the history of discovery and colonization in the great unknown Southern land. We have seen it visited by the Spanish, Dutch, and French, without an effort on the part of either at colonization. We have pointed to the voyages of Dampier, Cook, Flinders, King, and Stokes, under the authority of Great Britain, by whose efforts the coast has been gradually brought to light with great distinctness, although not a year passes without some farther additions to the perfectness of the surveys thus made, and even to the discoveries of river-mouths of importance; as, for instance, the discovery lately made, or certainly about to be made, of the mouth of the river Boyne, which discharges its waters on the eastern coast not far from the Tropic of Capricorn, probably into Harvey Bay. We have briefly reported the passage of the Blue Mountains, the expeditions of Oxley, Sturt, Hume, Mitchell, Eyre, Sturt again, and Leichhardt, which have made known to us the great valley of the Murray, the Victoria of Central Australia, the coast of the northeast, the region of the Austral Alps and Pyrenees, the slope towards Bass's Straits, Lake Torrens, and the deserts which lie between the gulfs of Spencer and Carpentaria. We have mentioned, for we could do no more, the problems as to convict labor, emigration, the price of land, and the dispersion of the settlers, which have arisen from time to time into prominence in the progress of New South Wales more especially, but which in some degree have been sources of disquiet in Western and Southern Australia as well. We have attempted to convey to our readers an idea of the fitness of this New Holland world more particularly for grazing; of the advantages for tillage that distinguish the southern district of New South Wales, "Australia the Blessed "; of the metallic wealth of the "Wakefield" colony; of the comparative barrenness, as far as we yet know, of the western and northwestern shores; and of the regular progress that is taking place in the region that reaches from Swan River to King George's Sound, and which is nearly equal in size to the State of Georgia, and about as far from the equa

tor.

Two subjects alone remain for us to speak of, the geological and meteorological views which have been proposed to account for the peculiar soil and condition of Central Aus

tralia, and the character and situation of the natives. Of both we must speak very briefly.

A favorite theory for explaining the flatness, the barrenness, and the salt pools of the vast regions which stretch from the western slope of the Blue Mountains and Australian Alps to the eastern declivities of the Stanley range of hills beyond the river Darling, has been its recent rise from the ocean. According to this view, the fertile lands along the eastern coast were not long since (in a geological estimate of long and short) bounded on the west by a bay or gulf, which stretched from the neighborhood of Adelaide, along the course of the Darling, to the region beyond the marshes of the Lachlan and Macquarie, where those rivers make a descent of 1,800 feet in from one to two hundred miles. As the whole continent rose above the ocean level, the bottom of this vast gulf became that plain which is now alternately flooded and scorched to dust. Hence its barren character, for as yet the influence of the ocean salt is felt, and only salsolaceous plants grow plentifully; and time has not yet brought from the uplands that vegetable mould which is essential to fertility; indeed, the uplands have not much to spare, for the evergreens that cover them afford but a short supply of leaves, and those fall so gradually as to lose most of their enriching virtues from the absence of a proper fermentation. When, in addition to this ocean origin of the interior, its flatness, the imperfect formation of its river channels, the absence of vegetable mould, and the frequent droughts, we consider the denuding effects of the floods which from time to time sweep portions of it, its want of fertility is explained. But, according to this view, nature by these very floods is preparing these plains for the habitation of man; she is deepening the river channels, is manuring the soil, is changing the worthless ocean bed into a land fit for cultivation. Such, very briefly stated, is the view (as we understand it,) of Sturt, of Mitchell, of M'Culloch and others.*

Another theory, and one to our mind far better supported by facts, is ably stated, though in a somewhat scattered form, by Strzelecki, who has done more to make New South Wales

* See M'Culloch's Gazetteer, art. "Australia," and references there given,

and Tasmania scientifically intelligible than all other inquirers. He has done so much, indeed, that before speaking of his views in relation to the subject before us, we must say a few words of the Count himself. He is a Pole, exiled, or self-exiled probably, because he would not renounce that nationality which he estimates so well. For twelve years previous to 1845, he was engaged in wandering through North and South America, the West Indies, the South Sea islands, New Zealand, New South Wales, Van Diemen's land, the islands near Java, China, Hindostan, Egypt, and Europe. That he did not fail to use his eyes, his ears, and his mind, during these varied travels, is amply proved by the work before us, and by the extracts from his unpublished journals, which he here and there gives by way of illustration. If these are fair specimens of his manuscripts, no traveller since Humboldt (if "since" is applicable to that wonderful man) so well deserves to have his writings published and illustrated at large.†

Strzelecki's view of New South Wales, - for of New Holland as a whole no sane man would say any thing in our present state of ignorance, is this: the geology, or rather the mineral character, of the rocks which prevail determines the vegetation, the temperature, the moisture, and the fertility of that strange land, whose lightnings even are so often thunderless.

The rocks of New South Wales are excessively silicious; the proportion of those containing more than sixty per cent. of silex to those containing less being as four to one; and so far as the country west of the Blue Mountains is known, this flinty formation almost universally prevails. Now the soil formed by the disintegration of such rocks is very unfavorable to vegetation, and especially to that kind of vegetation which causes the earth readily to imbibe moisture from the air, and slowly to part with it; in other words, such a soil, independent of rains, will always be dry, and rains will

* See the note from his Manuscript Journal, page 380.

† It was Strzelecki who discovered "Gipp's land," back of Cape Howe, a very valuable region, — to him almost a rat-trap, (page 460,) as he had to work four weeks, going three miles a day, and leaving every thing, in order to get out!

Strzelecki, 190; McCulloch's Gazetteer, 215, (Am. Ed.) Lightning without thunder has been witnessed on the Atlantic; men have been killed on board ship, when no other sound accompanied the electricity than a hiss. This we have from the commander of the ship, a man of the highest character.

always run through it, or be shed by its surface. In addition to this, it is found, that the silicious soils absorb solar heat, but do not retain it after the sun has passed away, a circumstance uniformly connected with non-productiveness. The amount of rain which falls in Australia was, for the years 1838 to 1842, both included, more than double that which falls in London; while the evaporation was not one third more. It is not, therefore, a dry climate. Neither is it a hot one, upon the whole; an average of three years does not show a summer heat above 90°, or an annual mean above 68°. The peculiar character of New South Wales, in short, is not to be traced to its climate, or its rains, although they fall unequally and often in torrents, so much as to its peculiar soil growing out of the minerals which compose the mass of its rocks. If this view be correct, nature must not be left to turn the Macquarie into a Nile, but wise irrigation and wise planting must cure what nature cannot; and, after all, the time may never come when the valley of the Darling and its tributaries can be other than a thinly peopled, pastoral land.*

In reference to the aborigines of Australia, who are decreasing with truly frightful rapidity, Strzelecki states, as a fact based upon very extensive and varied observation among the natives of America, the South Sea islanders, and Australians, that, by a law of nature, the aboriginal female, after having once borne children to a European, is barren to men of her own race. In addition to this cause of decrease, the prevalence among the New Hollanders of the most poisonous. complaints, as attested by Sturt and others, may be mentioned. Nor is there in the Australian nearly as much as in the Iroquois, the Delaware, the Huron, and the Black-foot, to make us regret this God-directed, - for such it seems to be, wasting away. Civilization and Christianity seem even less adapted to him than to our own red man. The British government, and especially the colony of South Australia, have favored the natives as far as the white man in this century can be expected to favor the brown. But it is all in vain. The New Hollander is not wanting in intelligence or good feeling. He is kind, forbearing, not devoid of ingenuity,

* Strzelecki, from one end to the other. ‡ Sturt, II. 124, 126, 148.

† Page 346.

not unworthy of sympathy; but he can no more live where the Anglo-Saxon once plants his foot, than his aboriginal weeds can where the plough, and harrow, and hoe are at their mission. The negro has a permanence; he fits into the white, and in one relation or another, the two can and do live together. But the North American Indian and the Australian fill no crevice in the absorbing nature of the Caucasian; they cannot be slaves, they cannot be equals, of course they cannot be masters; and so, while might practically makes right, they die, or their race is lost by admixture with the race of their conquerors. It is not now, indeed, a question of right, but a question of fact; and before it can be made a question of right in practice, the sufferers will be gone from earth.

And here we must close. This topic of the natives, taken in connection with the aborigines of the Pacific islands and Africa, we may return to again. We might also fill another article as long, though perhaps not as tedious, as this, with sketches of Anglo-Australian life; but we prefer to turn the attention of such readers as may follow us thus far to some of the various English works, which relate to this subject, — especially to those of Landor, Sidney, Howitt, Wilkinson, and Westgarth.*

E. P. Whipple,

ART. VII. Discourses on the Christian Spirit and Life. By C. A. BARTOL, Junior Minister of the West Church, Boston: Crosby & Nichols. 1850. 12mo. pp. 344.

In spite of the common prejudice upon the subject, we maintain that theology, considered as a department of literature, is no more under the dominion of dulness than any other department. Books, viewed apart from their subjects, may be divided into two classes, and when subjected to analysis, they exhibit widely different mental processes according as they fall within one division or the other. The first class is composed of works which proceed from self-acting minds,

*Landor on Western Australia; Sidney on Botany Bay and its Backgrounds; Howitt and Westgarth on Australia Felix; Wilkinson on Australia of the South.