to say nothing of the relief England will feel when her paupers are thus economically provided for.

These views Mr. Wakefield gave to the world in his "Letters from Sydney," in 1829. They contained too much common sense, and Great Britain too many paupers, to fall dead upon the public ear even during the political tumults of 1830; and in that year a Society was formed to promote the scheme he had suggested. In 1831, the Government adopted the leading principles which were advocated by the Wakefield school, and Lord Ripon, Secretary for the Colonies, forbade all further grants by the Royal Governors, East and West, instructing them to sell the royal lands at auction, at a minimum price of five shillings (one dollar and a quarter) an acre. Commissioners were also appointed to attend to the subject of emigration, and every effort was made to induce the starving laborers of England, Ireland, and Scotland to betake themselves to the plains of New South Wales, and the banks of the St. Lawrence. These measures and these efforts were not in vain; the number of emigrants to Sydney increased, in eight years, from 800 yearly to 5,000; the sales of land from 20,000 acres in 1832, to 271,000 in 1835.

But the greatest achievement of the Wakefield system was the founding of the colony of South Australia, near the mouth of the Murray. No sooner was it understood that the ministry were disposed to adopt the new theory of colonization, than efforts were made to secure a grant of those lands lately visited by Sturt,* as a field where that theory could be tried with some degree of confidence; as the country was uninhabited by whites, and was sufficiently distant from New South Wales and Tasmania to prevent much trouble from stragglers. In 1831, accordingly, Lord Ripon was approached on the subject; after much trouble, a charter was obtained in 1834; and on the 28th of December, 1836, Governor Hindmarsh anchored in St. Vincent's Bay. But before we proceed to speak of South Australia, which commenced thus at the close of 1836, we have several arrearages to bring up; namely, the fourth problem stated above, as to the concentra

*The projectors of South Australia seem to have adopted Sturt's error of "seven million acres without question; see a letter from Mr. Morphett in the second annual report of the Colonization Commissioners.

tion of settlers; some items in the history of New South Wales; the progress of inland discovery; and the foundation of Western Australia on the banks of Swan River.

When the passage of the Blue Mountains opened the interior of the continent to settlers and squatters, and above all, when the experience of a few dry seasons demonstrated the need of vast pastures for their flocks and herds, it was a matter of course that the colonists began to scatter themselves to far distant stations, wherever grass and water beckoned them. This dispersion was felt to be injurious to the welfare of the community, and concentration became a recognized desideratum soon after the time of Macquarie; but how to prevent the dispersion was a question which none could answer. Wakefield's scheme, it was hoped, would do something, but could have no effect upon those who occupied lands without authority; police officers and prosecutions were out of the question; and many were almost forced by the increasing price of real estate, which was raised by the rulers from one and a quarter to three, and then to five and seven dollars an acre as the minimum,* * to seek the wilderness, and become squatters on the royal domain. Some who bear this by no means honorable or euphonious name are wealthy; some own herds of 25,000 cattle, and flocks that number 60,000 head. Thus "the Wakefield," misapplied and caricatured, led to a result the opposite of what was hoped for, dispersion instead of concentration, barbarism in place of civilized society. Nor have some other governmental measures been more wise; for example, land is sold to the settler at five dollars the acre, and not less; but if he refuses to buy, he may, if he dislikes squatting, take out a license to pasture his sheep on the vast public commons, and for this he pays a mere trifle, less than four cents an acre.†

The fourth problem, accordingly, as to the concentration of society in Australia, is, we may say, still unanswered.

Turning next to the second of our arrearages, the state of things in New South Wales from 1821 to 1836, during the rule of Brisbane, Darling, and Bourke, we have, in addi

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*In 1838 to 12 shillings; to 20 shillings in 1843; and in some localities to 30 shillings.

† See How itt, 99, 213.

tion to the greater ingress of free emigrants, the popularity, growth, and death of the "assignment" system, and the introduction of Wakefield's plan, to notice, first, the speculative spirit which, in 1825-6, played the same game with sheep and cattle in Australia, that it was playing in England with Joint Stock Companies of all sorts, and has since played with railroads and locomotives. Next, we would refer to the constant growth of that social aristocracy, which was inevitable in a community part convict and part free. Many of the emancipists became wealthy as years rolled by, but they remained as much a marked class as the free blacks of Philadelphia or Boston. Efforts were made to break down the wall of partition; governors and philanthropists tried it, but in vain. The shoemaker who had never seen the inside of a prison would no more ride in the carriage of the emancipist millionaire, than a Virginia planter would marry his slave.

una

A third point in the annals of Sydney and its dependencies is the continued power of rum. In the capital, there has been a bar-room or liquor-store of some kind to about every sixty inhabitants from 1821 till nearly the present time. To these stores the laborers from the country, ble as they say to buy land at the high rates asked, and in the large tracts (640 acres) prescribed under "the Wakefield," and so having no motive to save, - bring their earnings, two and three hundred dollars at a time, place them in the landlord's hands, and with a request to be helped till the money is gone, and then to be kicked out of doors, they gather their friends and commence an Australian spree.

And now, having hinted at the social problems which arose in the time of Macquarie, and at the partial solutions that have been given them, we return to the geographical investigations which have taken place since Sturt discovered the Murray in 1829. During his sail down that river, the Captain found, as we have stated, a stream entering from the north which he thought was the Darling; to determine how this was, and what might be the character of the country along the latter stream, Major Mitchell, surveyor-general of the Colony, was sent, in 1835, to examine the region from which the great drought of 1828 had driven the former explorers. During that year and the one succeeding, this

gentleman traced the river in question from where Sturt had left it to its junction with the Murray; he also ascertained that its valley, though by no means as fertile as that of the Nile, was yet available for pasturage in ordinary seasons; and discovered several new native grasses. But the facts revealed by Mitchell respecting the Darling were unimportant compared with his examinations of the country about the heads of the Murray, and southward to Port Phillip, a region so fertile to eyes that had dwelt on the half-desert lands farther north, that he named it Australia Felix. It is a country, he says in his report of October 24, 1836, "more extensive than Great Britain, equally rich in point of soil, and which now lies ready for the plough in many parts, as if specially prepared by the Creator for the industrious hands of Englishmen." Since that expedition, Mitchell, now Sir Thomas and Lieutenant Colonel, has attempted to find a stream which, flowing into the Gulf of Carpentaria, would open a route from Sydney to the northern coast, and avoid the difficult straits of Torres. He started upon his enterprise in November, 1845, and succeeded in finding, as he thought, the very stream he was in search of, which he named the Victoria. He did not, however, prosecute the inquiry, but returned to Sydney in January, 1847, and left his second in command, Mr. Kennedy, to follow the Victoria through its lower course. This he undertook to do, but soon found that the river, instead of continuing to run northward, changed its course and ran, growing shallower and smaller as it went southwest, toward the as yet unknown centre of the continent.* From that point Kennedy turned back, and no one thus far, we believe, has learned the fate of Mitchell's Victoria, unless Dr. Leichhardt, who, a year ago last April, had just left the neighborhood of Moreton Bay with the intention of pursuing the course of the Victoria, and then penetrating entirely across to Swan River, has been fortunate enough to do so.

After Mitchell, no late investigator deserves more praise than Dr. Leichhardt himself, and should he succeed in his present enterprise, he will place himself foremost among the Austral travellers. In his expedition of 1844-5, he suc

* Kennedy's report is in the Atheneum for June 10th, 1848, p. 580.

ceeded in going from Moreton Bay to a point on the eastern shore of Carpenter's Bay, and thence, round the head of those waters, to Port Essington. In this journey, he saw large tracts of fine land, and discovered a considerable stream, which he named after the Surveyor-General, Mitchell. Captain Stokes, also, of late years, between 1837 and 1843, has examined in detail the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and also some portion of the northern shores that King passed by; - the result of which researches has been the finding of four rivermouths, that seem to promise a fine inland country upon the banks; these are the Albert and Flinders, emptying into Carpenter's Gulf; the Adelaide, opening into Clarence Strait; and another, Victoria, which pours out its waters at the eastern extremity of the inlet, the western end of which King named Cambridge Gulf.

Less important, but not less interesting than the researches of Mitchell, Leichhardt, or Stokes, have been those of Eyre, and our friend Captain Sturt, both of whom, starting from Adelaide, have tried to penetrate the realms north of that capital. Of their travels we have not seen any full accounts, and can only say that Eyre learned the existence of a vast horse-shoe lake, which seems formerly to have communicated with Spencer Gulf, and would seem to be the very mediterranean sea to which the natives have referred from time to time. All about it, as we gather, was salt and barren. Sturt went further northward, to about the 25th parallel of latitude, and there found also salt lagoons and dry runs.

Thus stands the geographical problem to-day; as yet, no one knows any thing worth speaking of in Eastern Australia away from the sea-coast, and beyond the valley of the Murray and its tributaries, which reach, however, through some ten degrees of longitude, and thirteen degrees of latitude, from the tropic of Capricorn to the neighborhood of Cape Howe; an extent of country equal to that which lies between Pittsburgh and the Mississippi, Lake Michigan and New Orleans. On the north, west, and south, the shores alone have been visited by Europeans, if we except the neighborhood of Swan River, and thence to King George's Sound on the south. To that colony we must now, for a few moments, turn our attention.

The southwestern corner of Australia was, in all proba