the high peaks behind, and is full of fine buildings. The cathedral stands on a knoll rising above the town, the best site, and is really a very nice building. Canton is distant from Hong Kong eight hours by steamer. We passed the celebrated Bogue Forts, and up the river to Whampoa: the river swarming with boats of all kinds, up to great painted junks of 600 tons burden, especially along the fifteen miles from Whampoa to Canton. The country, too, is very pretty-fine mountainous hills, and rich plains, studded with villages, or square clusters of houses joined in rows, with narrow streets about four feet wide, with a strong gate at each end, shut at night as a defence against pirates. Every street in every town is closed by gates at night. We were reminded of England and her church towers by the constant pagodas near the villages, rising from among the trees. The only place where foreigners are permitted in Canton is in the Foreign Factory, as it is called; a block of buildings, houses, hongs, and offices, with a garden down to the river, in which stands a decent English church, shut off from the town by gates. The garden is pretty: the buildings (the Chinese confess) are the finest anywhere in China, the imperial palace not excepted. We steamed up through rows of anchored boats, forming regular streets, to opposite the Factory. Here a hong boat, gaily painted, was sent to take us on shore, where we were hospitably entertained by Mr. in the house of the firm."

The Bishop of Victoria now has a band of twenty-one clergymen assisting him in the missionary college, and in his other endeavours for the propagation of the Gospel. Both before and since the insurrection in China, he has written urgently for large additional assistance in the work which lies before him; but until lately the Society has been totally unable to respond to the appeal.

The thought of that mysterious empire, with its powerful

dynasties, antique associations, political anomalies, remote civilization, stereotyped customs, and dogmatic morality, running back into ancient days, and influencing one-third of the human race, the thought of this country, hitherto spell-bound and closed against the stranger, now of a sudden throwing open its gates to European influence and enterprise, seems as a call to Christian men to seize, without delay, the opportunity thus granted by heaven, of declaring within its limits that Gospel which it is their first duty to propagate. English and American missionaries, of our own communion, are already stationed in the consular cities of China; but, almost the only efforts to evangelize three hundred millions of heathens in the interior and the northern extremity of this large empire, are those of the Roman Catholic Church, which has a body of thirteen Bishops and 160 priests at work in the country.

"China," writes the Bishop of Victoria, "is now on the brink of a mighty change: a change which will affect one-third of the human race. May it be ours to take possession of this land in the name of Christ, and with an adequate force of missionary labourers! The general impression here prevails, among every class of thinking observers, that this movement (the insurrection) is the most important epoch in the modern history of China, and that these occurrences are but ushering in events of almost unparalleled magnitude, and on an almost unexampled scale for the political, moral, social, and religious emancipation of China. My desire and my prayer is that this crisis may not pass unimproved, and that the eye of Britain may not be averted from China; soon, perhaps, about to become her younger sister in the common family of Christendom. We turn to our own National Church, with her ample resources, her ancient seats of learning, and her numerous clergy. We appeal to the students, in our universities, to come forth to our help, and to the help of the

Lord, against the mighty. We call upon them to follow us hither, and to place themselves in readiness to go whithersoever Divine Providence shall beckon us onward; that a right direction may be given to these imperfect beginnings among the people, and that these dawnings of Christian light may shine more and more unto the perfect day."

CHAPTER XII.

WORK IN AUSTRALASIA.

AUSTRALIAN DIOCESES.-SYDNEY-GOULBOURN-NEWCASTLE-BRIS

BANE-MELBOURNE-ADELAIDE-PERTH-TASMANIA-NORFOLK

AND PITCAIRN'S ISLANDS.

SYDNEY.

THE first discovery of Australia, or New Holland, as it was formerly called, is involved in some obscurity; but, it appears certain that it was visited by Dutch mariners as early as the year 1605. This enormous island, perhaps more correctly denominated a continent, presents an area of 3,000,000 of square miles, an extent of surface very little less wide than is presented by the whole of continental Europe.

The first Englishman who is authentically recorded to have visited this country, was the celebrated Dampier, then (1688) a chief of buccaneers, but he does not appear to have claimed the territory for himself or his sovereign, and so it remained in the possession of the degraded race, of whom miserable remnants still wander over its fastnesses. In 1770, Captain Cooke entered the Pacific, and the whole of the coast was surveyed: other navigators also visited New Holland without, however, adding much to the geographical knowledge already acquired concerning it.

But no attempt was made to colonize any portion of it till 1787, when the loss of the American colonies, whither it had previously been the custom to transport convicted criminals

considered unfit to be kept at home, suggested to the Government of George III. the idea of forming somewhere in the Pacific a new penal settlement. Accordingly, on the 13th of May, 1787, the first body of convicts left the shores of England. And, thus, the very same year which saw the order of the Church first completed in our colonies, by the consecration of Bishop Inglis to the see of Nova Scotia, is distinguished also as the year in which the foundations were laid of our great Australian Empire-and laid, alas! with most grievous and guilty negligence.

For it will scarcely be believed in these days, when such great exertions are made to provide religious instruction for the emigrant and other ships which daily leave our ports-it will scarcely, we say, be credited that the ten ships conveying this living cargo of vice and misery (565 male and 192 female convicts, guarded by above 200 soldiers, in all more than 1,000 souls) were on the very point of starting upon that momentous voyage of 15,000 miles, over an unknown sea to a strange and distant shore, without a single minister of religion, who might seek, by God's grace, the recovery of some at least of those sinsick souls, or cherish the spiritual life of those who were free from crime in that great company of a thousand human beings. But at the eleventh hour a strong appeal was made to those in authority, and through the intercession of the Bishop of London one chaplain, the Rev. Richard Johnson, was appointed a few days before they sailed.

On the 26th of January, 1788, the fleet, which was under the command of Captain Phillip, first governor of the colony, entered the magnificent harbour of Port Jackson, and the British flag was hoisted in a thickly wooded plain, over which kangaroos then ran in scores, and where now the handsome city of Sydney stands.