save that there are some things, with regard to this region, which ought to be made generally known to the English people, and the sooner the better. Moreover, a friend of ours, one of our tent residents, is going over to Launceston, Van Diemen's Land, and thus by paying 4d. in that place, I avoid the imposition of David Kelsh, our postmaster, into whose purse must drop 1s. 6d. for every letter transmitted to England. What a shame it is that these colonies should not be placed on a footing with her Majesty's other colonies!

We have been here a quarter of a year, and ought by this time to know something of Australia Felix. Whence it derived this felicitous name God knows, and Major Mitchell; but, certainly, not from the nature of the country. It is, however, deservedly called the Land of Promise, performance lying yet in speculation. The land has grown gold to those who have bought and sold it, almost, at present, its only growth. It is neither a land of rivers and springs of water, nor does it overflow with milk and honey: honey there is none, and milk is 6d. per pint. I have read in the Port Phillip papers a document of Lord John Russell's, addressed to the Emigration Board, newly formed for the colonies; wherein he points it out, as one of their duties, to divest the information they impart of all poetical colouring.

Now, this, without his Lordship's laying any charge upon me, I will, as soon as I have sufficient health and leisure, perform as a duty, gratuitously, to the public. In the meantime, I will mention a few of ours and the country's grievances. We were led to expect a most delicious climate, the thermometer seldom higher than 90° or lower than 45°. On July 3d, it was as low as 25°; there was ice an inch thick in the wash-hand basin, and noon, so sudden and intense was the change, that it was up to 85°. This, of course, was in our tent, where all skiey influences are more strongly felt. We have had, I can assure you, enough cold weather; and I attribute to these extremes of temperature an attack of dysentery, which has, in nearly a week's time, shrunk me to skin and bone.

Another of the disadvantages attending Australian emigration, is the length of time before you can purchase land and locate yourself upon it. We understood that we could have any part of the country we might fix upon surveyed, and put up by auction; but this we find, like the mildness of the climate, a fable. It is in the Sydney country, and in Van Diemen's Land ; and there, if the selector pays for the survey and does not purchase, he is repaid by the purchaser. All who come out here

must either purchase at second-hand, or wait for a government land sale. Not choosing to do the former of these alternatives he must either live like a gipsy, in a tent, or endure many exorbitant charges in a new settlement; and even then he will have to submit to some. After waiting for several months the sale day arrives, and, to his mortification, there are only town allotments to be sold, and he wants a country section. The first week that we landed there was a land sale, but there was no land that suited us. Consequently, we had to wait, after a long and wearisome voyage from England, from April the 5th to June the 10th, before we had an opportunity of purchasing. At the next land sales town allotments alone will be sold, in Melbourne, William's Town, and Geelong; and the emigrants who are now arriving, or those who could not supply themselves at the June sales, must wait, and linger and wait. Surely, they will not forget this is the Land of Promise, Australia Felix! and that it is pleasant to have something in perspective. If the land was sold in too liberal quantities at first, the government has amended that indiscretion; those who purchased have some leisure allowed them to retail their speculations out again: and thus, between the sales, men's land appetites are sharpened, and the present dribblings keep it on edge.

The soil is not generally of so rich a quality as was represented to us in England. Many who came out with us are dissatisfied; some will return as soon as they have realised their expenses out to England. Port Phillip, or rather Australia Felix, has disadvantages to contend with that the other colonies in this part of the world have not. The old colony of New South Wales, and Van Diemen's Land also, have abundance of cheap labour; and it is to maintain, in their superiority, these old colonies, that the proceeds of our Melbourne lands in great measure go. After more than £800,000 has been realised, so utterly is the place neglected, that there are no wharfs, yet there are wharf charges: no bridges, no roads, save such as are the result of individual industry and enterprise. There is a shallow and dangerous bay, in which almost every ship of any size is aground; yet there are no light-houses, no pilots. There has been time enough wherein to dispose of by auction more than £800,000 worth of the public lands, yet there has been no time to facilitate commerce, or to provide a safe entrance to the bay of Port Phillip on the part of the government. Messrs. Morris and Delanoy, two enterprising persons who were in the habit of offering their services as pilots in the bay, risked their lives, and lost them, by going down last week in a paltry little

boat, to the assistance of the Mellish, from England, which was fast aground in the bay. I knew Delanoy well; he had been at our tents, and had gone down in our boat with us from Melbourne to William's Town. Our port, had he lived, and been properly appointed, would have had a good pilot in him.

Another of our Melbourne disadvantages is, its government is at Sydney. This is its greatest calamity. Before you can arrest a person for debt, you must obtain a writ in Sydney. It monopolises all the law, and, I think, all the divinity, for the substantial stone church, which is nearly half built, has been deserted for more than two months; for this simple reason, the funds are exhausted. Thus the pleasantest eminence in Melbourne displays a grievous want of religion, or of Episcopalian spirit amongst the Melbournites.

Salaries are paid to protectors of the blacks, yet the blacks are unprotected. Here is a mounted police, well paid no doubt, and ready, on most occasions, to proceed to any place where a white man has been killed by the natives. When the police force was applied to in a case of outrage on the Werribee river, their reply to the settlers was, that they could render them no assistance. There is little protection for either person or property at the squatting stations. Whites and blacks very often kill each other. You meet with very many people who, you feel pretty certain, must, in their defence, have been compelled to shoot the natives. Some of the settlers at out-stations, when asked how they managed with the blacks, said, "Oh, we were harassed by them for some time at first; but we gave them a good talking to, and they have been quieter since." What the good talking to means, needs no comment. The natives are, most assuredly, a miserable, worthless, and treacherous race; still, after all, human beings. We gave up squatting rather than place ourselves in the disagreeable situation of killing or being killed by such hideous creatures. Whilst the police force is insufficient, and the government supine, the settlers are only safe through their number, and being well armed. More than thirty whites have been missed, besides what the blacks are known to have murdered. The papers here abound with recorded murders. The last week the Port Phillip Gazette contained an advertisement, offering a reward of 50l. for a chief called Jacka Jacka, a black whom I have seen here about. It seems he and some other natives, armed, went, and finding a hut-keeper alone, murdered him. The reward is offered by the owners of the station, not by the government!

There has been a public meeting here, and a petition sent

from it to the home government, setting forth our forlorn, ungoverned condition, and praying that we may have a governor of our own. I know not how reasonable this procedure may be thought by Lord John Russell, but were a government to be accorded to us, and were La Trobe the real governor, instead of the shadow-with this and with a more liberal and wise policy, than has hitherto been pursued towards us-then, but not till then, is there any chance of our being permanently prosperous. In the present state of things, although we have purchased a farm on the Yarra, and a part of a town allotment, yet we shall not, on this account, cry up the land as Australia Felix!!!

Áfter all, our morality is to be contaminated by a convict population. Twenty-one prisoners of the crown have been sent here from Sydney. These were intended to make some alteration in the woeful condition of our public streets; yet, by their coming, one of the loudest boasts of Australia Felix is at an end. There are convicts in the land-evil leaven in the lump.

First impressions are not generally very correct: whatever errors there were, however, in the preceding, I must rectify. Time has wrought great changes, but not the emancipation of the colony! One very minor mistake I made about the punt charge. I see in the MS. letter it was three-pence, and in the printed letter in "Tait's Magazine," it was further exaggerated, by mistake, to eight-pence; the real charge was two-pence. About David Kelsh, as postmaster, I said nothing but the truth: on one occasion he detained two of my letters, which arrived from England in February, bearing the Melbourne post-office stamp of that date, until the July following-more than seventeen weeks. Of course, such a postmaster was sure to be dismissed; and with this mention, I also dismiss him.

These letters were, on "Tait's Magazine" reaching the colony, severely commented upon; I defended myself; but do not think it necessary here to reprint either the accusation or defence; still, a few particulars I must mention. It was asserted that I was materially in error about the climate, and about the ice especially. We afterwards saw ice three-quarters of an inch thick, in a similar vessel. Ice there never is on ponds or rivers; the warmth of the water preventing it. Cold weather there is, intensely cold, principally in the winter nights. In the Australian day and night, in winter, are often concentrated the four seasons of the year; it is deep winter a little before the dawn, spring breathes about you about nine or ten o'clock in the forenoon, fierce summer scorches you in the afternoon, and the gloom of evening comes down upon you with an autumnal

feeling. Winds from the south, probably from icebergs, may generate he intense cold. That these great and sudden transitions of temperature are not so injurious to health as would be expected, is certain; owing, it may be, to the purity of the atmosphere. The change from England to Australia must be felt, more or less, by all; and the price of initiation paid. Three times did I meet the dysentery, like very giants, all attacks in the first twelve months; and, coming off victorious, I was made free of the country. From that time I loved to breathe the air of the land; nor had any man in the world more vigour of life in him, more robust health. The English atmosphere is of the earth, earthy, an exhalation; its cold is raw and damp; its heat is clogging and—a word I never heard in Australia―sultry. The Australian atmosphere is of heaven. This, after four years' experience of it, I am compelled by conscience to testify. If not a country

It is a land

"For sportive youth to stray in;

For manhood to enjoy its bloom;"

"For age to wear away in."

Of the other statements of the letters I was, by time and observation, fully assured.

As it regards climate, soil, more rivers and more rain, its immense range of pastoral country, and its maritime position, Australia Felix is infinitely the best Australian province. It is free from the summer frosts, which do so much mischief to the farmer and gardener of Van Diemen's Land; freer from convicts than that island and New South Wales; freer from sand-clouds, "brick-fielders," than Sydney. Adelaide and Sydney are three degrees hotter than Melbourne, and are more visited and parched by the curse of hot winds. In Australia Felix we can say with James Montgomery,—

"There gentler suns dispense serener light,

And milder moons imparadise the night." There are shades to the picture, plentifully to be found elsewhere.

OLD FAITH FLOUTED BY NEW EXPERIENCE.

YEARS ago Port Phillip, then in its babyhood, became the home of speculative men, who grew with its unsound growth, and strengthened with its precocious strength. Men without capital assumed airs of consequence, and seemed to have that which they