storekeepers many are Hebrew, and others Christian Jewsmost unconscionable dealers; whose charges for goods are not proportioned to the risk, but to the possibility of obtaining all they charge. If a settler is industrious, persevering, steady, and fortunate, he gets on in the world, and soon gets out of their hands; otherwise, they get by degrees all his property, stock, living and dead, into their possession. Many of the wholesale dealers in colonial knavery have realised enormous fortunes; some of them have had two or more strings to their commercial bow. They have also been innkeepers and extensive farmers; the farms and stock having fallen into their hands in the natural course of things, resulting from their vocations of storekeeping and spirit-selling. Who so well known for their wealth as those famous colonial traders, T—, of Sydney, and F—— and Wof Launceston. Men, whose lives, whose sayings and doings, were they written, would abound with racy material for the novelist; and would present to the student of human character some striking incidents in new and romantic situations. F at one time, apprehended and sent as a prisoner, as all criminals then were, to be tried at Sydney; and along with him, as the most necessary evidence of his guilt, packed in casks, the skins of the sheep which he had stolen and killed, and which had been found in his possession. He, so rich, and to be tried capitally, was rather a serious, and would have been to most a dreadful situation. To him it was a matter of other moment, food for drollery, and a well-spring of perpetual good-humour. No one could think him guilty; his pleasantry won insensibly on all his sea-faring companions. To his accusers, and to those who had the charge of his person, there was something in it incomprehensible. He must, they felt assured, have other hopes and evidence on his side of the question to adduce, of which they knew nothing; for nothing seemed to their apprehension more certain than his guilt, conviction, and death. Poor creatures, and pitiable for their simplicity! They had forgot that he was a magician, and carried with him a talisman as wonderful in its effects as the lamp of Aladdin !

When arraigned and tried at Sydney, he was acquitted; for on opening the fatal casks, the Pandora's box whence his evil genius was to issue, the skins were- -Omirabile dictu!-seal-skins! F had touched the seamen with his golden necromantic wand-the casks had opened, the sheep-skins had gone overboard, and the others had been substituted. Blessed are they who carry with them, if not a clear conscience, that patent life-preserver and deliverer in multifarious difficulties and dangers, the golden

talisman! I have heard that in the after days of his prosperity, F, when he had about him a knot of his confidential friends and associates, used to amuse them wonderfully with facetious recitations of this and his other hair-breadth 'scapes and adventures. Alas, he grew old! and when Death approached him nearly, he felt uncomfortable and restless, and removed to his country location to die more at his ease, and quietly and then back again to the town. Then some one must pray by him, for he was not altogether as he wished to be. Still human nature

would be predominant, and he is said to have declared to his ghostly comforter, that "he was no such great sinner after all!"

PRIMITIVE COLONIAL FARMING OPERATIONS.

Year after year, on myriads of colonial farms in the corn lands, the stumps of trees are left standing, to be cursed every season, and ploughed round in the customary manner. It would be a world of trouble to grub them up, so there they are left to cause infinitely more. Then what a disagreeable employment it is for the English ploughman, who has always had old cultivated fields to manifest his skill upon, to break up a new piece of land! Every few minutes he must pause, to cut through a root or to remove a stone. Often, too, he has to visit the, smith with bended and broken plough-irons. Then the Australian climate is very friendly to the wheelwright; the dryness of the sun and the atmosphere shrivelling the wood until ploughs, harrows, and dray-wheels fall to pieces. We had two pair of good wheels (one pair new) in two years. When a fresh piece of ground is ploughed it looks like coarse wicker-work, so thickly is it gossamered over with tree-roots and fibres. To rid the land of these is no small task, most of the fibres and roots being fast at one end. Years elapse before you have done with them. A great deal of corn is lost, and there are no gleaners, because the land is not rolled to break the clods, few farmers having a roller. We had that luxury; and we raked the ground, making ourselves both a roller and rakes: but when the corn was threshed it was full of bits of earth, bark of roots, and small fragments of roots. We had no barn, (there is no possibility of doing everything you wish, and at once,) so we had to thresh out the corn in the country's primitive mode. We had no granary but our cottage; so in it we had to stow our sacks of grain. There it was followed by mice, and the mice were followed by snakes, three of which deadly pests we managed to kill, one of them whilst crossing the very hearth.

How strange it sounds to the free labourer to be told, one especially just new from the old countries, that the settler has no money; that he must be paid in kind. This is general in Van Diemen's Land. If he is reaping, he must receive for his work so many bushels of wheat per acre, and as much slop clothing, tobacco, &c. at the settler's storekeeper's in the town, as his wages amount to. Still more strange it is when he has to thresh where there is no floor but the bare earth, and no roof but the bare heavens. Nineteen crops of wheat have been known to have been raised successively without manure from the same field; beaten out without any attempt to raise a barn, and the nineteen years' accumulated straw has lain in one heap where it was originally thrown, undisturbed. This is not the case universally; some of the rich Tasmanian and Australian settlers have good substantial barns, and other out-buildings, quite suitable to their houses; not a few of which are elegant, and some quite noble.

I have heard people say that they would like as well to thresh on the bare ground as in a barn, and to clean their corn with the wind as with a winnowing-machine: yes-it may suit a lot of idle convicts, who, having once been imprisoned, do not like the sight of walls, and would rather stand waiting every five minutes for a breath of wind that will but last one, instead of using their hands at a machine to raise it; but for doing the work well, and with despatch, commend me to the good old English method. One great disadvantage there is in the out-ofdoor threshing, the wind every minute or two comes in puffs, mingling the threshed and unthreshed corn together. It is true that the corn in the sun comes out much more easily, but the straw is beaten through its intense dryness into dust. Eight bushels of barley is considered a day's work in England; whilst in the colony twenty is talked of, but I think, if ever accomplished, is not well done. Still the primitive custom is slovenly and an idle one, favoured by the warm dry climate, which fosters a great deal of other idleness.

SQUATTING.

Some idea may be formed of the importance of the Squatting Interest by the fact, that from a table presented to the Legislative Council of New South Wales, it appears that at the present time, October, 1843, there are beyond the boundaries of location 879 stations, having 11,000 acres of cultivated land, a population of 8000 souls, 11,796 horses, 491,000 head of horned cattle, and one million eight hundred sheep.

An idea may also be formed of the immense loss of capital sustained by the Squatting community, when we reflect on the great depreciation in the value of all kinds of stock. A depreciation which has swallowed up all the increase, and will yet for years swallow it up.

The Squatting Interest is certainly important in wealth and its_results; but, as a system, for the full occupancy of a new and extensive country unsatisfactory, only advantageous as a temporary measure; and the sooner such uncertain and semioccupancy of the land is converted into real and full possession by purchase, the better both for the Squatter and for the permanent good of the country. A new land-sale system only can do it; the land must be sold according to its real relative value.

THE COUNTRY BETWEEN MELBOURNE AND ADELAIDE. REPORT OF MR. HAWDON.

Lieutenant Mundy, late of the 21st regiment, and I, left Melbourne at noon, on Thursday, the 11th of July, and after a drive of thirty-two miles over the beautiful open grassy downs of Port Phillip, halted for the night near Mount Macedon. Our route for nine miles was underneath the southern point of Macedon, through ranges of, as it is usually termed, the Black Forest, thickly covered with stringy-bark and other timber of great size. At the termination of this forest the country again opens into undulating downs; the soil is of good agricultural quality, and the pasturage not to be surpassed for sheep grazing. This parklike scenery continues for twenty miles, when we crossed the Campasby rivulet, a small but valuable stream which flows into the river Hume, four miles below the junction of the rivers Goulbourn and Hume. We started from the Campasby at noon, on the 14th. A few miles brought us to the pass over the Colobin, running through a deep ravine down high steep banks, where Mr. Mundy found it a difficult task to drive with any degree of safety. The country here was of granite soil, affording good sheep pasturage. Crossing over a rocky pass, called by Major Mitchell, Expedition Pass, we encamped in a small grassy valley on the southern side of the range: the distance travelled during this afternoon, twenty miles.

Monday, 15th.-Passed over some small timbered hills, through which a branch of the Yarraine streamlet runs (when flowing); the valleys well grassed. About five miles further, we

again came upon open grassy downs, on which we saw a number of emus feeding. The soil as we proceeded was of rather an inferior quality. Travelling for about ten miles, we approached a deep and broad valley, through which the course of a large creek or principal branch of the Yarraine winds. On some of the sheets of water we observed musk ducks, with heads of an unusually large size. After having dined, and changed the horses in harness, we proceeded down the valley for the distance of a mile, when, turning to the left, we went over some stony hills for four miles: the remainder of the journey continued open downs, when we again descended into a deep valley and encamped by the edge of a large sheet of water, our day's journey being twenty-eight miles.

Tuesday, 16th.-After starting, we crossed for seven miles over the same open country, when we came to a beautiful rich valley, with a sheet of water in the middle. We continued to pass over open downs, the soil not of first-rate quality, but the scenery a perfect panorama; although adapted for sheep, it is by no means fitted for extensive agricultural operations. In the evening we came to a sheep-station belonging to Mr. Bowerman, upon what I should consider to be also a branch of the Yarraine river. Mr. Allan, who lives on the station, showed us a human skull that had been found near here, with two fractures behind, apparently done with a tomahawk. I felt perfectly confident the skull had been that of a white man. Mr. Allan intends to carry it to Melbourne, when some unfortunate man's fate may be discovered. The skull was of peculiarly intelligent formation.*

The

Thursday, 18th.-We passed for seventeen miles through ranges covered with stringy bark; these are called by Major Mitchell, the Australian Pyrenees. A few miles to the west of us they appeared much higher and more difficult to cross. range was undulating, and good driving road when we passed over. Kangaroos were seen here for the first time on the journey, and on a sheet of water a few teal ducks. The remainder of our day's journey was through an open grassy gum-tree forest. After having travelled twenty-three miles, we halted for the night near a small hole of water; here we observed the bones of a horse; from its position we concluded it must have been a blood mare belonging to Mr. Allan, and killed by the notorious Dignum and his followers for provisions.

*Is it improbable that this skull may be that of Mr. Gellibrand, or of Mr. Hesse, who were lost or murdered at no great distance from this neighbourhood?