explorer left the further prosecution of this enterprise, on his return to Sydney, to his able and accomplished junior on the surveying staff, Edmund B. Kennedy. He shortly afterwards sailed for England, full of the conviction that he had discovered a great highway from Eastern Australia to India by an inland navigable river. Like his predecessor Evans, in his speculations on the course of the Macquarie, he was doomed to be disappointed; for soon after Mr Kennedy found that the supposed Victoria suddenly turned to the southward and became absorbed in the great Australian desert, in the same manner that Oxley found the Macquarie vanish among the marshes.

Kennedy, 1847-8. In 1847, after Mr Kennedy had returned from his fruitless survey of the Victoria River, the government acquiesced in the suggestions of that gentleman, and other members of the survey department, to prosecute short exploratory journeys into the interior and the northern parts of Australia, as a better method of completing the survey of the country than by long and hazardous expeditions. Mr Kennedy's plan was to survey that part of tropical Australia situated between Cape York in Lat. 10. 43. S., and Rockingham Bay in Lat.

18. 10., a distance by ordinary travelling of not more than 500 miles. But this country, within the influence of the tropical rains, is apparently of such an impassable nature from swamps and prickly scrubs, and so thickly inhabited by hostile aborigines, that this expedition proved to be the most perilous and calamitous of any hitherto attempted in Australia of which we have any record. Out of thirteen persons who started from Rockingham Bay on 5th June 1848, one man alone—Mr Kennedy's aboriginal servant, Jackey Jackey—reached Port Albany, after a six months' journey. At this harbour, a small schooner, the Ariel, commanded by Captain Dobson, was lying at anchor with stores on board, waiting the arrival of the party, to succour them and take them back to Sydney. Here this faithful creature related, in his broken English, his doleful tale. It had taken them a month to extricate themselves from the swamps and thickets of Rockingham Bay. Their sheep and horses could scarcely find any grass to eat. They journeyed along the coast ranges for four months through a frightfully-broken country, almost destitute of game and provender, which reduced both men and horses to the verge of starvation; inasmuch that they had to kill twenty-four of the latter to sustain their own lives. Notwithstanding these attempts to support their strength, Mr Kennedy found his men so faint from inanition that he resolved upon leaving eight of them at Weymouth Bay, within about 150 miles of Port Albany, from whence he promised to return for them by sea. Fresh disasters were in the way of this intrepid traveller; one of the men accidentally shot himself, and was disabled. It was agreed that this man and his two mates should remain behind, while Mr Kennedy and his servant were to proceed onwards. Undismayed, he pursued his journey, attended by his faithful servant, and was almost within view of the harbour where he expected succour, when he was inhumanly murdered by a tribe of barbarous savages who speared him to death. The incident of his death, as related in the simple language of Jackey Jackey, is truly affecting. "He then said, 'Jackey, give me paper and I will write'; I gave him paper and pencil and he tried to write, and he then fell back and died. And I caught him as he fell back, and held him, and I then turned round myself and cried; I was crying a good while until I got well; that was about an hour, and then I buried him; I dugged up the ground with a tomahawk, and covered him over with logs, grass, and my shirt and trousers; that night I left him near dark."² Without delay the vessel was brought round to Weymouth Bay, after a fruitless attempt to find the wounded man and his two companions; who there is little reason to doubt met with the same untimely fate as their leader. Here, alas! two living skeletons were all that remained alive of the eight men left at the bay; the other six "withered away, and died from sheer inanition and prostration of the physical energies," as described by one of the survivors, Mr Carron, the botanist to the expedition. His simple and unaffected narrative of their sufferings is the only existing document from which any account of the expedition can be gathered. For although the local government subsequently despatched a party to collect what papers and instruments of Mr Kennedy's might be found in the possession of the natives, scarcely anything of importance was recovered.

The latest, and greatest in contemplation, of these exploring Leichhardt expeditions, the melancholy result of which can scarcely be now a matter of doubt, was that led on by the zealous and indomitable Leichhardt. We have already mentioned his return from his successful expedition to Port Essington in March 1846. Not having then accomplished his original design of penetrating into Central Australia, he rested but a brief space in the settled districts until he was again rally-

¹ Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia from Moreton Bay to Port Essington, during 1844-5. By Dr Ludwig Leichhardt.

² Jackey Jackey's Statement to Dr Vallack.—Sydney Morning Herald, February 1849.

ing a band of adventurers round his Standard of Discovery. "His project was to penetrate to the westward, if practicable, across the great desert, to the settlement of Swan River, a distance little short of 3000 miles in a direct line; hoping to find by the way a succession of oases, like those in the African or Arabian deserts, which would enable him to recruit his party on the journey."¹ After making a false start in 1847, when some of his volunteers, whose enthusiasm quailed before the privations in store for them, abandoned the expedition, he finally left the Darling Downs in the early part of 1848. Since that year no tidings have reached us from the gallant band of explorers, excepting some false rumours of their massacre brought in by the aborigines; which induced the government to despatch a party in July 1852, to make inquiry into the truth or falsehood of the report, but without any satisfactory result. Since the date of his last letter in April 1848, at the furthest white man's home in the interior, from Moreton Bay, five Australian springs have strewed their flowers on the far western shore, but no Leichhardt has revisited these objects of his ardent study; and the probability is, that if he and his companions have not been massacred by savages, their bodies are buried under the sands of the great desert.

It is a remarkable fact, that the most recent of these exploratory expeditions have been the most calamitous, notwithstanding the advantages of former experience, and of modern scientific invention. It is worthy of remark, also, that those unfortunate leaders whose untimely fates have been recorded, were all young men, while the veteran explorers have survived to witness the beneficial results of their discoveries. A new expedition under General Haug has been decided on by the British government. Its chief object will be the exploration of N.W. Australia, for which purpose the expedition is to start from the Victoria River, and to reach the southern extremity of the Gulf of Carpentaria. General Haug hoped to leave England in Nov. 1853.

As the structure of the country is brought to light by those discoveries, we observe the broken fragments of its geography gradually pieced together, and at last united into one great whole. Before us on the map we have the grand outline of this island-continents completed, and its limits correctly ascertained; showing a superficies on the earth's surface equal to about three-fourths of the continent of Europe. And although four-fifths of that area is a blank in geography, yet we have sufficient data to determine its principal geographical features. From Wilson Promontory, in 39. 11., the extreme south point, to Cape York in 10. 43. S. Lat., its extreme north, we know that there is a continuous chain of mountains, which, for want of a better name, Sir Roderick Murchison has called the Australian Cordillera,—the backbone of Australia, stretching in one sinuous serrated ridge from S. to N. for 1708 geographical miles, in a straight line, at an average altitude of 1500 feet above the level of the sea; dividing the eastern and western waters of Eastern Australia; and that the water-shed is rapid on its eastern flank, where the sources of the streams are upon an average not more than eighty miles in a direct line from the coast where they disembogue into the South Pacific Ocean; while the western waters have a gradual descent to the great Murray River, flowing through the interior, for an average distance of 500 miles. On the western coast from Cape Leeuwin to N.W. Cape, similar features present themselves in the geographical direction of the rivers and mountain ranges, only on a smaller scale; while between these two mountain parallels exists the Great Australian Desert, a second Sahara; which Sturt has defined on its southern limit, and Mitchell and Kennedy to the eastward. It now remains for future explorers to approach it from the north and from the west to define its general area. At the same time, nothing new of

much importance can be contributed to the great geographical problem of what the terra incognita Australis is; for we have now sufficient data to solve the question. And it is not unphilosophical to conclude from all that is known of its geography, that the entire island, at some distant geological epoch, formed a vast archipelago, with those two mountain chains forming distinct groups of islands trending north and south, while the desolate region between was the bed of a shallow sea, studded with smaller islands.

Of the individuals belonging to the organic kingdoms of nature which inhabit this varied territory, we may observe in this place generally, that they are remarkable for their difference in structure from those of any other part of the world; still the inorganic substances which compose the rocks and minerals are much the same as those found upon other localities of the earth's crust. And although the recent discoveries of her mineral treasures have taken the world by surprise, it is evident that the convulsions of nature which produced these phenomena obeyed the same laws which upheaved the lands of the northern hemisphere. And we shall find, when treating of the gold-discovery, that the light of science in the hands of an eminent geologist guided him to foretell its existence. (For a more detailed view of its surface, geographical divisions, mountains, rivers, lakes, and coasts, see the article AUSTRALIA.)

The aborigines, wherever they have been met with, are of the very lowest description of human beings. In the journal of the Duyfken, the N. coast is described as thinly "inhabited by wild, cruel, black savages, by whom some of the crew were murdered;" and the ship Vianen, touching on the western coast about 21° S., observed "a foul and barren shore, green fields, and very wild, black, barbarous inhabitants." In 24° S., Polert, who commanded the Batavia, saw four natives, whom he describes as "wild, black, and altogether naked, not covering even those parts which almost all savages conceal." Tasman "found in Hollandia Nee, in Lat. 17. 12. S., a naked black people, with curly hair, malleous and cruel, using for arms bows and arrows, hazagueys, and kalaways." The S. coast is so barren, and the naked hillocks of sand so continuous, that there appears to be nothing for human inhabitants to subsist upon. "It is not surprising," says D'Entrecasteaux, "that Nuyts has given no details of this barren coast; for its aspect is so uniform, that the most fruitful imagination could find nothing to say of it." None of our navigators, however, saw more than the coast line, which is either of rock or hillocks of sand. But where the country begins to improve towards the eastward, in the neighbourhood of Kangaroo Island, Captain Flinders found not the least vestige of inhabitants; and, from the stupidity of the kangaroos on that island, "which," he observes, "not unfrequently appeared to consider us as seals," he concludes there either were no natives, or that they were ignorant of every kind of embarkation. Towards the northern part of the eastern coast, the same navigator thinks they are somewhat superior to those near Sydney, having belts round the waist, and fillets about the head and upper part of the arm, associating in greater numbers, and dwelling in huts of a superior construction. They also catch fish with nets, which he thinks is alone a feature of distinction from those who only spear the fish, as a net requires more than one person to manage it, consumes much time in making, cannot easily be dragged about, and, in short, must occasion a sense of the advantage to be derived from mutual assistance, and suggest the necessity of a permanent residence.

Notwithstanding these evidences of social progression from the lowest depths of the savage state, and which may be accounted for amongst the tribes inhabiting the great York Peninsula, from their contiguity to the superior races of mankind peopling New Guinea and the Polynesian Islands, the ethnologist can discover clear and distinctive characteristics in the Australian aboriginal people, to warrant him in classifying them as the furthest removed type of humanity from any other race with whom we are acquainted. Their general description may be given thus, according to European notions on the standard of humanity, as exemplified in the northern varieties of mankind. They are hideously ugly, with flat noses, having wide nostrils; eyes deeply sunk in the head, large and wide apart, over-shadowed by bushy black eyebrows; the hair black and straight, clotted but not woolly, the males having long curly beards; the mouth is extravagantly wide, with thick prominent lips; and the colour of the skin varies from dark bronze

¹ Mossman and Banister's Australia Visited and Revisited.

Austral-
asia. to jet black. The skull and jaws, when stripped of the hair, integuments, and muscles, present still more distinct characteristics. The cranium is thick and spongy, the inner and outer plates being wide apart, the coronal region flattened. By external admeasurement the capacity of a male skull now in our possession—which was that of a native doctor who died about forty years of age, and furnishes us with a type of these Australian crania above the average—is 117 cubic inches; which, when compared with the average size of Anglo-Saxon crania—according to Mr Stratton's tables—scarcely equals the admeasurement of a boy ten years of age, laid down by him at 120 cubic inches. The facial angle, according to Count Strzelecki, is between 80° and 85°. The zygomatic process is widely arched; and the lower jaw, although unusually expanded at the base, is short, and forms a remarkably small chin. The molar teeth are flattened more than ordinarily, and sometimes are so smoothly ground by friction in chewing that they frequently resemble the teeth of ruminating animals. Their stature is below the average of the most diminutive European race; and they are wretchedly thin and ill-made, with long lean arms and legs, and short wide feet, the great toe largely developed—which is strengthened to a wonderful degree by use from their youth, in placing that member in the notches they cut with a tomahawk on the trees, when in search of animals for food.

To add to their natural deformity, they thrust a bone through the cartilage of the nose, and stick with gum to their hair, matted with moss, the teeth of men, sharks, or kangaroos, the tails of dogs, jaw-bones of fish, &c., and daub their faces and bodies with red and white clay, and scarify the skin in every part with sharp shells.

On the sea-coast they live principally upon fish, turtle, and shell-fish; the former are caught by nets, hooks, and speared by double and treble pronged spears. In the interior they hunt the kangaroo, wallaby, and emu, with their boomerangs, spears, and waddies; besides which they procure an uncertain supply of opossums, flying squirrels, sloths, storks, cranes, ducks, parrots, cockatoos, eels, lizards, snakes, grubs, ants and their eggs, tuberous roots, wild berries, and honey; in fine, any description of creature or plant from the animal or vegetable world which can supply any nutriment, does not come amiss to the appetites of these attenuated savages. Nay more, although man be described specifically as a "cooking animal," the Australian, in his natural state, scarcely troubles himself with this process, beyond that of throwing a bird or beast on the burning embers of a fire, without skinning it or drawing the entrails; and when it is partially roasted, brushing the singed hair or feathers off, tearing a mouthful or two with his teeth, and throwing it into the fire again to cook another portion of it; when this process of mastication is repeated until the bones are picked.

They have no fixed habitations, the climate generally allowing of their sleeping in the open air, in the crevices of rocks, or under the shelter of the bushes. Their temporary huts consist of the bark of a tree, or a few bushes interwoven in a semicircular form, tapering at the top, and raised upon a prop-stick, open in front, and forming merely a breakweather, occasionally large enough to shelter six persons from the rain, but most frequently for the accommodation of two. They seem to have no idea of the benefits arising from social life; their largest clans extend not beyond the family circle, of each of which the eldest is called by a name synonymous with that of father. They are totally without religion, paying neither the least respect nor adoration to any object or being, real or imaginary. Hence they have nothing to prompt them to a good action, nothing to deter them from a bad one; hence murder is not considered as any heinous crime, and women think nothing of destroying, by compression, the infant in the womb, to avoid the trouble, if brought alive into the world, of carrying it about and finding it subsistence. Should a woman die with an infant at the breast, the living child is inhumanly thrown into the same hole with the mother, and covered with stones, of which the brutal father throws the first. They are savage even in love, the very first act of courtship, on the part of the husband, being that of knocking down his intended bride with a club, and dragging her away from her friends bleeding and senseless, to the woods. The consequence is, that scarcely a female of the age of maturity is to be seen without her head full of scars, the unequivocal marks of her husband's affection.

To these details, generally acknowledged by all travellers, such as Collins, Flinders, Sturt, Mitchell, and others, we shall add some further observations based upon experience and scientific data which have escaped their notice, as illustrative of the ethnographic characteristics of this barbarous people. So various are the languages spoken by the entire radius of tribes located outside the great desert—which, we presume, is untempered by human beings—that a subdivision of the east and west coasts into lingual districts fifty miles in diameter for 300 miles inland, would give in each district not merely a distinct dialect, but in the majority of cases a different language from that of the adjacent tribes.

One universal affinity, however, which, we have observed, these languages bear towards each other is, that the letter S is never found in the construction of their words. No evidences of tilling the ground, planting, sowing seed, and reaping the harvest, have been seen by travellers amongst them; which distinguishes them essentially from the Maori race in New Zealand, the races inhabiting the Polynesian Islands to the N.E., and the Malays to the N.W., excepting the tribes located on the extreme north coast. They do not trade or barter with each other or with strangers. Though each family or tribe has a generally recognized boundary within which they hunt and consider their "sit-down" or territory, and beyond which they seldom stray, still they neither exchange, buy, nor sell land among each other; and when their territory was taken possession of by the British, they demanded no equivalent as the New Zealanders have done—they cannot conceive a right of claim to that which is fixed and immovable. Not having any movable property beyond their spears, boomerangs, clubs, shields, opossum-skin rugs, and baskets, their neolus is less than that of the industrious bee, and their idea of property inferior to that of the beaver. These rudely-constructed articles of clothing, and weapons of offence and defence, they appear to divide promiscuously among each other, holding possession very much on the old lawless principle that "he may take who hath the will, and he may keep who can." Lunatics or idiots are rarely or never to be found amongst them. Slavery, as understood in the negro sense of the term, does not exist; the married females, however, are to all intents and purposes the slaves of their husbands; virtue and modesty are terms to them, in their purely savage state, utterly unintelligible. Polygamy is recognized and adopted; but from their savage custom of murdering infant female children, the proportion of the sexes is kept nearly equal, and seldom permits of more than one of each cohabiting together. Cannibalism exists among them. The writer has had proofs of several instances; this horrible practice, however, was confined to the bodies of their enemies killed in fight, and of half-caste children of the female sex. They show very little affection for their offspring, especially the males; and we have frequently taxed their philoprogenitive feelings by offering a few pieces of tobacco or a blanket for a child, when we should have easily succeeded in bartering with the fathers, and with no great difficulty overcome the affection of the mothers. Their treatment of the aged is even worse than their neglect of their offspring. These wretched specimens of humanity look at the age of 50 or 60 like octogenarians. Instead of being respected as elders of the tribe, as is the case among other savage races, they are considered as useless members who can no longer fight, hunt, or dig up roots. Hence the garbage of the game captured by the strong son or daughter is thrown with contempt to the father or mother; and they are even prohibited, like the children, from eating the best kinds of food, which the sturdy warriors of the tribe claim as theirs by the law of might. Rheumatism and diseases of the skin are their most prevalent complaints; the result of continual exposure to the weather, and their filthy habits. In every group or tribe of families, there is a doctor-man who uses charms, decoctions of herbs, and personal manipulation to cure the afflicted. In all such services rendered for the general welfare of the whole, or even in any other matter of assistance given to each other, we have never known of any sort of remuneration being tendered, or any special expression of gratitude coming from the patient. That they are capable of being civilized in a measure is shown by the organized troops of black mounted police throughout the south-eastern colonies, and the general employment of them by the colonists as shepherds and mounted herdsmen; may, so far as intellectual advancement is concerned, in a few instances they have been taught to read and write. But at the best they are uncertain retainers, and cannot be kept to constant labour, while they have a very faint conception of the relations between master and servant. We are confident, also, that the Australian aboriginal would pine and die under any attempts to enslave him by means of the lash and the fetters, which the passive African submits to. Like most other savages, however, they exhibit the extremes of indolence when their appetite is satisfied, and of activity when hunger prompts them to hunt for food. Treachery and cunning among them are considered virtues; and it is no disparagement to designate them, morally speaking, a generation of liars. The truth is not in them; in their relations with the Europeans no faith can be placed in what they say, and the local governments take exception to their evidence in a court of justice, or at the utmost value it but slightly.

This unfavourable delineation of the general characteristics of the Australian race, before they have mingled with the European settlers, is one, however, of the faithfulness of which we can confidently challenge disproof. They have, on the other hand, their redeeming qualities. Expert in the capture of game and fish, they will cheerfully share their meals with an unsuccessful neighbour, and will seldom refuse the white man a share—from whom, however, they expect an equivalent. Like children, they are easily pleased, and when

their appetites are satisfied they become a jocular and merry race, full of mimicry and laughter. The sounds of hilarity are often heard ringing joyously through the echoing forests around their camping grounds; and the delight with which they enjoy the pleasures of the dance at their corroborees, is not exceeded by the most enthusiastic frequenters at Almacks. Their conceptions of harmony and melody are very low, and they have no instrument, however rude, to produce musical intonations. Their wild yells of glee, and monotonous crooning songs, are reduced to a barbarous kind of measure by striking two pieces of wood together at long and short intervals. As exceptional cases of a better nature (our previous remarks having strictly reference to the Australian aboriginal in his purely savage condition), we can speak of many instances where feelings of great tenderness have been shewn, by the females more especially, and European life and property have been voluntarily rescued from fire and shipwreck. We can likewise testify to the fact of finding faithful and honest followers among them during our travels in the interior. We treated them as children, and they were obedient; had we resented supposed injuries they tried to inflict upon us, as if they were responsible ones, as some have done, we should have exposed ourselves to their deadly enmity. In our transactions with them we dealt on the principle which they themselves considered just. The fidelity and devotion of Jackey Jackey towards the unfortunate explorer Kennedy, are sufficient in themselves to prove that the rudiments of a better nature than they ordinarily display are implanted in their minds.

The history of this race is comprised within a small compass. Records they have none, and their traditions are as evanescent as their dwellings; and like the summer fires, which sweep every vestige of these rude structures from the face of the earth, so their history is buried in oblivion with each succeeding generation. To estimate their present population is likewise a matter of uncertainty. Some years ago the governments instituted a calculation which gave for New South Wales, including Port Phillip, 13,700, and for South Australia, 4500; taking this as a criterion of the other portions of Australia at an approximate census, there would in 1853 be some 210,000 aborigines on the entire island. In this estimate we have allowed for their rapid decrease before the colonizing races of Europe; which may, ere long, render them an extinct people. This subject is fraught with intense interest to the ethnologist. Some morbid philanthropists who have formed associations for the preservation of these races, attribute their extinction to the aggressions by fire and sword upon them by the settlers, and the deadly diseases they introduce. Although to some extent this may be the case, still there is a more powerful influence at work, which ultimately will cause the inferior race to be swallowed up by the superior. Count Strzelecki, states his views in these terms:—"The aboriginal woman, after connection with a European male, loses the power of conception on a renewal of intercourse with the male of her own race, retaining that of only procreating with the white man." From our own investigations, and the testimony of others whom we have consulted, we cannot adduce evidence sufficient to corroborate this statement.¹ The facts are before us that the aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land have dwindled down, from between 4000 and 5000, to 8 males and 10 females, who are calculated to die out within 20 years, notwithstanding the efforts of the government to preserve them; whereas, in that time, the same number of our prolific countrymen in the neighbouring isle, would in all likelihood increase tenfold. The tribe also that inhabited the country around Port Jackson and Botany Bay, which Governor Phillip on his arrival found to number about 1500 individuals, is now extinct. The last of its members died in 1849, little more than 60 years after the occupation of their lands by the Anglo-Saxon. These facts are startling, and demand further investigation.

If the rocks and mountains, and the earths, resemble nearly the inorganic substances that are met with in other parts of the world, there is at least a very extraordinary and a distinct characteristic difference in both the animal and vegetable part of the creation, which makes a considerable class of subjects in both these kingdoms peculiar to Australia. The fauna and flora of this arid region are so unique, so far removed in their nature and habits from the generality of species which exist in other parts of the world, so low in the scale of classified animals and plants, and bearing so close an affinity in their structure to the extinct tribes and genera whose fossil remains are found imbedded in European rocks of the eocene

geological period, that some ethnologists are tempted to advance the hypothesis that Australia exhibits the most ancient surface-geology for our investigations, of any portion of the terraqueous globe. In other words, that this great south land has existed upheaved from the ocean, contemporary with the bygone epochs of the paleozoic formation, which at a recent geological era was submerged below the sea; and that its groups of living creatures, and its vegetation, have been perpetuated throughout subsequent epochs which have extinguished whole genera of animals and plants in the northern hemisphere. The recent investigations of naturalists in Australia and the surrounding seas, have shown that certain forms of star-fishes and bivalve shells found petrified in the chalk formations of Europe, have existing types in the tropical seas of Australia, and that the Port Jackson shark is the only living example of the ancient group of Cestrateute fishes. And while the superficial observer perceives, in the apparently anomalous examples of plants in the grasses and gum-trees, and animals, in the kangaroo and duck-billed platypus, a mere assemblage of luna notera, when compared with the productions of other regions, the attentive student of natural history finds at every step some useful harmony between the individuals of the organic kingdoms, and the peculiar physical geography of this great southern land. Here he finds the grasses containing an unusual pith in their stems, from which they derive nourishment during the dry seasons which occur in this arid climate, when the hollow-stemmed grasses of Europe would perish. And when he examines the structure of that curious animal the duck-billed platypus (Ornithorhynchus paradoxus), he discovers that its organism is peculiar to the manner in which it secures food from the water insects, where, in its burrowings in the earth, scarcely any worms are to be found. These and other anomalous forms of the organic world in Australia, are doubtless reconcilable to the universally harmonious system of nature, and require only further investigation to be made manifest.

The animals hitherto discovered, with very few exceptions, are Animals of the numerous species of kangaroo or the various opossum type; the former having their hinder legs long out of all proportion when compared with the length of the fore-legs, and both families being Marsupial, that is, having a sack under the belly of the female for the reception of the young; of which families, though divided into different genera, there are at least a hundred distinct species. To these marsupial genera may be added another of a singular kind, classed by naturalists under the genus Al, represented by the wombat of the natives, or the native bear of the colonists, a herbivorous animal of the sloth kind. Of carnivorous animals, there are very few. The dingo or native dog has some resemblance to the English fox in its appearance and predatory habits, and is the dread of the sheep-farmer. It is supposed, however, not to be indigenous; and with the buffalo, which is found on the northern coast, has no doubt been brought by the Malays, who cross over to fish for trepang, from Java, Timor, and other islands in the Indian Archipelago, as it exhibits very little specific difference from the jackal of these countries. The feline tribe is represented by several species of yellow-spotted cats; and these pretty nearly complete the catalogue of Australian quadrupeds. One animal, however, deserves some specific notice, from the discussions that have arisen regarding the nature and uses of the unusual organic structure of its head: we allude to the duck-billed water-mole of the colonists (Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, or Platypus anatinus): "a quadruped," says the late Dr White of the British Museum, "with the beak of a bird, which is contrary to known facts and received opinions." The investigations, however, of modern scientific men, have discovered that even this apparent paradox of nature, "setting the bill of a bird upon the head of a quadruped," is in harmony with her laws. This organ, although it has the same function as the bill of a duck, is not, like that appendage, affixed to the skeleton, but merely attached to the skin. It was by Cuvier, along with a somewhat similar Australian animal, the Echidna, ranked among the Edentata; but now they are both more usually arranged as a distinct class of mammals termed Monotremata. They approach the marsupials in possessing the abdominal bones of that order, though they have not the pouch; and they approximate mammals to birds, in possessing a common clavus. The echidna has also a bill-formed mouth, and spines like those of a hedgehog on its body. Australia at the present period is the great metropolis of the order. The flying phalangers (Phalanger) are likewise an interesting and

¹ It may be remarked that the assertions of Strzelecki on this subject are more than doubtful, and are at variance with all analogy respecting sexual intercourse between other races of mankind. The same notion once prevailed regarding the negro and white varieties of the human species; but is not founded on fact. The barrenness of the aboriginal females, under such circumstances, will excite little surprise when we consider the well-known effect of promiscuous sexual intercourse in checking fecundity: while the rapid decrease of the Australian native population is further explicable by the frequent practice of infanticide, especially of female children, the excessive labour exacted from their women, the introduction of epidemic disorders by Europeans, and immoderate indulgence in intoxicating liquors.—Ed.

Australasia. beautiful group of marsupials. Crocodiles, turtles, and yangan, or dugong, one of the cetaceans, inhabit the rivers and harbours of tropical Australia; and in the southern, eastern, and western streams, large fish of the perch tribe abound. The seas swarm with scaled fish and crustaceans; many of them edible, others poisonous, and some of the most brilliant colours. Reptiles are frequently met with, but not abundant. There are several species of snakes; some are venomous, but the majority are harmless. Lizards are more plentiful, and all of them harmless; while a large species of iguana affords the natives a delicate kind of food.

Animals. The birds are equally singular with the beasts, there being black swans and white eagles; the former everywhere in such multitudes as to spoil a proverb that had held good for two thousand years; and their song as described by Mr. Bass, "exactly resembles the creaking of a rusty sign on a windy day." The Monura superba, with its scalloped tail feathers, is perhaps the most singular and beautiful of that graceful species known by the name of birds of paradise; ducks, pigeons, cockatoos, parrots, and parakeets, are innumerable, and of great variety and beauty. The mountain eagle is a magnificent creature, and the emu is, next to the ostrich, the tallest bird that exists, many of them standing full six feet high; and the insect creation presents strange and brilliant forms.

Plants. The plants are no less singular than the animals. Of these the distinguished botanist Mr. Brown has given a very curious and instructive account in his Geographical and Systematical Remarks, in the Appendix to Flinders's Voyage. He collected nearly 3900 species of Australasian plants, which, with those brought to England by Sir Joseph Banks and others, supplied him with the materials for a Flora terre Australis, consisting of 4250 species, referable to 120 natural orders; but he remarks that more than half the number of species belong to eleven only of those orders. Of the Eucalyptus or gum-tree, the largest yet discovered, there are not fewer than 100 different species. "The Eucalyptus globulus of Labillardière," says Mr. Brown, "and another species, peculiar to the S. of Van Diemen's Land, not unfrequently attain the height of 150 feet, with a girth near the base of from 25 to 40 feet." Of this magnificent genus there are 50 different species within the limits of the colony around Sydney. Of the beautiful and elegant Melaleuca, Mr. Brown collected upwards of 30 species, all of which, with the exception of the two species Leucodendron and Cajuput, appear to be confined to Terra Australis. The tribe of Stackhousea is entirely peculiar to that country. Of the natural order of Proteaceæ, consisting of about 400 known species, more than 200 are natives of New Holland, of which they form one of its characteristic botanical features; the Banksia, in particular, being one of the most striking peculiarities of the vegetable kingdom. The Casuarina, of which 13 species have been discovered, is another characteristic feature of the woods and thickets of Australia. The most extensive genus, however, is the apetalous Acacia, of which there are more than 100 species; and this, with the Eucalyptus, "if taken together," says Mr. Brown, "and considered with respect to the mass of vegetable matter they contain, calculated from the size as well as from the number of individuals, are perhaps nearly equal to all the other plants of that country." The Casuarina and the Eucalyptus are represented as furnishing excellent timber for ship-building, and for all the purposes of domestic furniture and agricultural implements; the gum of the Eucalyptus is medicinal; and that of one species might be employed as pitch. Freycinet says they procured a resinous substance from the Xanthorrhoea, which served them to caulk their vessels. The bark of a tree (Acacia dealbata) is known to be more efficacious in tanning leather than the oak-bark; and a shrub (Leptospermum scoparium) was used by Captain Cook as a substitute for tea. Nutmegs were found by Flinders on the northern coast, but they were small, and had so little of an aromatic flavour, that Mr. Brown gave the plant the specific name of insipida. Among the curious productions of the vegetable world is the Nymphaea distillatoria, or pitcher plant, of which a very correct and detailed drawing is given in the Atlas to Flinders's Voyage. The pines of the genus Araucaria have the double-dotted vascular tissue of the carboniferous Coniferae. The Eucalypti or gum-trees shed their bark annually instead of their leaves; while the latter hang vertically from the branches, instead of horizontally, as in most English forest-trees; and the Casuarina or she-oak trees have the jointed articulations of Hippuris instead of leaves. Altogether, the anomalous characters of Australian botany, though presenting organic phenomena distinct from those of the northern hemisphere, are in harmony with the branches of the animal kingdom already alluded to. Since Brown's Prodromus was published in 1810, very little has been added to that profound work. And it is a remarkable fact, that few genera, if any, have been discovered since that eminent botanist and his patron Sir Joseph Banks first collected the plants of Botany Bay. Although Cunningham, Labillardière, and others, have added materially to the list of species, there is still a vast region open to botanic enterprise, especially

in the unexplored mountain ranges of the great Australian Cordillera.

II. Having marked the progressive discovery of this fair and fertile island, until it was ascertained to be such by Tasman, General Marion, Furneaux, Cook, D'Entrecasteaux, Bass, and view of Flinders, we shall not think it necessary to notice the minor discoveries of Bligh, Hunter, Cox, &c., but proceed to give a general account of its dimensions, surface, and natural productions. It is situated between the parallels of 41. 0. and 43. 32. S. Lat., and 144. 32. and 148. 25. E. Long.; its medial length from N. to S. being about 160, and breadth from E. to W. 145 geographical miles. Its surface possesses every variety of mountain, hill, and dale,—of forests and open meadows,—of inland lakes, rivers, and inlets of the sea, forming safe and commodious harbours,—that can render a country valuable or agreeable; and it enjoys a temperate climate, which is perhaps not very different from that of England, though less subject to violent changes. In May, corresponding to our November, Labillardière observed the mountains in the interior covered with snow. The western and southern coasts are bold, steep, and rocky; the latter terminating so abruptly as to appear as if it had been broken off, and the group of islands named De Witt's Isles, to the southward, twelve in number, formed out of the fragments. Cook found the cliffs on the eastern side composed of sandstone; but the vast buttresses that look towards the southern seas of ice are stated by Flinders to be composed of basaltic columns, appearing like so many stacks of chimneys. Labillardière found, near this southern extremity, a stratum of coal $3\frac{1}{2}$ feet thick and 200 fathoms long, resting on sandstone.

The soil, in general, is represented as more productive than that of the E. side of Australia; and the island has the advantage of being intersected by two fine rivers, rising near the centre; the one named the Tamar, falling into Bass's Strait on the N., and forming Port Dalrymple; the other, the Derwent, which discharges itself into the sea on the S.E. extremity, spreading its waters, in the first instance, over the Great Storm Bay, which communicates with North Bay, Norfolk Bay, and Double Bay, on the E., and with D'Entrecasteaux's Channel on the W. The Tamar in its course receives three streams—the North Esk, the South Esk, and the Lake River; and the tide flows about 30 miles up the river, to the point where it is joined by the two Esks. At this spot is situated the flourishing town of Launceston; having a population of about 6500. At the head of the western arm of Port Dalrymple is situated George Town, on the skirt of a beautiful, rich, and well-wooded country. There is also a town named Hobart Town, which is now the capital, on the right bank of the Derwent, about five miles inland, with a population, in 1851, of 14,000 inhabitants. The country between these two towns is everywhere rich and beautiful, abounding in grassy plains, marshes, and lakes, bounded on each side by hills, well clothed with wood, rising into high and rocky mountains. A turnpike road now bisects the island between Launceston and Hobart Town,—a distance of 130 miles, which is accomplished by stage-coaches within 12 hours.

The description given by D'Entrecasteaux of the channel that bears his name, and the surrounding shores, corresponds generally with the following animated account of it from M. Péron, ten years afterwards. "Crowded on the surface of the soil are seen on every side those beautiful Mimosa, those superb Metrosideros, those Coryea, unknown till of late to our country, but now become the pride of our shrubberies. From the shores of the ocean to the summits of the highest mountains may be observed the mighty Eucalyptus, those giant trees of Australasian forests, many of which measure from 162 to 180 feet in height, and from 25 to 30 and even 36 feet in circumference. Banksia of different species, the Protea, the Embothria, the Leptospermum, form an enchanting belt round the skirts of the forests. Here the Casuarina exhibits its beautiful form; there the elegant Exocarpus throws into a hundred different places its negligent branches. Everywhere spring up the most delightful

thickets of Molucca, Thesium, Conchylum, Evodia, all equally interesting, either from their graceful shape, the lovely verdure of their foliage, the singularity of their corollas, or the form of their seed-vessels."—Voy. aux Terres Australes.

All the navigators who have visited the southern part of Van Diemen's Land describe the natives as a mild, affable, good-humoured, and inoffensive people; with the exception of Marion, the effect of whose fire-arms, Labillardière thinks, had made them afraid of Europeans. Subsequently the settlers found them a hostile and treacherous race, probably from the same cause. Flinders and Bass conceived that the natives of this island were sunk still lower in the scale of human existence than those in the neighbourhood of Port Jackson, though they saw but one man, and he is described as having "a countenance more expressive of benignity and intelligence than of that ferocity or stupidity which generally characterized the other natives." They are obviously the same people as those of Australia. The women refused from Cook's people all presents, and rejected all their addresses, not so much from a sense of virtue, it was supposed, as from the fear of the men, of whom they stood in great awe. With the convicts and free settlers they had free intercourse. In some places were found miserable huts of twigs, and rude baskets made of a juncus or rush; but these were all the signs that appeared of civilization. Cook, D'Entrecasteaux, and Baudin, all observed many of the largest trees with trunks hollowed out, apparently by means of fire; and as the hollow side invariably faced the E. and S.E., the lee-side to the prevailing winds, it was concluded they were intended as habitations. In D'Entrecasteaux's Channel only were indications of huts made of the bark of the Eucalyptus, consisting of three rolls stitched together. Of the numerous tribes who peopled this island when it was first colonized by the British, only 18 men and women now remain. At the early settlement it was a penal colony, and the natives were considerably thinned by a war of extermination carried on by the convicts and settlers against them, which ended in their being conveyed to Flinders' Island in Bass's Strait, from whence the miserable remnant now at Brown's River, near Hobart Town, were brought to end their days in peace.—D'Entrecasteaux, Labillardière, Flinders, &c.

III. New Guinea, or Papua, is, after Australia, not only the first in point of magnitude, but claims a priority in discovery over that and every other island in the Australasian Sea. In the year 1526, when the Portuguese and the Spaniards were disputing their respective claims to the Spice Islands, Don Torge de Meneses, of the former nation, had, in his passage from Malacca to the Moluccas, by extraordinary and accidental circumstances, discovered the N. coast of Papua, so called, according to some, because the word signifies black, which was the colour of the natives, or curled hair, according to others. Meneses remained at a port called Versija till the change of the monsoon, and then returned to the Moluccas. The next navigator who touched at Papua was Alvarez de Saavedra, on his homeward voyage from the Moluccas in 1528, for New Spain; and from an idea that the country abounded in gold, he gave it the name of Isla del Oro. He staid a month, and obtained provisions; but some Portuguese deserted with the only boat the ship had, and were left behind. They found their way, however, to Gilolo, and reported that Saavedra had been wrecked; but on his subsequent arrival they were tried, condemned, and executed. He is supposed to have added about 50 leagues of discovery to that of Meneses. In 1529 Saavedra sailed a second time from New Spain, and, according to Galvaon (or Galvano), followed the coast of Papua eastwards above 500 leagues.

In 1537 Gonzalvo and Alvarado were despatched on discovery by the viceroy of Peru; but the former being killed in a mutiny, the crew chose another commander; and the first land they made was Papua. The ship was in so crazy a state that she was abandoned; the crew, only seven in number (the rest having died of hunger and fatigue), were made captives, and carried to an island called Crespos (curly-haired men), whence they were sent to the Moluccas and ransomed.

In 1545 Ynigo Ortiz de Retz, in his voyage from Tidore to New Spain, came to an archipelago of islands near the land of Papua; sailed 230 leagues along the N. coast; and not knowing it had been before visited by Europeans,

he called it Nueva Guinea, from the resemblance of the natives to those of the coast of Guinea.

In 1606 Torres made the E. coast of New Guinea, in his way to the Moluccas, sailed westward 300 leagues, doubled the S.E. point, sailed along the southern coast, saw the northern coast of New Holland, and passed the strait which now bears his name. He describes the coast of New Guinea as inhabited by a dark people, naked, except a covering round the middle, of painted cloth made of the bark of a tree. They had arms of clubs and darts ornamented with feathers. He fell in with many large islands, ports, and rivers. Towards the northern extremity he met with Mahometans, who had swords and fire-arms.

In 1616 Schouten came in sight of a burning mountain on the coast of New Guinea, which he named Vulcan, and immediately after of the coast itself. The island was well inhabited, and abounded with cocoa-nuts; but no anchoring ground could be found. The natives were black, with short hair; but others appeared of a more tawny colour, with canoes of a different shape. Among the islands in sight to the northward, four small ones continually smoked. On approaching the main land, the natives, whom he calls real Papoos, came off, "a wild, strange, and ridiculous people, active as monkeys, having black curled hair, rings in their ears and noses, and necklaces of hogs' tusks." They had all some personal defect; one was blind, another had a great leg, a third a swelled arm; from which Schouten concluded that this part of the country was unhealthy, an inference which was confirmed by observing their houses built upon stakes eight or nine feet from the ground. At the two little islands of Moa and Insou, on the N.E. coast, the friendly natives supplied them with abundance of cocoa-nuts. At 28 leagues from Moa, Schouten fell in with a group of 14 small islands covered with wood, and apparently uninhabited; but sailing to the northward, they were followed by six large canoes, the people in which were armed with javelins. Those in some canoes from another island were of a tawny complexion, had long curly hair, and appeared by their persons and language to be a different race from the natives of Papua: they had rings of coloured glass, yellow beads, and vessels of porcelain, which were regarded as "evidences of their having communication with the East Indies." Schouten's Island is the largest of this group. Tasman visited all these islands and the coast of New Guinea in 1643, but made no discoveries in this part of his voyage.

Our countryman Dampier saw the coast in 1699, but did not land: the natives came off to his ship, and he speaks in admiration of their large and picturesque proas. He discovered, however, a strait unknown before, which divides New Guinea from New Britain, and is now called after his name. Bougainville was less fortunate, when, in 1768, he touched on the coast of what he considered a separate island, and to which he gave the name of Louisiade. D'Entrecasteaux, in 1792, passed along the northern coast of Louisiade, and through Dampier's Strait, but left the point of its identity with or separation from New Guinea undecided.

Sonnerat published A Voyage to New Guinea, though he evidently never was there, but describes the natives and productions from what he saw and from what he could collect at the island of Gibby, to the eastward of Gilolo.

Forrest, in 1775, anchored in the Bay of Dory, on the northern extremity of New Guinea, and collected some information respecting the inhabitants from a Mahometan Hadji, who accompanied him. Captain Cook, also, in his first voyage in 1770, made the coast in about 6.30. S. Lat., a little to the northward of Cape Valscher, but did not bring his ship to anchor, on account of the hostility of the natives. A party landed near a grove of cocoa-nut trees, and not far from it found plantain and the bread-fruit tree. The breeze from the trees and shrubs is said to have been charged with a fragrance not unlike that of gum benjamin.

Australasia. Three Indians rushed out of the wood with a hideous shout, and ran towards the party; the foremost throwing something out of his hand which burnt like gunpowder, the other two hurling their lances at the same time. Before they reached the pinnacle, from 60 to 100 had collected, all stark naked; their appearance as to stature, colour, and crisped hair, resembling that of the New Hollanders. They let off fires by four or five at a time, but for what purpose could not be imagined. These fires appeared to be discharged from a piece of stick, probably a hollow cane; and the fire and smoke exactly resembled those of a musket, but without any report. Those who were on board ship, at a distance, concluded they had fire-arms; and even those in the boat might have supposed them firing volleys, had they not been so near as to ascertain that there was no report. Torres had observed something of the same kind in about 4. S. Lat. on the same coast, where, he says, the inhabitants were black, but better clothed than those southward; that among the weapons used by them were hollow bamboo sticks, which they filled with lime, and by throwing it out endeavoured to blind their enemies. This explanation, however, does not account for the fire. Forrest says that the Chinese from Tidore trade with Papua under Dutch colours; perhaps, therefore, gunpowder may be one of the articles carried by them in exchange for the slaves, ambergis, sea-slugs (Sipunculus edulis), tortoise-shell, lorics, birds of paradise, &c., which they carry back to China.

The S.E. coast of New Guinea was visited in June 1793 by Mr Bampton, master of the Hormuzeer, and Mr Alt, master of the Chesterfield, two British merchant vessels, who, in their endeavours to find a passage to the N.W. while beating up the Great Bight of this island, added some valuable information to what was previously known of that part of the coast. Captain Bristow, also the discoverer of the Auckland Islands, visited in 1806 the northern shores of the smaller islands, which were described by D'Entrecasteaux in 1793. But the southern shores of the Louisiane remained unexplored from the period of Bougainville's voyage in 1768 until the year 1840, when a French navigator, Captain D'Urville, attempted a flying-survey of them in the Astrolabe during his voyage round the world. He was not sure, however, whether the land he observed belonged to New Guinea or the Louisiane, although he passed a multitude of islands with navigable channels between them.

In 1845 Captain Blackwood, in H.M.S. Fly, surveyed 140 miles of the S.E. coast of New Guinea within the Great Bight. Here he found a low muddy shore extending many miles inland of the same character, intersected by channels, which evidently are the estuaries of streams. One of these he ascended for a distance of 20 miles in the ship's boats, and saw numerous native villages built at intervals along the banks; but being confronted by the inhabitants, who appeared to be of warlike disposition, he considered it dangerous to attempt a landing. This partial survey was followed up in 1846 by Lieutenant Yule in H.M. schooner Bramble, who laid down the coast-line from where Blackwood's survey had terminated E. of Aird's River, along the S.E. shore of the bight. As he proceeded southerly, where the coast trends to the eastward, he found the country inland gradually improve in aspect from low mud banks to densely wooded hills; with a lofty range of mountains in the distance. At this point where he sighted a high peak of this mountain-chain—which now bears his name—he returned to Australia to await further orders.

On the 10th of June 1848, Captain Owen Stanley in H.M.S. Rattlesnake, accompanied by the Bramble, Lieutenant Yule, as tender, commenced a further survey of the doubtful S.E. peninsula of New Guinea, and Bougainville's Louisiane. During their combined indefatigable exertions for four months, they not only determined the fact that the

latter island is separated from the mainland, but that it forms one of several groups of smaller islands, more or less surrounded by dangerous coral reefs, which extend for upwards of 200 miles E. by S. of the great Papuan Island, between 151. and 154. 30. E. Long., and the parallels of 11. and 12. S. Lat.; the entire assemblage of island and reefs, including the Calvados Group, being now denominated the Louisiane Archipelago.

Much valuable information has been added to the natural history and ethnography of those coral-bound isles which Captain Stanley has now determined upon the charts of Australasia, by Mr John Macgillivray, the naturalist who accompanied the expedition; and who has furnished us with the journal of the voyage, which the death of the captain prevented himself from publishing. In his graphic descriptions of these new and interesting islands, he thus describes their appearance: "From the anchorage we enjoyed an extensive view of the south-eastern portion of the Louisiane Archipelago. On the extreme right is the large S.E. island, with its sharp undulating outline, and Mount Rattlesnake clearly visible, although distant 45 miles. Next, after a gap partially filled up by Pig Island, Joannet Island succeeds, 10½ miles in length, not so high as South-east Island, but resembling it in dimness of outline: its highest point, Mount Asp, is 1104 feet in height. Next come the Calvados, of various aspect and size, some with the undulating outline of the larger islands, others rising more or less abruptly to the height of from four to upwards of nine hundred feet. They constitute a numerous group—upwards of 40—some of which, however, are mere rocks: they are delineated upon the Rattlesnake's chart, and there are others to the northward. Behind them, in two of the intervals, the large and distant island of St Aignan (so named after one of D'Entrecasteaux's lieutenants) fills up the background, falling low at its eastern extreme, but the western half is high and mountainous, with an elevation of 3279 feet. Further to the westward, the last of the Calvados in this view was seen to form a remarkable peak, 518 feet in height, to which the name of Eddystone was applied; and still further to the left, Ile Real of D'Urville's chart shoots up to the height of 554 feet, as a solitary rocky island with a rugged outline and an abruptly peaked summit."

Leaving these islands, Captain Stanley proceeded on his general survey along the S.E. coast of New Guinea, until he reached that point of land where Lieutenant Yule in the Bramble had left off. On making the S.E. cape of the island, the land appeared of a mountainous character inland; and this continued increasing in elevation for 250 miles, until he came to Yule's Peak. It is evident that this great mountain-chain divided the watershed on each side of the peninsula. On determining the altitude of this range of mountains, it was found to average double that of the Australian Alps—the highest section of the great Cordillera of that island. Mount Owen Stanley is 13,205 feet in height, being more than double that of Mount Kosciusko (6510 feet)—the highest mountain in Australia. Of fifteen other peaks in the range, whose altitudes are laid down on the Rattlesnake's chart, eight are above 7000 feet. Doubtless there are rich fields for discovery to future naturalists on these tropical-alpine ranges. At present, however, the hostile disposition of its savage occupants renders it inaccessible to European explorers.

If we except the Louisiane Archipelago, New Guinea extends in General S.E. by E. direction from the Cape of Good Hope, nearly under the view of equator, to South-east Cape, in 10. 35. S., being in length about 1200, New and medial breadth about 150 geographical miles. The accounts of Guinea, all the navigators who have touched on the different parts of its coast, describe it as a rich and magnificent country, containing, in all human probability, from its situation and appearance, the most valuable vegetable products of the Meluccas and the several Asiatic islands. Forrest found the nutmeg-tree on Manaswary Island, in the Bay of Dory; and he learned that a people in the interior, called

¹ Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Captain Owen Stanley. By J. Macgillivray, vol. 1. p. 241.

Australia.

Haroforas, cultivate the ground, and bring their produce down to the sea-coast; that they are very poor, and some of them have long hair; and that they live in trees, which they ascend by cutting notches in them. The people of New Guinea, in many parts of the coast, live in huts or cabins placed on stages which are erected on posts, commonly in the water, and probably as a protection against snakes and other venomous creatures, though Forrest seems to think against the Haroforas. On these stages they haul up their proas or canoes. These people are invariably described as being hideously ugly. Their large eyes, flat noses, thick lips, woolly hair, and black shining skin, impressed the early navigators with the idea that they were of African origin; but closer investigation of late years has shown them to be a very mixed race indeed. Mr Macgillivray resolves them into several indistinct types with intermediate gradations. Thus, occasionally he met with strongly marked negro characteristics, but still more frequently with the Jewish cast of features; while every now and then a face presented itself which struck him as Malayan. Although the hair of these aborigines was invariably frizzled out into a mop, and woolly, instances were met with in both sexes where it was black, soft, and curly, while in others it was red and frizzly, and the males mostly beardless. The colour of the skin varies from a light to a dark copper shade; and their stature does not average more than 5 feet 4 inches. Instead, therefore, of considering them a pure race, these late investigations would lead us to suppose that the races from all the neighbouring Polynesian and Malayan islands had their representatives on this beautiful and fertile group of islands; who have amalgamated and formed the most warlike race in the Australasian seas. Their habits, however, are much the same as their neighbours; and they show equal skill in the management of their canoes and weapons, and in the building of huts. The Papuans also increase their natural deformity by passing bones or pieces of stick through the cartilage of the nose, and as already mentioned, frizzing out their curly locks like a mop, sometimes to the enormous circumference of 3 feet. They appear, however, to be one degree farther removed from savage life than the Australian aborigines, having permanent houses, and both men and women wearing wrappers round the waist, which are among the articles brought to them by the Chinese and Malays.

Animals.

The only quadrupeds known to exist on this island are dogs, rats, and wild hogs; but the feathered race are of great beauty and infinite variety. New Guinea is the native country of the bird of paradise. They are said to migrate in large flocks, in the dry monsoon, to the islands of Arroo, and other islands to the W. and N.W. of New Guinea. The great crown pigeon, parrots, lorics, and minas, are natives of Papua.

The whole of this great country is indented with deep bays on every side, some of which nearly intersect the island; and the coast is surrounded on every side by a multitude of small islands, all peopled with the same description of blacks, excepting those already mentioned on the N.W., near the equator, most of which are under the government of Mahometan Malays, with whom both the Dutch and Chinese have long kept up intercourse.

New Britain, New Ireland, and neighbouring islands.

IV. There can be little doubt that this extensive range of islands was partially seen by Le Maire and Schouten in 1616, who, after discovering the Groene Island and the Marquen Islands, steered along the northern coast of New Ireland, as did Tasman also in 1642. Dampier, however, first ascertained New Britain to be an island distinct from New Guinea, by passing the strait which has since borne his name. He visited Port Montague on this island, and speaks of the black natives resembling the Papuans, their dexterity in managing their canoes, their woody hills, fertile valleys, and delightful rivulets. He also anchored in Slinger's Bay, on New Ireland, which he conceived to be the same land with New Britain; but Carteret, in 1727, discovered and passed through a strait which separates them, and to which he gave the name of St George's Channel. The Admiralty Islands of Carteret, to the north-westward of New Britain, had previously been discovered by Schouten, and named the Twenty-five Islands. New Britain was seen by Roggewein in 1722, and by Bougainville in 1768.

D'Entrecasteaux, we believe, was the last navigator who passed along the N. coast of New Britain, and through St George's Channel, which divides it from New Ireland, and from thence to the Admiralty Islands; and from his voyage, published by Rossel, together with Labillardière's and Carteret's, we shall extract a few gleanings.

General description.

The extent of New Britain and Ireland is not exactly known, nor have they been sufficiently explored to enable

geographers to lay them down with accuracy, or even to state what number of islands the group consists of. One of considerable extent lies off the N.W. end of New Ireland, which has been named New Hanover, and is itself surrounded by low woody islands. The whole group occupies a space between 2. 30. and 6. of S. Lat., and 149. and 153. of E. Long., and may probably contain an area not less than 10,000 geographical square miles.

Carteret, in passing through the strait, saw but few natives on Natives the S. coast of New Ireland. These showed marked signs of hostility, and were armed with lances headed with flint; they had also slings and good fishing-tackle. They were black, and had woolly hair, but their lips, he says, were not thick, nor their noses flat; their cheeks were streaked with white, and their hair and beards were covered with a white powder. Their canoes were long and narrow, and had generally ostriggers; one of them measured 90 feet in length, and was formed out of a single tree. The two large islands, and the whole group, in fact, were nearly covered with wood; and thick cocoa-nut groves skirted all the low parts of the coast. Labillardière says that New Ireland produces nutmegs; and he also mentions a new species of the Areca palm, 108 feet high, the stem consisting of hard solid timber.

The natives of the Admiralty Islands, lying to the N.W., were found by Carteret to be less black than those of New Britain and Ireland, with agreeable countenances, not unlike Europeans; their hair was curly, smeared with oil and red ochre, and their bodies and faces painted with the same material; the glans penis was covered with the shell called the bulu ovum, serving the same purpose as the wooden sheath of the Caffres in South Africa, whom, indeed, they seem to resemble as closely as the natives of New Guinea do those of the western coast of Africa. The women wear a bandage round the waist. The central island is tolerably large, and of a beautiful appearance, clothed with the most luxuriant verdure, and cultivated to the very summit. Among the groves of cocoa-nut trees are numerous habitations, and the natives have evidently attained to a higher degree of civilization than their southern neighbours: they use earthen vessels, and chew the betel leaf with chunam or lime. This central island is surrounded by nearly 30 small flat islets of coral, and reefs in the various stages of progress towards islets.

Proceeding to the westward and to the north-west, we meet with other little clusters of islands, as the Hermites, the Portland, the Echiquier (chess-board), vulgarly called Exchequer Islands, all of which consist, like the Admiralty Archipelago, of a larger central island surrounded by a chain of islets and reefs, most of them covered with beautiful verdure. The natives of these groups, as they approach the equator, gradually assume a lighter colour and longer hair, till they lose entirely the negro character, and merge into that of Malays and other Asiatic islanders.—See Schouten, Dampier, Carteret, Labillardière, &c.

V. This archipelago of islands was one of the first discovered of the Spaniards in Australasia, though the credit of it is given to Alonzo de Mendana, who was sent on an expedition of discovery in 1567 from Callao by the viceroy of Peru. He anchored in a port on the island of Santa Ysabel, to which he gave the name of Porta de la Estrella; and he also built a brigantine to make further discoveries, in which she was particularly successful, having fallen in with no fewer than thirty-three islands, "of very fine prospect." Many of them were of considerable size, to which they gave particular names, as Galera, Buenavista, Florida, San German, Guadaluca, San Christoval, Santa Catarina, and Santa Ana. Guadaluca, however, was the most attractive, having a port which they named De la Cruz, and a river which they called Galego. Of this island Mendana took possession for the king of Spain. When the voyage was published, the name of Solomon's Islands was given to the group, "to the end that the Spaniards, supposing them to be those isles from whence Solomon fetched gold to adorn the temple at Jerusalem, might be the more desirous to go and inhabit the same;" but it has been said that Mendana's advice was, that they should not be colonized, "that the English, or others, who pass the Strait of Magellan to go to the Moluccas, might have no succour there, but such as they get from the Indians." The truth, however, is, that Mendana, on a second voyage for the discovery of the Solomon Islands, returned without being able to find them, which

Australasia. gave occasion to the remark, that "what Mendana discovered in his first voyage he lost in his second." He discovered, however, in this second voyage, the great island of Santa Cruz, which is situated at the S.E. extremity of Solomon's Islands, and may very fairly be considered as one of the group. This island, which has an excellent harbour, La Graciosa, was first revisited after Mendana's discovery by Carteret, in 1767, who changed its name to that of Egmont, and made it the principal island of a group which he called Queen Charlotte's Islands. Here Mendana died, and Quiros succeeded to the command; but the search for Solomon's Islands was abandoned when they were not more than 40 leagues from Christoval. It is a singular fact that Solomon's Islands, whose name was sufficient to tempt adventurers, were lost to Europeans for two centuries after their discovery, and that we know at present little, if any, more than Mendana gave to the world after his first voyage. They were revisited by Bougainville in 1768; by M. Surville in 1769, who, from a ridiculous mistake, called them the Archipelago of the Arsaciades, to mark the natives as assassins; by Lieutenant Shortland of the British navy, in 1788, who chose to call them New Georgia; and frequently, since that time, by various British and French navigators.

Natives. Santa Ysabel, says Mendana, was inhabited by people who had the complexion of mulattoes, with curly hair, and little covering to their bodies; who worshipped serpents, toads, and such like creatures; whose food was cocoa-nuts and roots; and who, it was believed, ate human flesh, "for the chief sent to the general a present of a quarter of a boy, with the hand and arm." Baonavista is twelve leagues in extent, very fertile, and well peopled, the natives living in regular villages or towns. On Florida, twenty-five leagues in circuit, the natives dyed their hair red, collected together at the sound of the conch-shells, and ate human flesh. Sesarga was well inhabited, produced plenty of yams and bread-fruit, and here the Spaniards saw hogs. In the midst of the island was a volcano continually emitting smoke. They saw bats which measured five feet between the tips of the wings. At Gaudalcanar they received in barter two hens and a cock, the first fowls that had been seen. At San Christoval the natives were very numerous, and drew up to give battle to the Spaniards, their arms being darts, clubs, bows and arrows; but they were dispersed by the fire of the muskets, which killed one Indian, and wounded others. In the neighbouring village was found a quantity of cocoa-nuts and almonds, sufficient to have loaded a ship. Santa Ana was well peopled and fertile. It has a good port on the E. side, where the Spaniards were attacked by the natives, who wounded three of the invaders, while a dart pierced through the target and arm of the Spanish commanding officer. The blacks had boughs on their heads, and bands round their waists. The Spaniards observed here hogs and fowls.

New Hebrides. VI. To the S.E. of Solomon's Islands, and between the parallels of 14. 30. and 20. S. Lat., are found a number of islands, some of very considerable magnitude, called the New Hebrides or Hebudes. They were first discovered in 1606 by Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, who, with Luis Vaez de Torres, was sent by the king of Spain from Lima with two ships and a zebra (launch) to establish a settlement at the island of Santa Cruz, and from thence to go in quest of the Tierra Austral or southern continent. This voyage has been considered, and justly so, among the most celebrated undertaken by the Spaniards since the time of Magellan. In April 1606 they discovered an island, to which they gave the name of Santa Maria, from whence they saw another island to the southward, "so large," says Torres, "that we sailed for it." On the 2d May they anchored in a bay large enough to hold a thousand ships, to which they gave the appropriate name of San Felipe y Santiago. Quiros at once determined that he had now discovered the long-sought-for southern continent, and in this conviction named it the Australia del Espíritu Santo. Two rivers fell into the bay, one the Jordan, the other the Salvador. The surrounding country was beautiful, and is thus described by the historian of the voyage: "The banks of the rivers were covered with odoriferous flowers and plants, particularly orange flowers and sweet basil, the perfumes of which were wafted

to the ships by the morning and evening breezes; and at the early dawn was heard, from the neighbouring woods, the mixed melody of many different kinds of birds, some in appearance like nightingales, blackbirds, larks, and goldfinches. All the parts of the country in front of the sea were beautifully varied with fertile valleys, plains, winding rivers, and groves, which extend to the sides of the green mountains."—Torquemada, as quoted in Burney's Account of Discoveries in the South Sea.

Of this terrestrial paradise, which the Spaniards regarded as their own, it was intended to take immediate possession. They landed in great numbers; the islanders also were numerous, but became alarmed, made them presents, and signified a wish for them to return to their ships. They landed, however, from their boats, upon which the chief drew a line on the ground with the end of his bow, and made signs that the Spaniards must not pass that boundary. It is said that Torres, to show his contempt of the idea of being restrained by barbarians, immediately passed the line. A battle ensued, in which the chief was killed, and all the rest fled into the woods. This rash act, however, was fatal to the views of the Spaniards, who never afterwards could prevail on the islanders to have any friendly communication with them; and they left this country, after some ridiculous formalities of taking possession in the name of Philip III., and founding a city, dignified with the name of the New Jerusalem.

So anxious was Quiros of "adding the Australia del Espíritu Santo to the other possessions of the Spanish monarchy," that, after his return to Spain, he is said to have presented no less than fifty memorials to the king. One of these, which was printed at Seville, begins thus: "I, Captain Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, say, that with this I have presented to your majesty eight memorials relative to the settlement which ought to be made in Australia Incoñita." In these memorials he enumerates the many valuable productions of this supposed southern continent,—cocoa-nuts, plantains, sugar-canes, yams, batatas, oranges, limes, papas, pumpkins, almonds, nutmegs, mace, ginger, pepper in great quantities, and woods for "building any number of ships." The animals are hogs, goats, and dogs; fowls, and a variety of useful birds; various good fish, and pearl oysters. The climate is described as so fine, with such a freshness in the air, that neither by labour, exposure to the sun, or rain, or dews, nor by intemperance, did any of the Spaniards fall sick; and among the natives many aged people were seen. They wear a covering round the middle: Torres says they are all black and naked. They are described by Quiros as corpulent and strong, cleanly, cheerful, sensible, and grateful: their houses, built of wood and thatched, stood, not on posts, but on the ground. They weave nets, and make earthen vessels, have plantations inclosed with palisades, construct vessels which navigate to distant countries, and have places appropriated for burying the dead; and, he adds, as the last and decisive test of their progress in civilization, "they cut their hogs and make capons."

This archipelago of islands, like that of Solomon, was lost to the Describer for a century and a half, when Bougainville revisited them in 1768. Except landing on the Isle of Lepers, however, he did not find anything more than discover that the land was not connected, but composed of islands, which he called the Great Cyclades; which, on being more accurately and extensively explored by Cook in 1774, underwent another change to that of New Hebrides, which they now bear in all our charts. According to the survey of our great navigator, they consist of Tierra del Espíritu Santo, the largest of the whole, St Bartholomew, Mallicolo, the Isle of Lepers, Aurora, Whitesand, Ambrym, Apes, Paoom, Three-bills, Sandwich, Montagu, Hinchinbrook, Shepherd's Isles, Erromango, Tanna, Immer, Amatom, and Erronan. The two which are more particularly described are Mallicolo and Tanna, the natives of which differ remarkably in their persons and language; those of the latter having curly but long hair, dark but not black, and without anything of the negro character in their features, which are regular and agreeable, their persons slender, active, and nimble. They were found to be

Australasia.

hospitable, civil, and good-natured; but they displayed a jealousy of their visitors seeing the interior of the island, which could only be equalled in Japan or China. All the plantations were fenced, and laid out in a line; they consisted of sugar-canes, yams, plantains, bread-fruit, &c. The yams were remarkably fine, one of them weighing 55 pounds, every ounce of which was good; and they had pigs and poultry. The juice of the cocoa-nut and water appeared to be their only beverage. Their arms were clubs, darts, lances, and bows and arrows. Their canoes, clumsily sewed together, had outriggers, and were worked by paddles and by sails. The men wore a wrapper round the loins, and the women a sort of petticoat reaching to the knees.

The natives of Mallicolo are called by Captain Cook "an ape-like nation," the most ugly, ill-proportioned people he ever met with, and different from all others, diminutive in their persons, dark coloured, with black hair, short and curly, but not so woolly as a negro's; they had long heads, flat faces, and monkey countenances; and a belt round the waist, pulled tight across the belly, made them look not unlike overgrown pismires. The women were equally ugly; and the dress of both sexes was in other respects the same as that of Tanna, as were also the productions of the island. Their houses were low, and covered with palm thatch.—See Dalrymple, Burney, Cook, &c.

New Caledonia.

VII. This large island, surrounded with coral islets and reefs, was wholly unknown till Captain Cook in 1774 fell in with the north-western extremity in steering south-west from Mallicolo, from which it is distant not more than about eighty leagues. He anchored within a small island called Balabaa, and opposite to the district Balade. This great island extends between latitude 20. 5. and 22. 30., in the direction of N.W. and S.E., about 250 miles long by 60 broad. The land bears a great resemblance to that of New South Wales, and many of its natural productions appeared to be the same, but the natives were different.

Natives.

The inhabitants are represented as a strong, robust, active, well-made people, courteous and friendly, and not in the least addicted to piffling, in which respect they differ from every other tribe of Australasia. They are nearly of the same colour as the natives of Tanna, and appeared to be a mixed race between that people and those of the Friendly Isles, or of Tanna and New Zealand, their language being a mixture of them all. Of the same disposition as the natives of the Friendly Islands, they were found to excel them in affability and honesty; and the women, like those of Tanna, were chaste than the females of the more eastern islands. They wear a petticoat of the filaments of the plantain tree, "at least six or eight inches thick, but not one inch longer than necessary for the use designed." They paint and panature their bodies, and wear ear-rings, and necklaces, and bracelets, of tortoise and other shells. Both men and women have good features and agreeable countenances; and some of the men measure in height six feet four inches. Their hair is frizzled out like a mop, and is very black, coarse, and strong, but different from that of a negro. The rough mop-heads make use of "scratchers," composed of a number of sticks of hard wood, about the thickness of knitting-needles, fastened together at one end like a sort of comb; the women have their hair cropped short. The men wear a wrapper round the loins, made of the bark of a tree. Their houses resemble bee-hives, with peaked roofs, entered by a hole just big enough to admit a man bent double. The sides are of spars and reeds, and both these and the roof well thatched with dry grass. They boil their roots and fish in earthen jars. They have nets made of plantain fibres, and the sails of their canoes are of the same material. These vessels consist of two trees fixed together by a platform. They have plantations of sugar-canes, plantains, bread-fruit, and cocoa-nut, but none of them very productive. The whole appearance of the country, indeed, is described as unable to support many inhabitants. The greater part of the visible surface consists of barren rocky mountains; and though the plains and valleys appeared to be fertile, Captain Cook was of opinion that "nature has been less bountiful to it than to any other tropical island we know in this sea."

D'Entrecasteaux passed the opposite extremity of New Caledonia in 1792, when on his search after the unfortunate La Pérouse, but was prevented by a barrier reef of coral from approaching the coast; and, in the following year, he visited Balade on the N.W. The account of the inhabitants, as given by Rossel and Labillardière, differs altogether from that of Cook. But their own account of their transactions there, the confidence with which they straggled over the country, and the readiness of the savages to serve them, by no means warrant the bad character they have thought fit to give them. Labillardière thinks the inhabitants, as well as the vegetable productions, resemble those of Van Diemen's Land. There

was no want of different kinds of esculent plants, though a great scarcity prevailed from drought or other cause when they arrived. The young shoots of the Hibiscus tiliaceus, the fruit of the Cordia sebestina, the Delichos tuberosus, Helianthus tuberosus, Arum esculentum, and Macrorrhizon, Hypoxis, Aleurites, figs, oranges, plantains, sugar-canes, cocoa-nuts, and the bread-fruit, all afforded them articles of food. Yet Labillardière says they eat steatite, and that he saw one man devour a piece of this stone as large as his two fists. They also eat a species of spider. They had lost the hogs which Cook left them, but some half-dozen of cocks and hens were seen by the French.—See Cook, Labillardière, &c.

VIII. Though these islands geographically belong to New Zealand, the natives are, in their physical character and language, Polynesians. They were first discovered on the 13th December 1642, by Abel Jansen Tasman, on his voyage of discovery from the Mauritius; and, on the 18th, the Heemskirk yacht and the fly-boat Zeehaan came to anchor in a bay to which they afterwards gave the name of Moordenaar's or Murderer's Bay, and to the island that of Staaten Land, in honour of the states-general, and in the possibility that it might join the Staaten Land to the east of the Tierra del Fuego. "It is a fine country," says Tasman, "and we hope it is part of the unknown S. continent." The expedition of Hendrik Brower to Chili the following year cut off the latter Staaten Land from any continental connection, and the name of the former was then changed to that of New Zealand.

On the 19th a boat with thirteen natives came within a stone's throw of the Heemskirk. The language in which they hailed was unlike that of the Solomon's Islands, of which Tasman had a vocabulary. Their vessel consisted of two narrow canoes, joined together by boards, on which the people sat; their paddles, about a fathom long, were pointed at the end; their clothing appeared of mats or cotton, but their breasts were naked. They were invited on board, but in vain. The ships, however, were moved nearer in-shore, upon which seven double vessels came off. A boat, despatched from one ship to the other, had previously been attacked. Three men belonging to the Zeehaan were killed, and one mortally wounded; one of the killed was dragged into the canoes. After this, despairing of getting water or provisions, they weighed and set sail, twenty-two of the native boats following them, eleven of which were full of people. The ships fired, and the canoes returned to the shore.

The next visitor, at the distant period of a hundred and twenty-seven years, was Captain Surville, who in 1769 put into a bay on the north-eastern extremity, and gave it the name of Lauriston Bay. In the same year Lieutenant (afterwards Captain) Cook of the Endeavour, made the land on the 6th of October, the enormous height of which became the subject of much conversation; and the general opinion was, that they had now discovered the Terra Australis Incognita. This voyage, however, and the circumnavigation of the islands of New Zealand, entirely subverted the theory of a great southern continent. In 1772 Captains Marion du Fresne and Crozet put into the Bay of Isles, where the former and some of the crew were murdered by the natives. In March 1773 Captain Cook in the Resolution, with Captain Furneaux in the Adventure, revisited New Zealand, where the latter had a whole boat's crew with a midshipman murdered by the inhabitants. In 1776 and 1777 a third visit was made to these islands by Captain Cook. In these several visits he was accompanied by men well versed in every branch of natural knowledge; and in the Voyages of Cook and Forster will be found every species of information that the ferocious disposition of the inhabitants made it practicable to collect.

The two great islands of New Zealand extend between Descriptive latitude 34° and 48° south, longitude 181° and 194° east; that to the northward, called Laheinomawe, is about 400 geographical miles long by 90 in medial breadth. The name

Australasia. of the southern island is Tavai Poenamoo, which is about 450 geographical miles long by 95 broad. The former has a rich and fertile soil, well clothed with trees, some of them more than 20 feet in girth, and 90 feet high, without a branch. Some of them resembled spruce, and were "large enough for the mainmast of a 50-gun ship." The highest hills were covered with forests, the valleys with grass and shrubbery, and the plains were well irrigated with rills of clear water. The southern island is very mountainous; one peak, resembling that of Teneriffe, was estimated by Foster, but without sufficient data, at 14,000 feet in height: it was covered with snow in the middle of January. Both as to appearance and temperature, they may be considered as the British Isles of Australasia. Fahrenheit's thermometer in February was never higher than 66°, and was not lower in June than 48°.

A great part of the western side of these islands had, however, a desolate and inhospitable appearance; exhibiting ranges of yellow sandstone, or white sandhills, with scarcely a blade of verdure. It is worthy of remark, that this extraordinary difference prevails between the two coasts of South Africa, the two coasts of New Holland, and the two coasts of Van Diemen's Land.

Natives. The natives are stout and well-limbed, muscular, vigorous, and active, excelling in manual dexterity; their countenances intelligent and expressive, of an olive complexion, but not darker than a Spaniard. In the appearance of the women there is not much feminine delicacy; but on Cook's first visit they found them more modest and decent in their behaviour than any of the islanders they had met with. They were covered from the shoulders to the ankles with a sort of netted cloth made of the split leaves of the flax plant (Pterocaulon tenax), the ends hanging down like fringes.

The black hair of the men is bound in a knot on the top of the head, that of the women is cropped; both sexes anoint their hair with rancid oil, and smear their bodies with grease and red ochre. The faces of the old men are covered with large furrowed black marks, generally spiral lines, and have a horrible appearance. The women wear in their ears pieces of cloth, feathers, sticks, bones, &c., and bracelets and anklets of bone, teeth, shells, &c. Captain Cook did not observe any appearance of disease, or bodily complaint, or eruption on the skin, or marks of any; and the most severe wounds healed most rapidly. Very old men, without hair or teeth, showed no signs of decrepitude, and were full of cheerfulness and vivacity. They are mild, gentle, and affectionate towards each other, but ferocious and implacable towards their enemies; and it unfortunately happens, that the little societies into which they appear to be divided, are in an almost perpetual state of hostility, which makes it necessary for them to dwell in haphaps or villages, fortified with embankments, ditches, and palisades. They give no quarter, and feast with apparent relish on the bodies of their enemies, which they cut up and broil in holes dug in the earth; they suck out the brains, and preserve the skulls as trophies. They made no hesitation in devouring human flesh in presence of the English officers, and their provision baskets had generally a head or a limb of a human subject.

The only quadrupeds on the islands are pigs, dogs, and rats, the former of which they eat; but their principal food consists of fish, potatoes, and the bruised roots of fern. They cultivate, however, and with great neatness, sweet potatoes, eddas, and gourds, all planted in regular rows; and Cook observed near the villages both privies and dunghills. Their houses have a ridge-pole to the roof, which, with the sides, are built of sticks and grass, and lined with bark; they sleep on the floors covered with straw; and the furniture consists of a chest to hold their tools, clothes, arms, and feathers, provision baskets, and gourds to hold water, which is their only beverage; the New Zealanders being among the very few people, civilized or savage, who are ignorant of the means of intoxication.

Their double canoes or whale-boats are admirably constructed with planks from 60 to 70 feet in length, and their prows and sterns are tastefully and curiously carved and ornamented; all of which is performed by adzes and axes of a hard black stone, or green talc or jade, and with chisels of human bone or jasper. Of these materials also their offensive weapons are made: these are lances fourteen feet long, sharp at both ends, of hard wood neatly carved; and a battle-axe of jade or bone about a foot long. Their war canoes carry from 60 to 70 men each; they keep exact time with their paddles, singing, with great vociferation and distorted features, their savage war-song, when bound on any hostile expedition.

Their war-dances are conducted in the same furious and extravagant style: the only musical instrument, if it can be called one, which they use, is a triton shell, which sounds like a cow's horn.

They have, however, a taste for music, and the women are said to sing in a soft, slow, and mournful cadence, making use of semitones. When their husbands are slain in battle, they cut their legs, arms, and faces, with bone or sharp shells; and there are few of them who do not wear scars on their bodies as testimonials of their affection and sorrow for their deceased friends.

The natives of New Zealand exhibit a strange mixture of civilized and savage life. It was hoped, from the state of their cultivated grounds, of which several hundred acres were seen, that presents of hogs, kids, and poultry, would have been most acceptable, and considerable numbers were left with them on the first and second visits of Captain Cook; but, excepting the cocks and hens, which had bred plentifully, and flew about wild in the woods, the others had been wantonly destroyed. In 1791 Vancouver touched at Dusky Bay, and remained there for some time, examining the bays and creeks in the neighbourhood; but he did not see one human being. And in 1793 D'Entrecasteaux passed between the Three Kings' Island and Cape Maria van Diemen, but had no other communication with the natives except in their canoes. Unlike in some respects to the Tahitians, they have evidently a common origin; their language not differing more than the language of the two New Zealand Islands from each other. The few notions they have of superior beings also accord with those of Tahiti. (See Cook's Voyages.)

The following horrible transaction proves how well Captain Cook described the character of these cannibals. In December 1809, the ship Boyd, from Port Jackson, was at Wangaroo, in the Bay of Islands, and admitted, without due caution, too large a number of natives on board, when the crew were suddenly attacked, overpowered, and slaughtered. Captain Alexander Berry, of the ship Edinburgh Castle, being on the coast, was soon after apprised of this horrible event; and, proceeding to the bay, found the remains of the Boyd, which had been burnt by the savages. On landing, he discovered that the massacre had been directed by Tippahoe, the old chief who had been so much caressed at Sydney. The bones of the unfortunate men lay scattered on the ground, where their bodies had been devoured by the savages. Sixteen were murdered and cut up on the deck of the vessel; five others, who had fled for safety upon the yards, were told by the old cannibal, that if they would come down their lives should be spared, which, after some hesitation, they consented to do. They were sent on shore, and in five minutes after their dead bodies lay on the beach. The only survivors which Captain Berry contrived to save, were a woman, two children, and a boy. Well might Captain Berry conclude the narrative of this horrid murder by an admonition, "Let no man trust a New Zealander."

The colonization of this group of islands by the British may well be considered an era in the history of Australasia. Little more than fifteen years has elapsed since the settlements of Auckland, Wellington, and other towns were established on the Waitata, and the shores of Port Nicholson and other parts of the coast; and, though much bloodshed has followed the occupation of the lands of this warlike people—who are now known by their aboriginal name, Maori—the stranger may travel at the present day through their country, with as much security from robbery or violence as in civilized Britain. We speak from experience when we state that the stranger white man who goes amongst them with a peaceful object has everywhere the hand of fellowship held out to him, and is invited to partake of their hospitality. Strange to relate, but nevertheless true, the descendants of the old race of wild cannibals rarely speak of the practices of their fathers without horror, and exhibit the most pacific desire to trade with the Europeans, whom their progenitors never saw but to deceive and to devour. They have yielded to the all-powerful influence of Mammon; they love wealth; and they have become a subdued race by adopting the luxuries of the white man, which they cannot produce themselves. Where the missionaries failed in their attempts to bring them within the sphere of Christian civilization, and the strong arm of European warfare could not crush the indomitable spirit of these brave people, the slow but sure progress of commerce has laid that proud race submissively at the feet of the trading Pakehas (foreigners). The horrors of cannibalism are now becoming lost in the traditions of the past; for if the main cause of that practice was the desire for animal food, which could not otherwise be gratified in a region where no indigenous quadruped exists, the pigs, sheep, cattle, and vegetable produce of all kinds introduced by the settlers have now furnished them with abundance of the necessities of life. A chief now, instead of leading his followers on to plunder and massacre the white men, may be seen walking into a banking office in Auckland or Wellington, and writing a cheque for a portion of his money deposited there; or sitting in a news-room perusing a newspaper

printed in his own language. The history of the British in New Zealand is replete with interest; but it does not admit of more than a brief notice in this place. For further details see NEW ZEALAND.

To the eastward of New Zealand is an island of considerable extent and well peopled, discovered by Mr Broughton in 1791, when on a voyage round the world with Vancouver. He called it Chat-ham Island. The people and the productions are the same as those of New Zealand. (See Vancouver's Voyage.)

The Auckland Islands, or Lord Auckland's Group, are in Lat. 50. 40. S. and Long. 165. 35. E., nearly 180 miles S. of New Zealand. They were so named by the discoverer, Captain Abram Bristow, master of a South Sea whaler belonging to Mr Samuel Enderby, in gratitude to the nobleman whose name they bear, for having procured him admission, when a boy, into Greenwich Hospital. This group was first seen on the 10th of August 1806; and on the 20th of October 1807, Captain Bristow came to anchor with his ship the Sarah in a fine harbour in the largest island, which he quaintly named Sarah's Bosom. This harbour, sometimes called Laurie Harbour and Rendezvous Harbour, has been renamed Port Ross by Mr Chas. Enderby in honour of Sir James Clark Ross, who surveyed the port. These islands have subsequently been visited and briefly described by Captain Morell of the American merchant service in 1829; by Commodore Wilkes of the United States exploring expedition; and by Admiral D'Urville of the French, and Sir James Clark Ross of the English navy in 1840.

The group consists of one large and several smaller islands. The principal island, Auckland, is about 30 miles long and 15 broad, and contains about 100,000 acres of land. The smaller islands, of which the principal are Adam's and Enderby, contain together about 20,000 acres. They are all of volcanic formation, composed of basalt and greenstone, and present a wild and picturesque appearance. The highest hill (Mount Eden) rises about 1350 feet above the level of the sea. Crawley's Harbour in the south of Auckland is described by Captain Morell and others as even superior to Laurie's Harbour. This island is fertile and well watered. The hills, except a few of the highest, are thickly covered with lofty trees of most vigorous growth, while the plains and valleys are clothed with luxuriant vegetation. Dr Hooker, who, in his Flora Australis, has given an elaborate account of the botany of these islands, says, "The whole land seemed covered with vegetation. A low forest skirts all the shores, succeeded by a broad belt of brushwood, above which to the summit of the hills extend grassy slopes. On a closer inspection of the forest, it is found to be composed of a dense thicket of stag-headed trees, so gnarled and stunted by the violence of the gales, as to afford an excellent shelter for a luxuriant undergrowth of bright green feathery ferns, and several gay-flowered herbs. The climate is described by Captain Morell as "mild, temperate, and salubrious. I have been told," he adds, "by men of the first respectability and talent, who have visited the island in the month of July, the dead of winter on this island, that the weather was mild as respects cold, as the mercury was never lower than 38° in the valleys, and the trees at the same time retained their verdure as if it was midsummer. At the time we were there the mercury seldom rose higher than 78°, although it answered to our July. The weather is generally good at all seasons of the year, notwithstanding there are occasional high winds, attended with heavy rain."

The domestic pig, introduced by Captain Bristow, is the only quadruped found in these islands. The woods abound with singing birds, and on the shores seals and sea-fowl are plentiful. "The only game observed," says Dr Holmes of the United States expedition, "were a few gray ducks, snipes, cormorants, and the common shag. The land birds are excellent eating, especially the hawks." Some officers of the French expedition, who visited the E. coast between the two harbours, found the banks full of fish, with a regular bottom varying from 15 to 20 fathoms.

The convenience of these islands as a station for the southern whale fishery was remarked by the various navigators who visited them, but has only recently been taken advantage of. Mr Charles Enderby, F.R.S., and his two brothers, sons of Captain Bristow's employer, having obtained a grant of these islands from the British Government, a company was incorporated in 1849 for the prosecution of this important object.

Kerguelen's
Island.

IX. Between the parallels of 40. 30. and 50. S., and longitude 69° E., lies the barren and uninhabited land of Kerguelen, so named from the French officer who first discovered it in 1772, and who, on a second visit in 1773, discovered some small islands near it, but on neither occasion was able once to bring his ships to an anchor upon any part of the coast. Captain Cook was more fortunate. He had heard of Kerguelen's discovery at the Cape of Good Hope, and wondered he should not have seen this land when he passed it so closely in 1770. In 1776, however, he fell in

with these islands, and as no account of Kerguelen's voyage had been made public, he gave new names to each island. Speaking of the main island, "I should," says Cook, "from its sterility, with great propriety call it the Island of Desolation, but that I would not rob M. de Kerguelen of the honour of its bearing his name." He changed, however, the Baie de l'Oiseau of the French, where they had landed in a boat and lodged a piece of parchment in a bottle, into Christmas Harbour; and called a round high rock Bligh's Cap, which had been named by M. de Kerguelen the Isle of Rendezvous,—although, says Cook, "I know nothing that can rendezvous about it but fowls of the air; for it is certainly inaccessible to any other animal." Kerguelen thought he had discovered the Terra Australis Incognita, but Cook soon determined that it was of no great extent.

The hills were but of a moderate height, and yet in the middle of summer were covered with snow; not a shrub was found on this island, and not more than 17 or 18 different plants, one-half of which were either mosses or grasses. The chief verdure was occasioned by one plant not unlike a saxifrage, spreading in tufts, and forming a surface of a pretty extensive texture, over a kind of bog or rotten turf: the highest plant resembled a small cabbage when shot into seed, and was about two feet high. No land animals were met with, but great plenty of the ursine seal (Phoca ursina). Penguins were very abundant, as were also shags, cormorants, albatrosses, gulls, ducks, petrels, and sea-swallows. A few fish of the size of a haddock were taken with the line, and the only shell-fish were a few limpets and mussels.

The steep cliffs towards the sea are rent from the top downwards, but whether by rains, frost, or earthquakes, could not be determined. The productions of the hills were composed chiefly of a dark blue and pretty hard stone, intermixed with small particles of glimmer or quartz. Lumps of coloured sandstone, and of semi-transparent quartz, are also common. Nothing appeared like an ore or metal of any kind.—Cook's Third Voyage, vol. i.

X. These small uninhabited islands are interesting only to St Paul in a geological point of view. Situated in the midst of the great Indian Ocean, at the distance of 2000 miles from the nearest land, and removed but 18 or 20 miles from each other, they have no common point of resemblance; the one being the product of a volcanic eruption scarcely yet cooled, with a few mosses and grasses on its surface; the other composed of horizontal and parallel strata of rock, covered with frutescent plants—an appearance which led the scientific gentlemen in D'Entrecasteaux's expedition to conclude that an organization so regular could not proceed from a volcanic origin. A French seal-catcher from the neighbouring island had set fire to the shrubbery, which continued to burn when the navigators passed the island; and imagining that they saw smoke issuing from the crevices between the strata, some of them were disposed to consider this circumstance as infallible indications of subterranean fire. Perron, the seal-catcher above mentioned, with the gentlemen of Lord Macartney's embassy, who explored the southernmost island, Amsterdam, say that the shores of St Paul's abounded with pumice-stone.

Of the recent creation of Amsterdam there can be little doubt; indeed, it is scarcely yet cooled, and is altered considerably since its first discovery by Vlaming in 1696. From every part of the sloping sides of the crater, which is nearly 1000 yards in diameter, and into which the sea has forced its way, either smoke, or hot water, or hot mud, is seen to issue; and everywhere is felt a tremulous motion, and a noise heard like that of boiling water. In many parts of the crater, in the centre of which the water is 174 feet deep, the sea-water is tepid from the hot springs below; and numbers of these springs are found on the margin, below the high-water mark, of various temperatures, from 100° to the boiling-point. One very copious spring, slightly

Austral-
asia. chalybeate, flows in a copious stream into the crater, nearly on a level with the lowest state of the tide.

Another singularity which this island presents is in its mosses and grasses, which are all European. To these may be added the Sonchus oleracea, or sow thistle; the Apium petrosilenum, or parsley; and the common Lycopodium, or club-moss, which grows luxuriantly on the bleak heaths of North Britain, and seems to thrive equally well on the boggy soil of Amsterdam, heated, at the depth of a foot below the surface, to the temperature of 186° of Fahrenheit's scale.

The crater abounds with an excellent perch of a reddish colour, which is easily caught with the hook, and may then be dropped at once into one of the hot springs on the margin, and boiled. So caught and dressed, we are told it affords an excellent repast. The bar across the mouth of the crater is represented as one mass of cray-fish; and in the sea, outside the bar, the vast multitudes of whales, grampuses, porpoises, seals, and sea-lions, render it dangerous for boats to pass. It was the same in Vlaming's time, who "found the sea so full of seals and sea-lions that they were obliged to kill them to get a passage through. When they steered from the shore there was also an astonishing number of fish."

XI. From the volcanic island of Amsterdam, we must now take a glance of those innumerable low islands and reefs of rocks which are scattered over the greater part of the Australasian Sea to the eastward and northward of New Holland, and which are produced by an operation of nature different from that which lifted up Amsterdam; less violent, indeed, in its character, than that by which the latter emerged from the abyss, but affording a basis equally, if not more, solid and enduring. A volcanic island not unfrequently breaks down its supporters, and sinks back into the cavity out of which it was hurled, as was recently the case with the Sabrina Island, near St Michael's; but the island of coral, created by slow and imperceptible degrees, hardens with time, and becomes one solid mass from the summit to the base.

Throughout the whole range of the Polynesian and Australasian islands, there is scarcely a league of sea unoccupied by a coral reef or a coral island: the former springing up to the surface of the water perpendicularly from the fathomless bottom, "deeper than did ever plummet sound;" and the latter in various stages, from the low and naked rock with the water rippling over it, to an uninterrupted forest of tall trees. "I have seen," says Dabrymple, in his Inquiry into the Formation of Islands, "the coral banks in all their stages: some in deep water, others with a few rocks appearing above the surface: some just formed into islands, without the least appearance of vegetation; others with a few weeds on the highest part; and, lastly, such as are covered with large timber, with a bottomless sea at a pistol-shot distance." In fact, as soon as the edge of the reef is high enough to lay hold of the floating sea-wreck, or for a bird to perch upon, the island may be said to commence. The dung of birds, feathers, wreck of all kinds, cocoa-nuts floating with the young plant out of the shell, are the first rudiments of the new island. With islands thus formed, and others in the several stages of their progressive formation, Torres Strait is nearly choked up; and Captain Flinders mentions one island in it covered with the Casuarina, and a variety of other trees and shrubs, which give food to parakeets, pigeons, and other birds, to whose ancestors it is probable the island was originally indebted for this vegetation. The time will come—however indefinite that period may appear—when New Holland, and New Guinea, and all the little groups of islets and reefs to the N. and N.W. of them, will either be united into one great continent, or be separated only by deep channels, in which the strength and velocity of the tide may obstruct the silent and unobserved agency of these insignificant but most efficacious labourers.

A barrier reef of coral runs along the whole of the eastern coast of New Holland, "among which," says Captain Flinders, "we sought 14 days, and sailed more than 500 miles, before a passage could be found through them out to sea." Captain Flinders paid some attention to the structure of these reefs, on one of which he suffered shipwreck. "Having landed on one of these creations," he says, "we had wheat-sheaves, mushrooms, stags' horns, cabbage leaves, and a variety of other forms, glowing under water, with vivid tints of every shade betwixt green, purple, brown, and white." "It seems to me," he adds, "that when the animalcules which form the coral at the bottom of the ocean cease to live, their structures adhere to each other, by virtue either of the glutinous remains within, or of some property in salt water; and the interstices being gradually filled up with sand and broken pieces of coral washed by the sea, which also adhere, a mass of rock is at length formed. Future races of these animalcules erect their habitation upon the rising bank, and die in their turn, to increase, but principally to elevate, this monument of their wonderful labours." He says that they not only work perpendicularly, but that this barrier wall is the highest part, and generally exposed to the open sea, and that the infant colonies find shelter within it. A bank is thus gradually formed, which is not long in being visited by sea birds; saline plants take root upon it, and a soil begins to be formed; a cocoa-nut, or the drupe of a pandanus, is thrown on shore; land birds visit it, and deposit the seeds of shrubs and trees; every high tide and gale of wind adds something to the bank; the form of an island is gradually assumed; and last of all comes man to take possession. If we should imagine one of these immense coral reefs to be lifted up by a submarine volcano, it would be converted into an insular or continental ridge of hills of limestone.

It is worthy of remark, that, in this great division of the globe, fully equal in extent to that of Europe, there is no quadruped larger than the kangaroo; that there is none of a ferocious character, and, in many of the islands, none of any description. Man only in Australasia is an animal of prey; and, more ferocious than the lynx, the leopard, or the hyena, he devours his own species, in countries too where nature has done everything for his comfort and subsistence.

The time is not far distant, however, when these inferior races must disappear before those exterminating influences to which we have already alluded, or their characteristic peculiarities be absorbed in the overwhelming tide of civilization. The same depopulating effects to which we have pointed in speaking of the aboriginal tribes in Australia and Tasmania, may be traced among the Maori race in New Zealand—a race which, fifteen years ago, was calculated at its lowest estimate to number 80,000 individuals. In vain do they strive to multiply their children, and to perpetuate their families by the most tender care. During our travels through the Kaipara country on the North Island, we observed chiefs with five, and as many as ten, wives, and only three or four sons and daughters; and we have heard Tirarau, chief of the Wairoa, lament in the following strain:—"I see the white man with one wife have ten children, while I with ten wives have only one child." It was melancholy to hear such remarks from these intelligent people, who are conscious of the decrease of their race; and that their lands will become peopled by the "Pakehas" when they are no more, as they are aware is the case throughout America. At a moderate calculation they are fewer by 12,000 now than they were fifteen years ago, when colonization was begun to any extent by Anglo-Saxon settlers, who have ever since kept up an indiscriminate intercourse with the Maori women. It is also observed, that the number of deaths is greatly above that of the births, which are chiefly a half-caste progeny. See NEW ZEALAND.

(J. B.—W.) (S. M.)