able place of location, which, as it affords a favourable specimen of the writer's style and manner, we hesitate not to extract, for the amusement of our readers:

A horse, with canvas bags for changes of clothes, &c. slung over behind the saddle, with a blanket under to wrap yourself up in at night, and a light cord round the horse's neck to tether him by, furnish your personal equipment while upon this quest; and if pushing into a country at a distance from settlers, a pack-horse with provisions ought to accompany you. A steady white man who is a good bush-ranger, and a black native, complete your train. The note of the bell-bird, tinkling like a dull sheep-bell, announces in our drouthy wilds the welcome presence of water (a very useful thing to know); and toward this sound you may confidently proceed.

The settlers are generally hospitably disposed, and in these jaunts you are always welcome to such fare and such accommodation as they have it in their power to give. A tinder-box, or powder-flask, conjures up a fire when you bivouac in the forest; while a few slips of bark, peeled from a tree, shelter you from the cold and wet;-and with a good fire at your feet, and a tin of hot tea before retiring to rest, you may sleep comfortably enough. Your muskets will furnish you with birds of various kinds;-and with a brace of good grayhounds you will never lack kangaroos and emus; so that your bush-fare is a true sportman's feast. You meet with some adventures probably both to astonish and alarm you, but these mostly end in your amusement. If you should hear a coach-whip crack behind, you may instinctively start aside to let the mail pass; but quickly find it is only our native coachman with his spread-out fan-tail and perked-up crest, whistling and cracking out his whiplike notes as he hops sprucely from branch to branch. Neither must you be astonished on hearing the razor-grinder ply his vocation in the very depths of our solitudes; for here he is a flying instead of a walking animal, and consequently can very readily shift his station. On seating yourself comfortably by the fire of one of our backwoodsmen, your attention may probably be arrested by a heavy foot-tread approaching the door, followed by the heavier souse of a load tossed down at the entrance; and pricking up your ear at the observation of "Good Lord! what a whapper! where did you meet with that old fellow ?" you hear a gruff grumbling voice reply," Why I had a tightish job on't wi' the ould boy; he took a good many thumps on the head before I could do for'un." Confounded at the meaning of this conversation, you bend your eyes with anxious gaze towards the door, which slowly opening, a desperate-looking ruffian, habited in a huge hairy cap and shaggy kangaroo-skin jacket, dappled thickly with blood, stalks solemnly across the floor, casting a grunting sort of recognition to each person around, and while teasing out the tobaccoleaf to charge his pipe, relates with the most cool, villanous indifference that he has been fortunate enough to kill an old man as he came along, whose hind quarters he had just brought with him to make steaks of for supper! ending his horrible recital with a significant glance at you,

while drawling out through his husky throat, "It will be a treat to the gemman, as he is a new comer!" You begin to fancy you have got into a den of cannibals, and that you are doomed to join in their horrible repast, or perhaps be broiled yourself in event of refusal! To your great relief, however, the "old man" turns out to possess the appendage of a tail, and is in fact no other than one of our old acquaintances, the kangaroos !'-vol. ii. p. 157-160.

The kangaroo is one of the principal objects of the several 'hunts,' and if there be a pond or river, he never fails betaking himself to it, as the only place in which he can successfully give battle to the dogs.

'From the great length of their hind legs and tail, they are enabled to stand on the firm bottom, while the dogs are obliged to swim, and in this way a fight between a large kangaroo and a pack of dogs affords a most amusing spectacle. The kangaroo stands gravely upright, with his fore-paws spread out before him, wheeling round and round, to ward off his assailants, and whenever one arrives within reach, he pounces his paws upon him, and sousing him suddenly under, holds him fast in this position, gazing all the while around with the most solemn simpleton sort of aspect, heedless of the kicking and sprawling of his victim, whom he quickly puts an end to, if some courageous colleague does not in good time advance to aid, and force the kangaroo to let his half-drowned antagonist bob above water again, who paddles forthwith toward shore, shaking his ears and looking most piteously, with no inclination to venture in a second time, notwithstanding all the halloos and cheerings with which you urge him.'-vol. i. pp. 314, 315.

Of this singular quadruped, peculiar, as most other living beings are, man not excepted, nor the vegetable creation neither, to New Holland and Van Dieman's Land, Mr. Cunningham mentions seven different known species or varieties; the forest kangaroo, the red kangaroo, the wallaroo, all of the largest kind : then, as next in point of size, there is the wallabee and the paddymalla; the two smallest being the kangaroo-rat and the rock kangaroo. These singular creatures have now disappeared from the neighbourhood of Sydney, but they abound in all the interior parts of the country. At Sir John Jameson's, on the Hawkesbury, is a tame one, of which our author gives the following amusing account :—

'One of the largest tame kangaroos I have seen in the country is domiciliated here, and a mischievous wag he is, creeping and snuffing cautiously towards a stranger, with such an innocently expressive countenance, that roguery could never be surmised to exist under it,-when, having obtained, as he thinks, a sufficient introduction, he claps his forepaws on your shoulders (as if to caress you), and raising himself suddenly upon his tail, administers such a well-put

push

push with his hind legs, that it is two to one but he drives you heels over head! This is all done in what he considers facetious play, with a view of giving you a hint to examine your pockets, and see what bon bons you have got for him, as he munches cakes and comfits with epicurean gout; and if the door is ajar, he will gravely take his station behind your chair at meal-time, like a lackey, giving you an admonitory kick every now and then, if you fail to help him as well as yourself.'-vol. i. p. 104.

A word or two on the original natives of New South Wales, and we have done. That these poor creatures are among the lowest, if not the very lowest, in the scale of human beings, the simple facts of their having no fixed habitation, no domestic animal of any description for food, and of their never having planted a tree or put a seed into the ground, are quite decisive. The Hottentot and the Kaffer have cattle in abundance, build for themselves comfortable huts, and scatter a few seeds of gourds and millet in the ground. The New Zealander does the same. The Eskimaux have their huts, and storehouses, in which they lay up provisions for the long, dark, and dreary winter months. The negro supports himself by agriculture; but the Australian native makes no provision for a future day: he trusts to his spear for the support of himself and his family, whether it be to procure fish or kangaroos, and when these fail he has recourse to oysters, limpets, and other shell-fish on the coast, or the bitter roots of fern and other vegetables. Such precariousness of subsistence will sufficiently account for the scanty population on the sea-coasts of this great country, and, as far as discoveries have yet gone, it is still more scanty in the interior. Yet, degraded as they are, it is agreed on all hands that these aborigines are a shrewd, intelligent race of men, capable of being instructed in mental acquirements, and in arts that require manual dexterity. It would appear, therefore, but a bad compliment to the colonists, for we see no indication of an intractable or invincible brutality on the part of these savages,—that they are found, in the thirty-eighth year,' prowling about the streets of Sydney, stark naked, or lying drunk in corners, or stopping strangers as they pass along, teasing, and begging from them money, spirits, or tobacco, and, if refused, insulting and abusing them in language more gross than the grossest Billingsgate. No doubt it happens here as everywhere else, that the poor savage, whose happiness consists in excitement, becomes an easy prey to the debasing and destructive effects of spirituous liquors and tobacco, the excessive indulgence in which leads, in the end, to the extirpation of his race; and while this state of things continues, we appre

hend

hend little improvement is to be looked for in the existing genera tion. We have heard nothing recently of the result of the experi→ ment made by Governor Macquarie, of educating the children of these people, but we believe it has failed; and the prevailing opinion among the settlers is, that they are a race of men utterly incapable of being civilized. Not so, however, thinks Mr. Dawson, the intelligent agent of the Australian Agricultural Company :-'I have heard them,' says he, 'called the most degraded of all God's creation, and that their nature will not admit of civilization; and this is, unfortunately, the language of nine out of ten people in the colony. They are, in fact, in the first stage of society, and are, in my opinion, just as susceptible of advancement by degrees as savages in the same state in other countries. I should be sorry to think that God created a race of human beings unsusceptible, in their very nature, of light or improvement. Having stamped upon them the image of his own likeness, for what end did he design them, if they are perpetually condemned to the level of brutes?'

Under this favourable impression, Mr. Dawson had assembled about a hundred of the natives at Port Stephens; and at their hands, from the moment of his landing, he received the most valuable assistance: they collected bark and built huts for the whole establishment; they carried the luggage from the boats to these huts; in a few minutes,' says Mr. Dawson, they were seen carrying boxes, bags, and other things on their heads, under the directions of different families, to their respective huts!' He describes them as generally cheerful and good-humoured, though keenly sensible of injuries; strictly faithful in the performance of duties which they have undertaken, and remarkably honest, which was shewn by the punctual return of anything lent to them or entrusted to their care. But then, it must be stated, he cautiously kept them from the knowledge of spirituous liquors. Whether he will be able to preserve them in this happy state of ignorance, when many hundred families, and as many convicts, are added to the establishment, may very much be doubtedindeed, we should say it will be impossible; and then, in spite of every exertion and kind intention on their behalf, it is to be dreaded that the result will not be unlike what Mr. Cunningham speaks of in his descriptions of the town of Sydney.

Upwards of one hundred pages of the first volume of Mr. Cunningham's book are occupied in geographical and topographical details, with notices respecting the soils and productions; but in these details we find nothing that is new; and, in fact, much of the geographical part, for want of a chart, is in a great degree unintelligible.

unintelligible. This defect, which might so easily have been obviated, is a considerable drawback on the value of the volumes, and ought to be supplied in the event, which, we think probable enough, of another edition being called for.*

It is rather surprising, that, in the thirty-eighth year,' so little progress has been made in discovery, where so extensive a field of terra incognita surrounds the settlers. In fact, a very small portion of New Holland is as yet at all known. The Dutch and French have visited certain parts of the coast, and Dampier, Cook, Flinders, and King have more minutely examined the rest, so that we have most of the bays and prominent headlands laid down with sufficient accuracy; but beyond this, with the exception of Sydney and its dependencies, not a mile of the interior is known. Discoveries, it is true, are slowly and gradually making, particularly to the northward on the eastern coast, where some harbours of no mean dimensions, and rivers of considerable magnitude have recently been found, where none had been supposed to exist, the overlapping of headlands having concealed them from the coasting navigator. Many great rivers, we have no doubt, will yet be found to exist on the northern and north-eastern coasts-were it otherwise, this immense continent would present a physical constitution in its geographical phenomena, at variance with what occurs in all other countries. Nothing could be more unsatisfactory than Mr. Oxley's account of the supposed termination of the Macquarie river, behind the Blue Mountains, in an inland sea, or overflowed marsh; and we must confess our surprize, that no enterprising person should have been found to push discoveries in that direction into the interior. Persons in the employment of government obtain large grants of land on such easy terms, that they cannot be expected to undertake expeditions which would subject them to considerable personal hardship-but if so many hundreds or thousands of acres, on a graduated scale, according to the degree of longitude reached in proceeding westerly, were held forth as the reward of discovery, we cannot help thinking that candidates would be forthcoming, to embark in expeditions which might lead to important results.

To show how fallacious is what is called a survey by running along the coast, it may be mentioned, that Captain Cook, in passing the entrance of Port Jackson, calls it 'a creek in which boats might enter and find shelter,' never once suspecting that within that narrow entrance lay the tortuous harbour of Sydney, ca

Since writing the above, we perceive that a second edition is announced, accompa nied by a chart.

pable