AUSTRALASIA, In modern geography, ↑heβfth great division of the earth’s •surface. A systematic classification in geography is as necessary to enable us to form clear and comprehensive views of its objects, as it is in botany, mineralogy, geo- !°gy> or any other department of physical science, though incapable of being brought to the same degree of perfection. The rapid progress made, during the last fifty years of the past century, in the discovery of those almost innumerable islands that are scattered over the three great oceans, the Indian, the Southern, and the Pacific, peopled by various races of human beings, differing in their features, manners, dispositions, and language, forcibly demanded some such systematic arrangement, otherwise, as the

President de Brosses has observed, “the sight would be dazzled and confounded, if care were not exerted to relieve it, and fix its attention by divisions marked from distance to distance.”

It was this learned and very intelligent writer who first suggested that all the lands and islands in the Austral world should be divided into three portions, corresponding with the three great oceans, the Indian or Ethiopic, the Atlantic, and the Pacific; those in the Indian Ocean and to the south of Asia to be named Australasia; those in the two Pacifies, from the multitude of islands, Polynesia (a name first used, we believe, by De Barros); and those in the Atlantic to the south of Cape Horn and the Cape [7:4:204]. of Good Hope, Magellanica. The last, however, became unnecessary, as soon as it was ascertained that the Terra Australis incognita had no existence. Some idea may be formed of the rapid progress made in maritime geography, even within the last fifty years, and of its imperfection previous to that period, when it is stated, that, in the year 1770, an enlightened and industrious ŉydrographer, the late Alexander Dalrymple, asserted that the great southern continent was not then a matter of discovery·, for that it had been seen on the west by Tasman in 1642, and on the east by Juan Fernandez above half a century before; adding, without any doubt or hesitation, that “the countries intermediate, equal in extent to all the civilized part of Asia, from Turkey to China inclusive, still remain unexplored.” Nay, more, “that it extended from 30° south to the pole, and that the number of its inhabitants was probably more than fifty millions.” All these facts he discovers in the Spanish and Portuguese voyages in the South Pacific Ocean. (Historical Collections.)

The two divisions of Australasia and Polynesia will be found to comprehend, with sufficient convenience, all those islands that cannot with propriety be referred to any of the four continents of the globe. Nor is there any difficulty in drawing a line of separation between these two divisions; though it is not quite so easy to mark the distinct boundary between the Australasian and the Asiatic islands, where they melt into each other, about the equator, at the north-west extremity of Papua or New Guinea. In a geographical view, the small islands of Waygiou, Salwatty, Batanta, Mysol, and Timorlaut, ought strictly to belong to Australasia; but, peopled as they are by Asiatics of the Malay tribe, and under the influence of the Dutch settlements, it may perhaps be more proper, in a moral and political point of view, to consider them as belonging to the Asiatic islands; more particularly as we shall then have all the Australasian population, with very few exceptions, marked with more or less of the African or Negro character. But, in fact, all geographical divisions arc and must be to a certain degree arbitrary.

If, then, we take the equator as the northern boundary from the 132° to the 175° of cast longitude; continue a line on the latter meridian to the 55th parallel (bending a little to take in New Zealand) for the eastern; another line along the same parallel to the 65th degree of east longitude for the southern; and a slanting line to the point on the equator from which we set out, so as to include Kerguelen’s Land, and pass on the eastern sides of Timorlaut, Ceram, Mysol, and Salwatty, for the western boundary; those lines will circumscribe the whole of the Australasian islands. We have included the uninhabited islands of Kerguelen and St Paul and Amsterdam, because they cannot properly be considered as African islands, though arranged, we believe, under that division by Pinkerton: they are of less importance to geography than to geology.

Australasia, then, may be subdivided into the following groups and islands :—

1. Notasia, or New Holland.

2. Van Diemen’s Land.

3. Papua, or New Guinea.

4. New Britain, New Ireland, and neighbouring islands.

5. Solomon’s Islands.

6. New Hebrides.

7. New Caledonia.

8. New Zealand, and Isles to the southward.

9. Kerguelen’s Islands, or Islands of Desolation.

10. St Paul and Amsterdam.

11. Numerous reefs and islets of coral scattered over the Australasian Sea.

I. The first attempt to explore this island, which, from its size, may be considered as the fifth continent of the earth, is unquestionably due to the Dutch; for although some part of the northern coast may have been seen by the early navigators of Spain and Portugal, there is no direct testimony in favour of such a discovery. There are two charts in the British Museum which belonged to the Hαrleian Collection ; one French, without date, which was probably the original; and the other English, apparently a copy: the latter is dedicated to the king of England, and bears date 1542. In both of these charts is marked down an extensive tract of country to the southward of the Moluccas, under the name of Great Java, agreeing more nearly with the position and extent of New Holland than any other, land. The form given to the north-west part of the coast in these charts approaches nearest to the truth; a part, indeed, which may have been seen by those early navigators who visited the Moluccas long before the date of the English chart. It is a singular coincidence in geographical nomenclature, that, on the east coast of the French chart, something like a Botany Bay should be designated under the name of Coste des Herbaiges. The Abbé Prevost, in the Histoire Générale des Voyages, and the President de Brosses, in his Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes, are not very happy in advancing a claim in favour of Paulovier de Gonneville, a French captain, to the discovery of this Terra Australis in 1504. It was the coast of Madagascar upon which Gonneville was driven, as is evident by their own accounts.

The best and most authentic abstract of the Dutch discoveries on the coasts of New Holland is contained in the instructions given by the governor-general of Batavia to Commodore Abel Janzen Tasman, and published by Mr Dalrymple in his Collection concerning Papua. From this document it appears that the Dutch government of Bantam in 1605 dispatched the Duyfhen yacht to explore the islands of New Guinea. Returning to the southward along the islands on the northern side of Torres Strait, she came to that part of the Great South Land which is now called Cape York; but all these lands were then thought to be connected, and to form the southern coast of New Guinea. “Thus,” says Captain Flinders, “without being conscious of it, the commander of the Duyfhen made the first authenticated discovery of any part of the Great South Land, about the month of March 1606.” About the same place, and in the same year, Torres, a Spanish navigator, being second in command to Fernandez de Quiros, saw the Terra Australis, but had as little knowledge of the nature of his discovery as the commander of the Duyfhen. He passed the strait, however, which divides this Terra Australis from New Guinea, whose existence was not generally known till 1770, when it was re-discovered and passed by our great circumnavigator Captain Cook. Of this, and his other discoveries, Torres addressed an account to the king of Spain, and, as it afterwards appeared, had taken the precaution to lodge a copy of it in the archives of Manilla; for, when that city was surrendered to the British forces in 1762, Mr Dalrymple snatched from oblivion this interesting document of early discovery, and, as a just tribute to the enterprising Spanish navigator, he gave to this passage the name of Torres Strait, by which it is now universally known.

In 1617 the Dutch sent a second expedition, but “with little success the journals of which were lost. In 1623, the yachts Pera and Arnheim were dispatched from Amboyna, under the command of Jan Carstens, who, with eight of the Arnheim’s crew, was treacherously murdered by the natives of New Guinea; but the vessels prosecuted the voyage, and discovered the great islands Arnheim and the Spult. The Arnheim returned to Amboyna; the Pera persisted, and ran along the west coast of New [7:4:205]Guinea, as they thought, but in reality New Holland, to Cape Keer-veer or Turn-again, and from thence explored the coast farther southward, as far as 17°, to Staten River.

1 In this discovery were found everywhere shallow water and barren coasts, islands altogether thinly peopled by divers cruel, poor, and brutal nations; and of very little use to the (Dutch East India) Company.”

The next expedition sent by the Dutch was from Banda in the year 1636, when Gerrit Tomaz Pool proceeded with the yachts Klein Amsterdam and Wesel, and nearly at the same place, on the coast of New Guinea, met the same fate which had befallen Carstens; but the supercargo, Pieterson, continued the voyage, and discovered the coast of Arnheim, or Van Diemen’s Land, in 11° S., and sailed along the shore 120 miles, but without seeing any inhabitants.

Abel Jansen Tasman sailed on a second voyage of discovery from Batavia in 1644; but no account of this voyage was ever made public, nor is it known to exist. No chart bearing his name is now known, but there is little doubt that the north-west coast of New Holland was first explored by him; and it is singular enough that Dampier should say he had Tasman’s chart of it. Tasman is also supposed to have sailed round the Gulf of Carpentaria; an opinion which Captain Flinders considers to be strengthened, from the names of Tasman, of the governor-general, and of two of the council, who signed his instructions, being applied to places at the head of the gulf, as well as that of Maria, the governor’s daughter, to whom Tasman is said to have been attached. Tasman had sailed, on a former voyage, from Batavia in 1642, for the Mauritius; whence steering south and, eastward upon discovery, he fell in with land, to which he gave the name of Anthony Van Diemens Land, in honour of the governor-general, “our master,” he adds, “who sent us out to make discoveries.”

The last voyage undertaken by the Dutch for the discovery of Terra Australis was in 1705, when three Dutch vessels were sent from Timor, “with orders to explore the north coast of New Holland better than it had been done before.” The account, however, given by the President de Brosses is so vague and imperfect that very little satisfactory information is to be obtained from it. It is on the west coast that the Dutch appear to have been most successful. In Tasman’s instructions it is stated, that “in the years 1616, 1618, 1619, and 1622, the west coast of this great unknown southland, from 35° to 22° south latitude, was discovered by outward-bound ships, and among them, by the ship Endragt? Dirk Hartog commanded this ship, and seems to have made the coast in latitude about 26° 30' S., and to have sailed northward along it to about 23°, giving the name of Landt van Endragt to the coast so discovered; and that of Dirk Hartog’s Road (called afterwards Shark’s Bay by Dampier) to an inlet on the coast a little to the southward of 25°. A plate of tin was found in 1697, and again seen by Baudin in 1801, on one of the islands which forms the roadstead, bearing an inscription that the ship Endragt of Amsterdam arrived there on the 25th October 1616. After this several outward-bound ships fell in by accident with different parts of this coast.

The.Dutch made little progress in any other part of the extensive coasts of New Holland. The instructions to 1asman say, “In the year 1627 the south coast of the ŋreat South Land was accidentally discovered by the ship the Guldee Zeepard, outward bound from Fatherland for the space of 1000 miles.” From the circumstance of this s up having on board Pieter Nuyts, who was sent from Batavia as ambassador to Japan, and afterwards appointed governor of Formosa, the name of Nuyts Land was given to this long range of coast.

The first English navigator who appears to have seen any part of New Holland is the celebrated William Dampier, who, in his buccaneering voyage round the world, in January 1686, touched at the north-west coast, for the purposes of careening his vessel and procuring refreshments. He made the land in latitude 16° 15', and ran along the shore to the north-east till he came to a bay or opening fit for the purpose. In 1699 Dampier a second time visited the north-western coast of this Terra Australis, being now legitimately employed in making discovery in his Majesty’s ship the Roebuck. Of this part of the coast little more is yet known than what has been described by Dampier,'and that little is due to the exploration of Captain King.

It was left for our celebrated navigator Captain Cook to complete the grand outline of the fifth continent of the world. The reign of George III. will ever be distinguished for the liberal principles on which voyages of discovery were undertaken, and their results communicated to the world. The Endeavour was fitted out to observe, at Ta-heité, the transit of Venus over the sun’s disk; on her return, in 1770, Captain, then Lieutenant Cook, explored the whole east coast of the Terra Australis Incognita, from Cape Howe to Cape York, not minutely entering into the details of every part, which would have been impossible, but laying down a correct general outline. “He reaped,” says Captain Flinders, “the harvest of discovery; but the gleanings of the field remained to be gathered.” In his passage through Endeavour Strait, between Cape York and the Prince of Wales’ Islands, he not only cleared up the doubt which till then existed, of the actual separation of Terra Australis from New Guinea, but, by his accurate observations, enabled geographers to assign something like a true place to the former discoveries of the Dutch in these parts. .

In 1777 Captain Cook, in the Resolution and Discovery, visited Van Diemen’s Land; but as Captain Furneaux, in his Majesty’s ship Adventure, had preceded him four years, and Tasman and Marion had examined the coast, little was here supposed to remain for discovery, except in detail. It was long subsequent to Furneaux’s visit that Van Diemen’s Land was ascertained to be an island; a discovery which may have been retarded by that officer having given an opinion “that there is no strait between New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land, but a very deep bay.” The existence of such a strait was however suspected; but the various attempts to ascertain it, without success, by different navigators from both sides of the coast, seemed to have decided the question in the negative, when Mr Bass, surgeon of the Reliance, having observed, as he ran down the east coast in an open whale boat, that a heavy swell rolled in from the westward, was satisfied in his own mind that such a swell could proceed only from the great Southern Ocean. To ascertain whether this was the fact, was a point of great importance to the new colony on the eastern coast; and for this purpose Mr Flinders, together with Mr Bass, was sent on this service in a small decked boat. At the end of three months they returned to Port Jackson, with an interesting account of the survey of the coasts of Van Diemen’s Land, which they had completely circumnavigated, and thus confirmed the conjecture of Mr Bass, whose name the strait deservedly bears.

The French are entitled to the honour of some partial discoveries on Terra Australis. Captain Marion was dispatched in the year 1772 from the Isle of France with two ships, the Mascarin and Marquis de Castries, on a voyage of discovery, one of the objects of which was that of the supposed southern continent. He touched at Van Diemen’s Land, quarrelled with the natives, and finding no fresh water, and the weather being stormy, he set sail for [7:4:206]• New Zealand, having added very little to the prior discoveries of Tasman.

In the year 1792, Rear-Admiral D’Entrecasteaux, having been sent outwith two ships, La Recherche and L’Esperance, in search of the unfortunate La Perouse, made the south coast of New Holland, which he explored as far as the Termination Island of Vancouver; the deficiencies of whose chart he was able to supply, by the state of the weather permitting him to keep the coast closer on board than the English navigator had been able to do. Termination Island was found to be the first of a large group laid down by Nuyts, whose accuracy is praised by the admiral, he having" found “the latitude of Point Lecuwin and of the coast of Nuyt’s Land laid down with an exactness surprising for the remote period in which they had been discovered.” This liberal acknowledgment did not, however, prevent him from giving to the group of islands, which he only saw, but did not survey, the name of Archipel dc la Recherche. But the most important discovery of D’Entrecasteaux was an inlet on the south coast of Van Diemen’s Land, which was found to be the entrance into a fine navigable channel, running more than thirty miles to the northward, and there communicating with Storm Bay; containing a series of excellent harbours, or rather one continued harbour the whole way, from beginning to end. “The charts,” says Captain Flinders, “of the bays, ports, and arms of the sea, at the south-east end of Van Diemen’s Land, constructed, in this expedition, by Messieurs Beau-temps, Beaupre, and assistants, appear to combine scientific accuracy and minuteness of detail with an uncommon degree of neatness in the execution. They contain some of the finest specimens of marine surveying, perhaps, ever made in a new country.”

In 1800 Captain Baudin was sent out with two armed vessels, Le Géographe and Le Naturaliste, on a voyage of discovery nominally round the world, but actually, as appears from his instructions, to examine every part of the coasts of New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land. The first volume of the account of this voyage was published by Μ. Péron, one of the naturalists, in 1807; the second never appeared. All the old names of the capes, bays, inlets, and islands, were unblushingly changed to those of Napoleon, his family, his marshals, and members of the Institute; and to 900 leagues of the southern coast, comprehending all the discoveries of Nuyts, Vancouver, D’Entrecasteaux, Flinders, Bass, and Grant, was given the general name of Terre Napoleon, while not 50 leagues of real discovery were effected which had not been anticipated by Captain Flinders, who, after losing his ship, and proceeding homewards, was scandalously detained as a prisoner in the Isle of France, “to give time for the previous publication of the voyage of Μ. Baudin, to prepossess the world that it was to the French nation only the complete discovery and examination of the south coast of Australia was due.”

Captain Flinders, however, ultimately triumphed. After an unjust and cruel captivity of seven years, he arrived in England in 1810, and in 1814 published his discoveries in two volumes, accompanied with an atlas of charts, which may be held forth as models in maritime surveying. At this time not a single chart of coast, bay, or island, of Captain Baudin s discoveries had appeared, though shortly afterwards an atlas was published by Freycinet, the first lieutenant, differing in their form and structure very little from those of Captain blinders, but bearing the names recorded in Μ. Peron s first volume. The frontispiece to this atlas affords an instance of that almost impious adulation which Buonaparte was in the habit of receiving from his creatures. An eye, having an N within it, darts its rays through a dark cloud overshadowing a globe with the southern pole uppermost, on which is drawn the outline of New Holland, with this inscription, “Fulget et ipso?

It is to Captain Flinders that we owe the completion in detail of the survey of the coasts of New Holland, with the exception of the west and north-west coasts, which he was prevented from accomplishing by the loss of his ship. Dampier had said, in anchoring near the south end of De Witt’s Land, behind Rosemary Island, which was one of an extensive cluster, “by the tides I met with a while afterwards, I had a strong suspicion that there might be a kind of archipelago of islands, and a passage possibly to the south of New Holland and New Guinea, into the Great South Sea eastward ;” but whether it might be a channel or strait, or the mouth of a large river, he seems not to have made up his mind. Vlaming saw an opening 12 miles wide near the same place, and could find no anchorage. It has now been ascertained that there is no outlet into the great Ocean eastward, nor into the Gulf of Carpentaria, nor into Bass Strait; but the geographical problem yet remains to be solved, whether the opening in the coast behind Rosemary Island be not the mouth of a large river. Le Géographe and Le Naturaliste, under Baudin, stood along this coast, examined in a very slovenly manner some particular points, but assisted geography less than they perplexed it, by unwarrantably changing every old name for that of some of the upstarts created by the French revolution. Never, indeed, were two naval officers so ill selected for the purpose of discovery as Captains Baudin and Hamelin; but not so those in the scientific department, who, under every unfavourable and discouraging circumstance, effected more for physical science than could be expected. Except those parts therefore that were examined by Captain King, a great portion of the northern part of this coast may still be considered as terra incognita ; and it is somewhat remarkable, that the local government of New South Wales, which, we believe, has under its command several colonial vessels, should not before this have taken occasion to ascertain this point, on which so many curious and unexplained phenomena in the geography and geology of the fifth continent depend. We are now, however, in a fair way of having our knowledge of the western side of New Holland considerably enlarged by the establishment of the new colony of Swan River, under the auspices of Captain Stirling of the navy; which, though not well adapted for an agricultural, there is every reason to believe, will turn out a prosperous pastoral settlement. Towards the end of 1830 the number of settlers amounted to not less than 2000 persons, with 3000 head of sheep, 500 head of horned cattle, and above 100 horses. The country is sandy and of light soil; but the herbage is nutritive, and the cattle thrive well upon it. The climate is excellent, and water is abundant and good. A bar across the mouth of the river prevents ships from entering Melville Water, whichis extensive,and of sufficient depth forafirst-rate man of war; but a little to the southward of it there is safe and extensive anchorage in Cockburn Sound. Along the coast whales are most abundant, and a fishery has already commenced. A succession of three ranges of hills, the first at thirty miles distance from the coast, has not prevented discoveries to the eastward of them. In the valleys among these hills is abundance of wood and pasturage, and beyond the third range has been discovered a river of considerable magnitude, running to the northward through a rich valley. This river will probably be found to terminate in Shark’s Bay.

A discovery has also been made of a bay to the eastward of Cape Lecuwin, into which a river called Blackwood falls; and to the eastward of this is another inlet or estuary, into which several rivers fall; and farther to the eastward still is the station of King George’s Sound, with [7:4:207],its two harbours. All these are comprehended within, and connected with, the Swan River Settlement. Its position is highly favourable for a speedy communication with India and the Indian Islands, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Mauritius, and it bids fair to become a flourishing and important settlement. It is a remarkable fact, that in a period not far short of thirty years since the settlement of Port Jackson was first made, all beyond as many leagues was a complete terra incognita to the settlers, till not long ago, when Mr Evans, the land-surveyor, penetrated behind the hitherto impassable barrier, the Blue Mountains, to the distance of about 300 miles, in two separate journeys.

Of these journeys it may be necessary to give a brief abstract. Ón the 19th November 1813 Mr Evans left Emu Island in the Nepean, and returned on the 8th January 1814, having performed a journey of 154 miles nearly west. At the end of 48 miles he had cleared the ranges of mountains, which, he says, consist of granite, with loose flints and quartz pebbles strewed on the surface; and here, for the first time, he fell in with a small stream running to the westward. The farther he advanced the more beautiful the country became; both hill and dale were clothed with fine grass, the whole appearing at a little distance as if laid out into fields divided by hedgerows. Through every valley meandered trickling streams of fine water, afl falling down towards the Fish River, so called by him from the vast abundance of fine fish resembling trout, which his party caught with ease whenever they had occasion for them. Many of the hills were capped with forest trees, chiefly of the Eucalyptus; and clumps of these, mixed with Mimosas and the Casuarina, were interspersed along the feet of the hills and in the valleys, so as to wear the appearance of a succession of gentlemen’s parks. The river, which at first consisted of a chain of pools connected by small streamlets, had assumed in the neighbourhood of Macquarrie’s Plains the character of a considerable stream, and had become unfordable, which made it necessary to construct a bridge of large trees to transport the people, the horses, and baggage. Evans says, the country was now more beautiful than he had ever seen. A fine river, running in a deep channel over a gravelly bottom, and its banks skirted with trees, excepting at the sloping points of hills round which it winded, and which were covered with a fine green sod down to the margin, intermixed with the white daisy; —all this, added to the temperate climate, put him in mind of England. Farther on, and before they reached Bathurst’s Plains, the river was increased considerably in size, by the junction of another stream, which he called Campbell’s River; and to the united streams he gave the name or Macquarrie’s River, the general direction of which appeared to be to the northward of west. Fish continued to abound of the same kind as those first caught, but of a size from eleven to fifteen pounds each. Governor Macquarrie says, these fish resemble perch, are not unlike that usually called rock-cod, and have been caught from seventeen to twenty-five pounds weight each. Large herds of emus were seen crossing the plains, and kangaroos in great abundance; but not a native human being appeared until on his return, when, near Bathurst’s Plains, two women and four children were come upon by surprise, and became so terrified that they fell down with fright. It was observed that both the, women had lost the right eye. Evans makes Bathurst s Plains near 150 miles from Emu Island; but Governor Macquarric, who subsequently visited this place, states the measured distance from Sydney town to be only 140 miles. It is represented as an eligible situation for establishing a settlement, as the land is excellent; plenty of stone and timber for building, but no limestone; abundance of water, though the river, at the time of the governor’s visit, just at the close of an unusually dry season, was reduced to a chain of pools, the intermediate channels being dried up.

In May 1815 Mr Evans was dispatched a second time, in order to follow the course of Macquarrie’s River. He proceeded about 115 miles, from whence he could see across an extensive plain, 40 or 50 miles, at the extremity of which was a range of blue mountains, separated by an opening in the north-west, through which, he had no doubt, the river flowed; and he appears to have had as little doubt that it crosses the continent, and falls into the sea somewhere in De Witt’s Land, probably through Dampier’s Opening, behind Rosemary Island. A recent discovery has proved that this opinion is not well founded. In January 1831 an expedition undertaken by Captain Sturt has pretty nearly determined this point. With a view to determine the course of the Murrambidgee River, or the outlet of its waters, this enterprising officer started a second time; and the result has been that, instead of the Macquarrie and the Lachlan, and other streams that run to the westward, falling into a great inland sea or extensive marsh, as was conjectured, their united waters constitute a large river, which, under the name of Murray, was found to turn to the southward, and empty itself into an extensive estuary, 60 miles in length by 30 or 40 in width. The river near the point where it fell into this lake or estuary was about 400 yards wide and 20 feet deep. The whole country on both banks was composed of undulating and picturesque hills, at the bases of which extended plains and valleys, within sight of many thousand acres of the richest soils.

The mouth through which the waters of the estuary communicated with the sea was in Encounter Bay, in long. 139.40. E. and lat. 35. 25. 15. S., a little to the eastward of the Gulf of St Vincent, and round the point named Cape Jervis. The river was well stocked with fish, and its banks more populous than any other part of the country that had been traversed. Some accounts state the total number seen to have amounted to not less than 4000 souls. They could scarcely be brought to believe that the discovering party were of the same genus as themselves; they placed their hands against those of the strangers, in order to ascertain if the number of fingers on each corresponded. Nothing surprised them more than the act of taking off the hat, believing, it would seem, that this superstructure of felt formed a part of the strange animal that had come into their country.

That part of the country which was passed over by Evans and Oxley was but thinly peopled. The natives who were seen resembled, in their persons and features, those of Sydney, but spoke a different language; and they were better clothed, being well covered with kangaroo skins, sewed neatly together with the sinews of emus. They wore the fur side next the skin, and the outer or flesh side was very ingeniously marked with regular ornamental devices, among which the cross appeared to predominate. They were exceedingly terrified at the sight of Mr Evans on his horse, as they took the rider and horse to be one animal, and did not recover from their fright or surprise on seeing him dismount. When a little tranquillized, and more familiar, they were found to be a good-humoured, laughing people, exhibiting none of the savage and furious spirit of the natives of Sydney, excited no doubt by the settlers. They were attended with dogs not unlike the jackal, with which they catch kangaroos. The spears they carried were heavy and clumsily made, and they could only throw them to a short distance, something like the New Zealanders.

The country beyond Bathurst was even superior to that [7:4:208]first explored. The vast herds of emus and kangaroos were truly astonishing. These animals, and the fish of the river, appeared to be the principal articles of subsistence for the natives. In one large plain, covered with kangaroos and emus, Evans discovered an immense quantity of a white substance, resembling comfits or sugarplums, which he took to be manna, but which appears to be a pure saccharine substance, an exudation probably from some particular plant. He passed whole mountains of fine blue limestone, and picked up topazes, crystals, and other pebbles, such as are met with on the coast of Bass’s Strait. He also mentions forests of pines, the trees forty feet in height without a branch. Governor Macquarrie, however, observed, that as the soil and grass-lands improved, the timber trees decreased in size. (See the different works of Dalrymple, Burney, Cook, D'Entrecasteaux, and Flinders.)

If, however, but little is yet known of the interior of New Holland, and the detail of the western coast still requires to be filled up, the grand outline of this large island, or more properly continent, has been completed, and its limits correctly ascertained. It extends in latitude from Cape York, in 10° 45' south, to Wilson’s promontory, in 39° 9' south; and in longitude from Dirk Hartog’s Island, in Shark’s Bay, in 113° east, to Point Look-out, in Glasshouse Bay, in 153° 35' east; the mean breadth from north to south being about 1200, and length from east to west 2100 geographical miles, making an area equal to about three fourths of the continent of Europe. A remarkable sameness in all the productions of the three kingdoms of nature prevails in every part of its extensive coasts, and as remarkable a difference in two of them (the animal and vegetable) from those of the rest of the world.

The natives, wherever they have been met with, are of the very lowest description of human beings. In the journal of the Duyfhen, the north coast is described as thinly “inhabited by wild, cruel, black savages, by whom some of the crew were murdered and the ship Vianen, touching on the western coast about 21° south, observed “a foul and barren shore, green fields, and very wild, black, barbarous inhabitants.” In 24° south, Polsert, who commanded the Batavia, saw four natives, whom he describes as “wild, black, and altogether naked, not covering even those parts which almost all savages conceal.” Tasman “found in Hollandia Nova, in lat. 17° 12' south, a naked black people, with curly hair, malicious and cruel, using for arms bows and arrows, hazagaeys, and kalawaeys.” Dampier describes them as being “a naked black people, with curly hair, having a piece of the rind of a tree tied like a girdle about their waists, and a handful of long grass, or three or four green boughs full of leaves, thrust under their girdle to cover their nakedness that “the two foreteeth of the upper jaw are wanting in all of them, men and women, old and young; neither have they any beards.” And he remarks, “they have no boats, canoes, or barklogs.” The south coast is so barren, and the naked hillocks of sand so continuous, that there appears to be nothing for human inhabitants to subsist upon. “It is not surprising,” says D’Entrecasteaux, “that Nuyts has given no details of this barren coast; for its aspect is so uniform, that the most fruitful imagination could find nothing to say of it.” None of our navigators, however, saw more than the coast line, which is either of rock or hillocks of sand. But where the country begins to improve towards the eastward, in the neighbourhood of Kangaroo Island, Captain Flinders found not the least vestige of inhabitants; and, from the stupidity of the kangaroos on that island, “which,” he observes, “not unfrequently appeared to consider us as seals,” he concludes there either are no natives, or that they are ignorant of every kind of embarkation. Towards the norths ern part of the eastern coast, the same navigator thinks they are somewhat superior to those near Sydney, having belts round the waist, and fillets about the head and upper part of the arm, associating in greater numbers, and dwelling in huts of a superior construction. They also catch fish with nets, which he thinks is alone a feature of distinction from those who only spear the fish, as a net requires more than one person to manage it, consumes much time in making, cannot easily be dragged about, and, in short, must occasion a sense of the advantage to be derived from mutual assistance, and suggest the necessity of a permanent residence. The native of the colony of Sydney we know pretty well to be a gloomy, solitary, unsettled being; seldom appearing, even in the town, without his spear, his throwing-stick, or his club. “His spear,” says Colonel Collins, “is his defence against enemies. It is the weapon he uses to punish aggression and revenge insult. It is even the instrument with which he corrects his wife in the last extreme; for, in their passion, or perhaps offener in a fit of jealousy, they scruple not to inflict death. It is the plaything of children, and in the hands of persons of all ages.” Turnbull says, the natives of this part of New Holland are, beyond comparison, the most barbarous on the surface of the globe, and that the influence of European settlers has had no effect in rendering them more sensible of the benefits of civilization; that every day men and women are to be seen in the streets of Sydney and Paramatta naked as in the moment of their birth; yet he contends that they are far from being stupid; that they are the greatest mimics alive; and that the oddities, dress, walk, gait, and looks of all the Europeans of any rank, from the time of Governor Philip downwards, are so exactly imitated, as to form among them a kind of historic register of their several actions and characters; and they are great proficients in the slang language of the convicts. But this seems to be the sum total of all their acquisitions from European intercourse. In other respects they remain, generally 7 speaking, the same untutored, unprotected, improvident, and comfortless savages we first found them. But why is this? Because no pains have been bestowed on their improvement; no kindness shown them to encourage that improvement. In the district under the command of Sir Edward Parry, the natives have been treated like human beings, are sensible of the advantages of civilization, and several of them have made considerable progress in reading and writing, attend the religious duties which the captain and his lady have regularly performed, and they vie with each other in being neat in their persons and clothing. They are described, however, as hideously ugly, with flat noses, wide nostrils, eyes sunk in the head, overshadowed with thick, black eyebrows; the mouth extravagantly wide, lips thick and prominent, hair black and clotted, but not woolly, the colour of the skin varying from dark bronze to jet black. Their stature is below the middle size. They are remarkably thin and ill made, their limbs small, and almost without any appearance of muscle. They live chiefly on fish, which they sometimes spear and sometimes net, the women on parts of the coast aiding to catch them with the hook and line. If a dead whale happens to be cast on shore, numbers flock to it from every part of the coast, just as the vultures smell out a dead carcass, and they feast sumptuously while any part of it remains. Those in the interior are stated to live on grubs, ants and their e gg s > kangaroos when they can catch them, fern roots, various kinds of berries, and honey. These sylvan satyrs are described as having long and lean legs and arms, owing, as is supposed, to their climbing of trees, which they ascend by notches cut into them by stone hatchets, in which [7:4:209]the great toe is placed, and by these means they ascend trees that are seventy or eighty feet in height.

To add to their natural deformity, they thrust a bone through the cartilage of the nose, and stick with gum to their hair, matted with moss, the teeth of men, sharks, or kangaroos, the tails of dogs, jaw-bones of fish, &c. and daub their faces and bodies with red and white clay, and scarify the skin in every part with sharp shells. The women and female children are generally found to want the first two joints of the little finger of the left hand; and the reason they assign is, that they would otherwise be in the way of winding the fishing-lines over the hand.

They have no fixed habitations, the climate generally allowing of their sleeping in the open air, in the crevices of rocks, or under the shelter of the bushes. Their temporary hovels consist of the bark of a tree, each hovel being just large enough to receive a single person; but to the northward, on the east coast, some were discovered a little larger, so that a family might, on an emergency, squeeze under one of them; they are, however, without furniture or conveniences of any description. They seem to have no idea of the benefits arising from social life; their largest clans extend not beyond the family circle, of each of which the eldest is called by a name synonymous with that of father. They are totally without religion, paying neither the least respect nor adoration to any object or being, real or imaginary. Hence they have nothing to prompt them to a good action, nothing to deter them from a bad one; hence murder is not considered as any heinous crime, and women think nothing of destroying, by compression, the infant in the womb, to avoid the trouble, if brought alive into the world, of carrying it about and finding it subsistence. Should a woman die with an infant at the breast, the living child is inhumanly thrown into the same hole with the mother, and covered with stones, of which the brutal father throws the first. They are savage even in love, the very first act of courtship, on the part of the husband, being that of knocking down his intended bride with a club, and dragging her away from her friends, bleeding and senseless, to the woods. The consequence is, that scarcely a female of the age of maturity is to be seen without her head full of scars, the unequivocal marks of her husband’s affection. The nearest relations are also perpetually destroying each other, either by stratagem or open combat; for, savage as they are, they have a singular custom of expiating an offence, even murder, by the criminal exposing himself to as many of the injured family as may choose to stand forth and hurl their spears at him. From the moment that he is so dreadfully mangled that he can stand no longer, or has the good fortune to parry all their shafts, a reconcilement takes place, and friendship is restored. If the criminal refuses to stand this trial, he and all his family are considered as fair game to attack and murder wherever they are met with. The English used to attend these unequal combats, and thus gave countenance to a savage practice, which not unfrequently ended in the death of the person who was thus put on his defence. (See Collins, Flinders, Turnbull, & c .)

If no very essential difference be perceptible in the moral and physical qualities of the man of New Holland and the rest of the species, except that which arises from the different circumstances under which they are placed,—if the rocks and mountains, and the earths, resemble nearly the inorganic substances that are met with m other parts of the world,—there is at least a very extraordinary and a distinct characteristic difference in both the animal and vegetable part of the creation, which makes a considerable class of subjects in both these kingdoms peculiar to New Holland. The quadrupeds hitherto discovered, with very few exceptions, are of the kangaroo or opossum tribe; having their hinder legs long out of all proportion when compared with the length of the fore legs, and a sack under the belly of the female for the reception of the young; of which family, though divided into different genera, there are at least fifty distinct species. They have rats, and dogs of the jackal kind, all exactly alike; and a little animal of the bear tribe, named womat ; and these pretty nearly complete the catalogue of four-footed animals yet known on this fifth continent. There appears, indeed, such an apparent affinity of the natural objects in New South Wales, that Dr White observes, all the quadrupeds are like opossums, all the fish like sharks; and that every part of the land, all the trees, and all the grasses, resemble one another. There is, however, an animal which resembles nothing in the creation but itself,—which, being rejected by naturalists from the classes mammalia, aves, and pisces, must, we suppose, be considered as belonging to the amphibia,— we mean the ornithorhyncus paradoxus, “a quadruped with the beak of a bird, which is contrary to known facts and received opinions.” When the head of one of these beasts was brought to the late Dr Shaw of the British Museum, he suspected it as an idle attempt to impose on his judgment, and did not hastily believe that nature had set the bill of a duck on the head of a quadruped; but so it has since proved to be the case.

The birds are no less singular than the beasts, there being black swans and white eagles, the former everywhere in such multitudes as to spoil a proverb that had held good for two thousand years; and their song, if we may credit Mr Bass, “exactly resembles the creaking of a rusty sign on a windy day.” The Maenura superba, with its scalloped tail feathers, is perhaps the most singular and beautiful of that very elegant race of birds known by the name of birds of paradise ; cockatoos, parrots, and parroquets, are innumerable, and of great variety. The mountain eagle is a magnificent creature; but the emu is perhaps the tallest and loftiest bird that exists, many of them standing full seven feet high.

The plants are no less singular than the animals. Of these Mr Brown has given a very curious and instructive account in his Geographical and Systematical Remarks, in the Appendix to Flinders’s Voyage. He collected nearly 3900 species of Australasian plants, which, with those brought to England by Sir Joseph Banks and others, supplied him with the materials for a Flora Terrce Australis, consisting of 4200 species, referable to 120 natural orders; but he remarks, that more than half the number of species belong to eleven only of those orders. Of the Eucalyptus or gum-tree, the largest yet discovered, there are not fewer than 100 different species. “The Eucalyptus globulus of Labillardière,” says Mr Brown, “and another species, peculiar to the south of Van Diemen’s Land, not unfrequently attain the height of 150 feet, with a girth near the base of from 25 to 40 feet.” Of this magnificent genus there are 50 different species within the limits of the colony of Port Jackson. Of the beautiful and elegant Melaleuca Mr Brown collected upwards of 30 species, all of which, with the exception of the two species Leucodendron and Cajaputi, appear to be confined to Terra Australis. The tribe of Stachhouseae is entirely peculiar to that country. Of the natural order of proteaceae, consisting of about 400 known species, more than 200 are natives of New Holland, of which they form one of its characteristic botanical features; the Eanksia, in particular, being one of the most striking peculiarities of the vegetable kingdom. The Casuarina, of which 13 species have been discovered, is another characteristic feature of the woods and thickets of New Holland. The most ex [7:4:210]tensive genus, however, is the leafless Acacia, of which there arc more than 100 species; and this, with the Eucalyptus, “if taken together,” says Mr Brown, “and considered with respect to the mass of vegetable matter they contain, calculated from the size as well as from the number of individuals, are perhaps nearly equal to all the other plants of that country.” The Ĉasuarina and the Eucalyptus are represented as furnishing excellent timber for ship-building, and for all the purposes of domestic furniture and agricultural implements; and the gum of the Eucalyptus is medicinal,—that of one species might be employed as pitch. Freycinct says they procured a resinous substance from the Nanthorrhea, which served them to caulk their vessels. The bark of a tree on the Hawkesbury is said to be as efficacious in tanning leather as the oak-bark; and a creeping plant (smilax) is used as a substitute for tea. Nutmegs were found by Flinders on the northern coast, but they were small, and had so little of an aromatic flavour, that Mr Brown gave the plant the specific name of insipida. Among the curious productions of the vegetable world is the Cephalotus follicularis, or pitcher plant, of which a very correct and detailed drawing is given in the Atlas to Flinders’s Voyage.

II. Having marked the progressive discovery of this fair and fertile island, until it was ascertained to be such by Tasman, Marion, Furneaux, Cook, D’Entrecasteaux, Bass, and Flinders, we shall not think it necessary to notice the minor discoveries of Bligh, Hunter, Cox, &c. but proceed to give a general outline of its dimensions, surface, and natural productions. It is situated between the parallels of 4L 0. and 43. 32. S. lat., and 144. 32. and 148. 25. E. long.; its medial length from north to south being about 160, and breadth from east to west 145 geographical miles. Its surface possesses every variety of mountain, hill, and dale,—of forests and open meadows,— of inland lakes, rivers, and inlets of the sea, forming safe and commodious harbours,—that can render a country valuable or agreeable; and it enjoys a temperate climate, which is perhaps not very different from that of England, though less subject to violent changes. In May, corresponding to our November, Labillardière observed the mountains in the interior covered with snow. The western and southern coasts are bold, steep, and rocky; the latter terminating so abruptly as to appear as if it had been broken off, and the group of islands named De Witt’s Isles, to the southward, twelve in number, formed out of the fragments. Cook found the cliffs on the eastern side composed of sandstone; but the vast buttresses that look towards the southern seas of ice are stated by Flinders to be composed of basaltic columns, appearing like so many stacks of chimneys. Labillardière found, near this southern extremity, a stratum of coal, 3⅛ feet thick and 200 fathoms long, resting on sandstone.

The soil in general is represented as more productive than that of the cast side of New Holland; and the island has the advantage of being intersected by two fine rivers, rising near the centre; the one named the Tamar, falling into Bass’s Strait on the north, and forming Port Dalrymple; the other, the Derwent, which discharges itself into the sea on the south-east extremity, spreading its waters, in the first instance, over the Great Storm Bay, which communicates with North Bay, Norfolk Bay, and Double Bay, on the east, and with D’Entrecasteaux’s Channel on the west. The Tamar in its course receives three streams,—the North Esk, the South Esk, and the Lake river; and the tide flows about 30 miles up the uver, to the point where it is joined by the two Esks. At the head of the western arm of Port Dalrymple is situated York Town, on the skirt of a beautiful, rich, and well-wooded country. There is also a town named Ho-A bart Town, which is now the capital, on the right bank of s the Derwent, about five miles inland. The country between these two towns was traversed in 1807 by Mr Grimes, who describes it to be everywhere rich and beautiful, abounding in grassy plains, marshes, and lakes, bounded on each side by hills, well clothed with wood, rising into high and rocky mountains.

The description given by D’Entrecasteaux of the channel that bears his name, and the surrounding shores, is grand and imposing, and corresponds generally with the following animated account of it from Μ. Péron, ten years afterwards. “Crowded on the surface of the soil are seen on every side those beautiful Mimosas, those superb Me-trosideros, those Correas, unknown till of late to our country, but now become the pride of our shrubberies. From the shores of the ocean to the summits of the highest mountains may be observed the mighty Eucalyptus, those giant trees of Australasian forests, many of which measure from 162 to 180 feet in height, and from 25 to 30 and even 36 feet in circumference. Banhsia of different species, the Protea, the Embothria, the Leptosperma, form an enchanting belt round the skirts of the forests. Here the Casuarina exhibits its beautiful form; there the elegant Exocarpus throws into a hundred different places its negligent branches. Everywhere spring up the most delightful thickets of Melaleuca, Thesium, Cŏnehyum, Evodia, all equally interesting, either from their graceful shape, the lovely verdure of their foliage, the singularity of their corollas, or the form of their seed-vessels.” (V(rJ∙ aux Terres Australes.)

All the navigators who have visited the southern part of Van Diemen’s Land describe the natives as a mild, affable, good-humoured, and inoffensive people; with the exception of Marion, the effect of whose fire-arms, Labillardiĕre thinks, had made them afraid of Europeans. Flinders and Bass conceived that the natives of this island were sunk still lower in the scale of human existence than those in the neighbourhood of Port Jackson, though they saw but one man, and he is described as having “a countenance more expressive of benignity and intelligence than of that ferocity or stupidity which generally characterized the other natives.” They are obviously the same people as those of New Holland, and go entirely naked, both men and women; but their language is altogether different. They have the art, too, of striking fire with two flints, which is not known to the other Australasian islanders; and it is also singular that they set no value on iron. The women refused from Cook’s people all presents, and rejected all their addresses, not so much from a sense of virtue, it was supposed, as from the fear of the men, of whom they stood in great awe. In some places were found miserable huts of twigs, and rude baskets, made of a juncus or rush; but these were all the signs that appeared of civilization. Cook, D’Entrecasteaux, and Baudin, all observed many of the largest trees with trunks hollowed out, apparently by means of fire; and as the hollow side invariably faced the east and south-east, the lee-side to the prevailing winds, it was concluded they were intended as habitations. In D’Entrecasteaux s Channel only were indications of huts made of the bark of the Eucalyptus, consisting of three rolls stitched together. (D’Entrecasteaux, Labillardière, Flinders, &c.)

HI. This great island is, after New Holland, not only the first in point of magnitude, but claims a priority in discovery over that and every other island in the Australasian Sea. In the year 1526, when the Portuguese and the Spaniards were disputing their respective claims to the Spice Islands, Don Jorge de Meneses, of the former [7:4:211]nation, had, in his passage from Malacca to the Moluccas, by extraordinary and accidental circumstances, discovered the north coast of Papua, so called, according to some, because the word signifies black, which was the colour of the natives, or curled hair, according to others. Meneses remained at a port called Versija till the change of the monsoon, and then returned to the Moluccas. The next navigator who touched at Papua was Alvarez de Saavedra, on his homeward voyage from the Moluccas in 1528, for New Spain; and from an idea that the country abounded in gold, he gave to it the name of Isla del Oro. From the resemblance of the natives to African negroes, being black, with short curly hair, the name was afterwards changed by the Spaniards to New Guinea, and not, as some have supposed, because it was thought that Guinea and Papua were situated under the same parallel of latitude; which, however, they certainly are, though one happens to be north and the other south latitude. He staid a month, and obtained provisions; but some Portuguese deserted with the only boat the ship had, and were left behind. They found their way, however, to Gilolo, and reported that Saavedra had been wrecked; but on his subsequent arrival they were tried, condemned, and executed. He is supposed to have added about 50 leagues of discovery to that of Meneses. In 1529 Saavedra sailed a second time from New Spain, and, according to Galvaom (or Galvano), followed the coast of Papua eastwards above 500 leagues.

In 1537 Gonzalvo and Alvarado were dispatched on discovery by the viceroy of Peru; but the former being killed in a mutiny, the crew chose another commander; and the first land they made was Papua. The ship was in so crazy a state that she was abandoned; the crew, only seven in number (the rest having died of hunger and fatigue), were made captives, and carried to an island called Crespos (curly-haired men), whence they were sent to the Moluccas and ransomed.

In 1545 Ynigo Ortiz de Retż, in his voyage from Tidore to New Spain, came to an archipelago of islands near the land of Papua; sailed 230 leagues along the north coast; and not knowing it had been before visited by Europeans, he called it Nueva Guinea, from the resemblance of the natives to those of the coast of Guinea.

In 1606 Torres made the east coast of New Guinea, in his way to the Moluccas, sailed westward 300 leagues, doubled the south-east point, sailed along the southern coast, saw the northern coast of New Holland, and passed the strait which now bears his name. He describes the coast of New Guinea as inhabited by a dark people, naked, except a covering round the middle, of painted cloth made of the bark of a tree. They had arms of clubs and darts ornamented with feathers. He fell in with many large islands, large ports, and large rivers. Towards the northern extremity he met with Mahommedans, who had swords and fire-arms.

In 1616 Schouten came in sight of a burning mountain on the coast of New Guinea, which he named Vulcan, and immediately after of the coast itself. The island was well inhabited, and abounded with cocoa nuts; but no anchoring ground could be found. The natives were black, with short hair; but others appeared of a more tawny colour, with canoes of a different shape. Among the islands in sight to the northward, four small ones continually smoked. On approaching the mainland, the natives, whom he calls real Papoos, came off, “a wild, strange, and ridiculous people, active as monkeys, having black curled hair, rings in their cars and noses, and necklaces of hogs’ tusks.” They had all some personal defect; one was blind, another had a great leg, a third a swelled arm; which made Schouten conclude that this part of the country was unhealthy, in which he was more confirmed by observing their houses built upon stakes eight or nine feet from the ground. At the two little islands of Moa and Insou, on the north-east coast, the friendly natives supplied them with abundance of cocoa nuts. At 28 leagues from Moa, Schouten fell in with a group of fourteen small islands covered with wood, but apparently uninhabited; but sailing to the northward, they were followed by six large canoes, the people in which were armed with javelins. Those in some canoes from another island were of a tawny complexion, had long curly hair, and appeared, by their persons and language, to be a different race from the natives of Papua: they had rings of coloured glass, yellow beads, and vessels of porcelain, which were regarded as “evidences of their having communication with the East Indies.” Schouten’s Island is the largest of this group. Tasman visited all these islands and the coast of New Guinea in 1643, and obtained vast numbers of cocoa nuts and bananas from the friendly natives of Moa and Insou. Tasman made no discoveries in this part of his voyage.

Our countryman Dampier saw the coast in 1699, but did not land: the natives came off to his ship, and he speaks in admiration of their large and picturesque proas. He discovered, however, a strait unknown before, which divides New Guinea from New Britain, and is now called after his name. Bougainville was less fortunate, when, in 1768, he touched on the coast of what he considered a separate island, and to which he gave die name of Louisiade: there is, however, some reason to believe that it is a continuation of New Guinea. D’Entrecasteaux, in 1792, passed along the northern coast of Louisiade, and through Dampier’s Strait, but left the point of its identity with or separation from New Guinea undecided.

Sonnerat published A Voyage to New Guinea, though he evidently never was there, but describes the natives and productions from what he saw and from what he could collect at the island of Gibby, to the eastward of Gillolo.

Forrest, in 1775, anchored in the Bay of Dory, on the northern extremity of New Guinea, and collected some information respecting the inhabitants from a Mahommedan Hadji, who accompanied him. Captain Cook, also, in his first voyage in 1770, made the coast in about 6° 30 ’ south latitude, a little to the northward of Cape Valscher, but did not bring his ship to anchor, on account of the hostility of the natives. A party landed near a grove of cocoa-nut trees, and not far from it found plantain and the bread-fruit tree. The breeze from the trees and shrubs is said to have been charged with a fragrance not unlike that of gum benjamin. Three Indians rushed out of the wood with a hideous shout, and ran towards the party; the foremost throwing something out of his hand which burnt like gunpowder, the other two hurling their lances at the same time. Before they reached the pinnace, from 60 to 100 had collected, all stark naked; their appearance as to stature, colour, and crisped hair, resembling that of the New Hollanders. They let off fires by four or five at a time, but for what purpose could not be imagined. These fires appeared to be discharged from a piece of stick, probably a hollow cane; and the fire and smoke exactly resembled those of a musket, but without any report. Those who were on board ship, at a distance, concluded they had fire-arms; and even those in the boat might have supposed them firing volleys, had they not been so near as to ascertain that there was no report. Torres had observed something of the same kind in about 4° south latitude on the same coast, where, he says, the inhabitants were black, but better clothed than those southward; that among the wcapons used by them were hollow bamboo sticks, which they filled with lime, and by throwing it out endeavoured to blind their enemies. This explanation, however, does [7:4:212]not account for the fire. Forrest says that the Chinese from Tidore trade with Papua under Dutch colours; perhaps, therefore, gunpowder may be one of the articles carried by them in exchange for the slaves, ambergris, sea-slugs (biche-de-mer), tortoise-shell, loories, birds of paradise, &c. which they carry back to China.

If we suppose the Louisiade of Bougainville to be connected with New Guinea, this island extends in a southeast by east direction from the Cape absurdly called Good Hope, nearly under the equator, to Cape Deliverance, in 11° 30' south, being in length about 1400, and medial breadth about 150 geographical miles. The accounts of all the navigators who have touched on the different parts of its coast describe it as a rich and magnificent country, containing, in all human probability, from its situation and appearance, the most valuable vegetable products of the Moluccas and the several Asiatic islands. Forrest found the nutmeg-tree on Manaswary Island, in the Bay of Dory; and he learned that a people in the interior, called Haraforas, cultivate the ground, and bring their produce down to the sea-coast; that they are very poor, and some of them have long hair; and that they live in trees, which they ascend by cutting notches in them. The people of New Guinea, in many parts of the coast, live in huts or cabins placed on stages which are erected on poles, commonly in the water, and probably as a protection against snakes and other venomous creatures, though Forrest seems to think against the Haraforas. On these stages they haul up their proas or canoes. These people are invariably described as being hideously ugly; their large eyes, flat noses,· thick lips, woolly hair, and black shining skin, denoting almost to a certainty their African origin and their affinity with the natives of New Holland: but the difference of language, and the want of all the useful productions on the latter, which abound on New Guinea, induced Captain Cook to conclude that there is no intercourse between the two people. The Papuans increase their natural deformity bypassing bones or pieces of stick through the cartilage of the nose, and frizzing out their curly locks like a mop, sometimes to the enormous circumference of three feet. They appear, however, to be one degree farther removed from savage life than the New Hollanders, having permanent houses, and both men and women wearing wrappers round the waist, which are among the articles brought to them by the Chinese and Malays.

The only quadrupeds that are known to exist on this large island are dogs, rats, and wild hogs; but the feathered race are of great beauty and infinite variety. New Guinea is the native country of those singular and matchless beauties, the birds of paradise, which were once thought to have no legs, but to be always on the wing, and which are known by the name of paxaros da sol, birds of the sun. They are said to migrate in large flocks, in the dry monsoon, to the islands of Arroo, and other islands to the west and north-west of New Guinea. The great crown pigeon, parrots, loories, and minas, are natives of Papua.

The whole of this great country is indented with deep bays on every side, some of which nearly intersect the island; and the coast is surrounded on every side by a multitude of small islands, all peopled with the same description of blacks, excepting those already mentioned on the north-west, near the equator, most of which are under the government of Mahommedan Malays, with whom both the Dutch and Chinese have long kept up a considerable intercourse.

IV. There can be little doubt that this extensive range of islands was partially seen by Le Maire and Schouten in 1616, who, after discovering the Groene Island and the Marquen Islands, steered along the northern coast of New Ireland, as did Tasman also in 1642. Dampier, however, first ascertained New Britain to be an island distinct from New Guinea, by passing the strait which has since borne his name. He visited Port Montague on this island, and speaks of the black natives resembling the Papuans, their dexterity in managing their canoes, their woody hills, fertile vales, and delightful rivulets. He also anchored in Slinger’s Bay, on New Ireland, which he conceived to be the same land with New Britain; but Carteret, in 1727, discovered and passed through a strait which separates them, and to which he gave the name of St George’s Channel. The Admiralty Islands of Carteret, to the north-westward of New Britain, had previously been discovered by Schouten, and named the Twenty-five Islands. New Britain was seen by Roggewein in 1722, and by Bougainville in 1768.

D’Entrecasteaux, we believe, was the last navigator who passed along the north coast of New Britain, and through St George’s Channel, which divides it from New Ireland, and from thence to the Admiralty Islands; and from his voyage, published by Rossel, together with Labillardière’s and Carteret’s, we shall extract a few gleanings.

The extent of New Britain and Ireland is not exactly known, nor have they been sufficiently explored to enable geographers to lay them down with accuracy, or even to state what number of islands the group consists of. One of considerable extent lies off the north-west end of New Ireland, which has been named New Hanover, and is itself surrounded by low woody islands. The whole group occupies a space between 2° 30' and 6° of south latitude, and 149° and 153° of east longitude, and may probably contain an area not less than 10,000 geographical miles.

Carteret, in passing through the strait, saw but few natives on the south coast of New Ireland, who showed marked signs of hostility, and were armed with lances headed with flint; they had also slings and good fishing-tackle. They were black, and had woolly hair, but their lips, he says, were not thick, nor their noses flat; their cheeks were streaked with white, and their hair and beards were covered with a white powder. Their canoes were long and narrow, and had generally outriggers; one of them measured 90 feet in length, and was formed out of a single tree. The two large islands, and the whole group, in fact, were nearly covered with wood; and thick cocoa-nut groves skirted all the low parts of the coast. Labillar dière says that New Ireland produces nutmegs; and he also mentions a new species of the Areca palm, 108 feet high, the stem consisting of hard solid timber.

The natives of the Admiralty Islands, lying to the north-west, were found by Carteret to be less black than those of New Britain and Ireland, with agreeable countenances, not unlike Europeans; their hair was curly, smeared with oil and red ochre, and their bodies and faces painted with the same material; the glans penis was covered with the shell called the bulla ovum, serving the same purpose as the wooden sheath of the Caffres in South Africa, whom, indeed, they seem to resemble as closely as the natives of New Guinea do those of the western coast of Africa. The women wear a bandage round the waist. The central island is tolerably large, and of a beautiful appearance, clothed with the most luxuriant verdure, and cultivated to the very summit· Among the groves of cocoa-nut trees are numerous habitations, and the natives have evidently attained to a higher degree of civilization than their southern neighbours; they use earthen vessels, and chew the betel leaf with chunam or lime. This central island is surrounded by nearly thirty small flat islets of coral, and reefs in the various stages of their progress towards islets.

Proceeding to the westward and to the north-west, we meet with other little clusters of islands, as the Her [7:4:213]mites, the Portland, the Echiquier (chess-board), vulgarly called Exchequer Islands, all of which consist, like the Admiralty Archipelago, of a larger central island surrounded by a chain of islets and reefs, most of them covered with beautiful verdure. The natives of these groups, as they approach the equator, gradually assume a lighter colour and longer hair, till they lose entirely the negro character, and melt into that of Malays and other Asiatic islanders. (See Schouten, Dampier, Carteret, Labillardière, &c.)

V. This archipelago of islands was one of the first discoveries of the Spaniards in Australasia, though the credit of it is given to Alonzo de Mendana, who was sent on an expedition of discovery in 1Ô67 from Callao by the viceroy of Peru. He anchored in a port on the island of Santa Ysabel, to which he gave the name of Porta de la Estrella; and he also built a brigantine to make further discoveries, in which she was particularly successful, having fallen in with no fewer than thirty-three islands, “of very fine prospect.” Many of them were of considerable size, to which they gave particular names, as Galera, Buona-vista, Florida, San German, Guadalcanar, San Christoval, Santa Catarina, and Santa Ana. Guadalcanar, however, was the most attractive, having a port which they named De la Cruz, and a river which they called Galego. Of this island Mendana took possession for the king of Spain. When the voyage was published, the name of Solomon’s Islands was given to the group, “to the end that the Spaniards, supposing them to be those isles from whence Solomon fetched gold to adorn the temple at Jerusalem, might be the more desirous to go and inhabit the same ;” but it has been said that Mendana’s advice was, that they should not be colonized, “that the English, or others, who pass the Strait of Magelhanes to go to the Moluccas, might have no succour there, but such as they get from the Indians.” The truth, however, is, that Mendana, on a second voyage for the discovery of the Solomon Islands, returned without being able to find them, which gave occasion to the remark, that “what Mendana discovered in his first voyage, he lost in his second.” He discovered, however, in this second voyage, the great island of Santa Cruz, which is situated at the south-east extremity of Solomon’s Islands, and may very fairly be considered as one of the group. This island, which has an excellent harbour, La Graciosa, was first revisited after Mendana’s discovery by Carteret, in 1767, who changed its name to that of Egmont, and made it the principal island of a group which he called Queen Charlotte’s Islands. Here Mendana died, and Quiros succeeded to the command; but the search for Solomon’s Islands was abandoned when they were not more than 40 leagues from Christoval. It is a singular fact that Solomon’s Islands, whose name was sufficient to tempt adventurers, were lost to Europeans for two centuries after their discovery, and that we know at present little, if any, more than Mendana gave to the world after his first voyage. They were revisited by Bougainville in 1768; by Μ. Surville in 1769, on a voyage from Pondicherry of mercantile speculation, and who, from a ridiculous mistake, called them the Archipelago of he Arsacides, to mark the natives as assassins; by Lieutenant Shortland of the British navy, in 1788, who chose to call them New Georgia; and frequently, since that time, by various British and French navigators ;—still the little we know of them is from Mendana.

Santa Ysabel, he says, was inhabited by people who had the complexion of mulattoes, with curly hair, and httle covering to their bodies; who worshipped serpents, toads, and such like creatures; whose food was cocoa-nuts and roots; and who, it was believed, ate human flesh, ‘ for the chief sent to the general a present of a quarter of a boy, with the band and arm.” Buónavista is twelve leagues in extent, very fertile, and well peopled, the natives living in regular villages or towns. On Florida, twenty-five leagues in circuit, the natives dyed their hair red, collected together at the sound of the conch-shells, and ate human flesh. Sesarga was well inhabited, produced plenty of yams and bread-fruit, and here the Spaniards saw hogs. In the midst of the island was a volcano continually emitting smoke. They saw bats which measured five feet between the tips of the wings. At Guadalcanar they received in barter two hens and a cock, the first fowls that had been seen. At San Christoval the natives were very numerous, and drew up to give battle to the Spaniards, their arms being darts, clubs, bows and arrows; but they were dispersed by the fire of the muskets, which killed one Indian, and wounded others. In the neighbouring village was found a quantity of cocoa-nuts and almonds, sufficient to have loaded a ship. Santa Ana was well peopled and fertile. It has a good port on the east side, where the Spaniards were attacked by the natives, who wounded three of the invaders, while a dart pierced through the target and arm of the Spanish commanding officer. The blacks had boughs on their heads, and bands round their waists. The Spaniards observed here hogs and fowls.

VI. To the south-east of Solomon’s Islands, and between the parallels of 14° 3 O' and 20° south latitude, are found a number of islands, some of very considerable magnitude, called the New Hebrides or Hebudes. They were first discovered in 1606 by Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, who, with Luis Vaez de Torres, was sent by the king of Spain from Lima with two ships and a zabra (launch) to establish a settlement at the island of Santa Cruz, and from thence to go in quest of the Tierra Austral or southern continent. This voyage has been considered, and justly so, among the most celebrated undertaken by the Spaniards .since the time of Magelhanes. In April 1606 they discovered an island, to which they gave the name of Santa Maria, from whence they saw another island to the southward,so large,” says Torres, “that we sailed for it.” On the 2d May they anchored in a bay large enough to hold a thousand ships, to which they gave the appropriate name of San Felipe y Santiago. Quiros at once determined that he had now discovered the long-sought-for southern continent, and in this conviction named it the Australia del Espiritu Santo. Two rivers fell into the bay, one the Jordan, the other the Salvador. The surrounding country was beautiful, and is thus described by the historian of the voyage: “The banks of the rivers were covered with odoriferous flowers and plants, particularly orange flowers and sweet basil, the perfumes of which were wafted to the ships by the morning and evening breezes; and at the early dawn was heard, from the neighbouring woods, the mixed melody of many different kinds of birds, some in appearance like nightingales, blackbirds, larks, and goldfinches. All the parts of the country in front of the sea were beautifully varied with fertile valleys, plains, winding rivers, and groves, which extend to the sides of the green mountains.” (Torque-mada, as quoted in Burney’s Account of Discoveries in the South Seaf

Of this terrestrial paradise, which the Spaniards re-: garded as their own, it was intended to take immediate possession. They landed in great numbers; the islanders were also numerous, became alarmed, made them presents, and signified a wish for them to return to their ships. They, however, landed from their boats, on which the chief drew a line on the ground with the end of his bow, and made signs that the Spaniards must not pass that boundary. It is said that Torres, to show his contempt [7:4:214]of the idea of being restrained by barbarians, immediately passed the line. A battle ensued, in which the chief was killed, and all the rest fled into the woods. This rash act, however, was fatal to the views of the Spaniards, who never afterwards could prevail on the islanders to have any friendly communication with them; and they left this country, after some ridiculous formalities of taking possession in the name of Philip III., and founding a city, dignified with the name of the New Jerusalem. "'·

So anxious was Quiros of “adding the Australia del Espiritu Santo to the other possessions of the Spanish monarchy,” that, after his return to Spam, he is said to have presented no less than fifty memorials to the king. One of these, which was printed at Seville, begins thus: “I, Captain Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, say, that with this I have presented to your majesty eight memorials relative to the settlement which ought to be made in Australia Incognita'' In these memorials he enumerates the many valuable productions of this supposed southern continent,—cocoa-nuts, plantains, sugar-canes, yams, batatas, oranges, limes, papas, pumpkins, almonds, nutmegs, mace, ginger, pepper in great quantities, and woods for “building any number of ships.” The animals are hogs, goats, and dogs; fowls, and a variety of useful birds; various good fish, and pearl oysters. The climate is described as so fine, with such a freshness in the air, that neither by labour, exposure to the sun, or rain, or dews, nor by intemperance, did any of the Spaniards fall sick; and among the natives many aged people were seen. They wear a covering round the middle: Torres says they are all black and naked. They are described by Quiros as corpulent and strong, cleanly, cheerful, sensible, and grateful; their houses stood on the ground, and not on poles, built of wood, and thatched. They weave nets, and make earthen vessels, have plantations inclosed with palisades, construct vessels which navigate to distant countries, and have places appropriated for burying the dead; and, he adds, as the last and decisive test of their progress in civilization, “they cut their hogs and make capons.”

This archipelago of islands, like that of Solomon, was lost to the world for a century and a half, when Bougainville revisited them in 1768, but, except landing on the Isle of Lepers, did nothing more than discover that the land was not connected, but composed of islands, which he called the Great Cyclades ; which, on being more accurately and extensively explored by Cook in 1774, underwent another change to that of New Hebrides, which they now bear in all our charts. According to the survey of our great navigator, they consist of Tierra del Espiritu Santo, the largest of the whole, St Bartholomew, Mallicolo, the Isle of Lepers, Aurora, Whitsuntide, Ambrym, Apee, Paoom, Three-hills, Sandwich, Montagu, Hinchin-brook, Shepherd’s Isles, Erromango, Tanna, Immer, Anna-tom, and Erronan. The two which are more particularly described are Mallicolo and Tanna, the natives of which differ remarkably in their persons and language; those of the latter having curly but long hair, dark but not black, and without any thing of the negro character in their features, which are regular and agreeable, their persons slender, active, and nimble. They were found to be hospitable, civil, and good-natured, but they displayed a jealousy of their visitors seeing the interior of the island, which could only be equalled in Japan or China. All the plantations were fenced, and laid out in a line; they consisted of sugar-canes, yams, plantains, bread-fruit, &c. The yams were remarkably fine, one of them weighing fifty-six pounds, every ounce of which was good; and they had pigs and poultry. The juice of the cocoa-nut and water appeared to be their only beverage. Their arms were clubs, darts, lances, and bows and arrows. Their canoes, clumsily sewed together, had outriggers, and were work-, ed by paddles and by sails. The men wore a wrapper round the loins, and the women a sort of petticot reaching to the knee.

The natives of Mallicolo are called by Captain Cook “an ape-like nation,” the most ugly, ill-proportioned people he ever met with, and different from all others, diminutive in their persons, dark coloured, with black hair, short and curly, but not so woolly as a negro’s; they had long heads, flat faces, and monkey countenances; and a belt round the waist, pulled tight across the belly, made them look not unlike overgrown pismires. The women were equally ugly; and the dress of both sexes was in other respects the same as that of Tanna, as were also the productions of the island. Their houses w ere low, and covered with palm thatch. (See Dalrymple, Burney, Cook, &c.)

VII. This large island, surrounded with coral islets and reefs, was wholly unknown till Captain Cook in 1774 fell in with the north-western extremity in steering southwest from Mallicolo, from which it is distant not more than about eighty leagues. He anchored within a small island called Balabea, and opposite to the district Balade. The great island extends between latitude 20° 5' and 22° 30', in the direction of north-west and south-east, about 250 miles long by 60 broad. The land bears a great resemblance to that of New South Wales, and many of its natural productions appeared to be the same, but the natives were different. They are represented as a strong, robust, active, well-made people, courteous and friendly, and not in the least addicted to pilfering, in which respect they differ from every other tribe of Australasia. They are nearly of the same colour as the natives of Tanna, and appeared to be a mixed race between that people and those of the Friendly Isles, or of Tanna and New Zealand, their language being a mixture of them all. Of the same disposition as the natives of the Friendly Islands, they were found to excel them in affability and honesty; and the women, like those of Tanna, were chaster than the females of the more eastern islands, not one of the ship’s company having been able to obtain the least favour from any one of them. They wear a petticot of the filaments of the plantain tree, “at least six or eight inches thick, but not one inch longer than necessary for the use designed.” They paint and puncture their bodies, and wear ear-rings, and necklaces, and bracelets, of tortoise and other shells. Both men and women have good features and agreeable countenances; and some of the men measure in height six feet four inches. Their hair is frizzled out like a mop, and is very black, coarse, and strong, but different from that of a negro. The rough mop-heads make use of “scratchers,” composed of a number of sticks of hard wood, about the thickness of knitting-needles, fastened together at one end like a sort of comb; the women have their hair cropped short. The men wear a wrapper round the loins, made of the bark of a tree. Their houses resemble bee-hives, with peaked roofs, entered by a hole just big enough to admit a man bent double. The sides are of spars and reeds, and both these and the roof well thatched with dry grass. They boil their roots and fish in earthen jars. They have nets made of plantain fibres, and the sails of their canoes are of the same material. These vessels consist of two trees fixed together by a platform. They have plantations of sugar-canes, plantains, bread-fruit, and cocoa-nut, but none of them very productive. The whole appearance of the country, indeed, is described as unable to support many inhabitants. The greater part of the visible surface consists of barren rocky mountains; and though the plains and valleys appeared to be fertile, Captain Cook was of opinion that “nature [7:4:215]has been less bountiful to it than to any other tropical island we know in this sea.”

D’Entrecasteaux passed the opposite extremity of New Caledonia in 1792, when on his search after the unfortunate La Perouse, but was prevented by a barrier reef of coral from approaching the coast; and, in the following year, he visited Balade on the north-west. The account of the inhabitants, as given by Rossel and Labillardiĕre, differs altogether from that of Cook. Instead of finding them friendly, honest, and inoffensive, they are described as the worst of cannibals, not only eating the flesh of their enemies, but feeding on little children, ferocious in their dispositions, the most audacious thieves, and the women the most shameless prostitutes. But their own account of their transactions there, the confidence with which they straggled over the country, and the readiness of the savages to serve them, by no means warrant the bad character they have thought fit to give them; and they had no more proof of their being cannibals than they had for accusing the people of Van Diemen’s Land of the same practices, because the surgeon-major mistook the bone of a kangaroo for that of a young girl. They appear to have endeavoured by signs to extort a confession to this effect from the poor savages, who, on their part, were also persuaded that the French were the real cannibals. The charge brought against the women is grounded solely on two young girls having been prevailed on by some of the crew to expose what decency requires to be concealed, in return for some pieces of cloth or iron. Labillardière thinks the inhabitants, as well as the vegetable productions, resemble those of Van Diemen’s Land. There was no want of different kinds of esculent plants, though a great scarcity prevailed from drought or other cause when they arrived. The young shoots of the Hybiseus tiliaceus, the fruit of the Cordia sebestina, the Dolichos tuberosus, Helianthus tuberosus, Arum esculentum, and Mαcrorrhizon, Hypoxis, Aleurites, figs, oranges, plantains, sugar-canes, cocoa-nuts, and the bread-fruit, all afforded them articles of food. Yet Labillardiĕre says they eat steatite, and that he saw one man devour a piece of this stone as large as his two fists. They also eat a species of spider. They had lost the hogs which Cook left them, but some half dozen of cocks and hens were seen by the French. (See Cook, Labillardiĕre, &c.)

VIII. Though these islands geographically belong to Australasia, the natives are, in their physical character and language, Polynesians. They were first discovered on the 13th December 1642, by Abel Jansen Tasman, on his voyage of discovery from the Mauritius; and, on the !8th, the Heemskirk yacht and the fly-boat Zeehaan came to anchor in a bay to which they afterwards gave the name of Moordenaar’s or Murderer’s Bay, and to the island that of Staaten Land, in honour of the states-general, and in the possibility that it might join the Staaten Land to the east of the Tierra del Fucgo. “It is a fine country,” says Tasman, “and we hope it is part of the unknown south continent.” The expedition of Hendrik Brower to Chili the following year cut off the latter Staaten Land from any continental connection, and the name of the former was then changed to that of New Zealand.

On the 19th a boat with thirteen natives came within a stone s throw of the Heemskirk. The language in which they hailed was unlike that of the Solomon’s Islands, of which Tasman had a vocabulary. Their vessel consisted of two narrow canoes, joined together by boards, on which the people sat; their paddles, about a fathom long, were pointed at the end; their clothing appeared of mats or cotton, but their breasts were naked. They were invited on board, but in vain. The ships, however, were moved nearer in shore, upon which seven double vessels came off.

A boat, dispatched from one ship to the other, had previously been attacked. Three men belonging to the Zeehaan were killed, and one mortally wounded; one of the killed was dragged into the canoes. After this, despairing of getting water or provisions, they weighed and set sail, twenty-two of the native boats following them, eleven of which were full of people. The ships fired, and the canoes returned to the shore.

.The next visitor, at the distant period of a hundred and twenty-seven years, was Captain Surville, who in 1769 put into a bay on the north-eastern extremity, and gave it the name of Lauriston Bay. In the same year Lieutenant (afterwards Captain) Cook of the Endeavour, made the land on the 6th of October, the enormous height of which became the subject of much conversation; and the general opinion was, that they had now discovered the Terra Australis Incognita. This voyage, however, and the circumnavigation of the islands of New Zealand, entirely subverted the theory of a great southern continent. In 1772 Captains Marion du Fresne and Crozet put into the Bay of Isles, where the former and some of the crew were murdered by the natives. In March 1773 Captain Cook in the Resolution, with Captain Furneaux in the Adventure, revisited New Zealand, where the latter had a whole boat’s crew with a midshipman murdered by the inhabitants. In 1776 and 1777 a thjrd visit was made to these islands by Captain Cook. In these several visits, accompanied as he was with men well versed in every branch of natural knowledge, there will be found in the Voyages of Cook and Forster every species of information that the ferocious disposition of the inhabitants made it practicable to collect.

The two great islands of New Zealand extend between latitude 34° and 48° south, longitude 181° and 194° east; that to the northward, called Eaheinomawe, is about 400 geographical miles long by 90 in medial breadth; the name of the southern island is Tavai Poenammoo, and it is about 450 geographical miles long by 95 broad; the former has a rich and fertile soil, well clothed with trees, some of them more than20feetin girth, and 90 feet high, without a branch. Some of them resembled spruce, and were “large enough for the mainmast of a 50 gun ship.” The highest hills were covered with forests, the valleys with grass and shrubbery, and the plains were well irrigated with rills of clear water. The southern island is very mountainous; one peak, resembling that of Teneriffe, was estimated by Forster, but without sufficient data, at 14,000 feet in height; it was covered with snow in the middle of January. Both as to appearance and temperature, they may be considered as the British isles of Australasia. Fahrenheit’s thermometer in February was never higher than 66°, and was not lower in June than 48°.

A great part of the western side of those islands had, however, a desolate and inhospitable appearance; exhibiting ranges of yellow sandstone, or white sand hills, with scarcely a blade of verdure. It is worthy of remark, that this extraordinary difference prevails between the two coasts of South Africa, the two coasts of New Holland, and the two coasts of Van Diemen’s Land.

The natives are stout, well limbed, and muscular, vigorous and active, excelling in manual dexterity; their countenances intelligent and expressive, of an olive complexion, but not darker than a Spaniard. In the appearance of the women there is not much feminine delicacy; but on Cook’s first visit they found them more modest and decent in their behaviour than any of the islanders they had met with. They were covered from the shoulders to the ankles with a sort of netted cloth made of the split leaves of the flax plant (Phormium tenax), the ends hanging down like fringes. A party once came upon some [7:4:216]women by surprise as they were fishing, naked, for lobsters, and “the chaste Diana, with her nymphs, could not have discovered more confusion and distress at the sight of Actaeon, than these women expressed upon our approach.” On the third visit, however, they had got rid of all their modesty, and a rusty nail was sufficient to purchase the last favour.

The black hair of the men is bound in a knot on the top of the head, that of the women is cropped; both sexes anoint their hair with rancid oil, and smear their bodies with grease and red ochre. The faces of the old men are covered with large furrowed black marks, generally spiral lines, and have a horrible appearance. The women wear in their ears pieces of cloth, feathers, sticks, bones, &c. and bracelets and anklets of bone, teeth, shells, &c. Captain Cook did not observe any appearance of disease, or bodily complaint, or eruption on the skin, or marks of any; and the most severe wounds healed most rapidly. Very old men, without hair or teeth, showed no signs of decrepitude, and were full of cheerfulness and vivacity. They are mild, gentle, and affectionate towards each other, but ferocious and implacable towards their enemies; and it unfortunately happens, that the little societies into which they appear to be divided, are in an almost perpetual state of hostility, which makes it necessary for them to dwell in happahs or villages, fortified with embankments, ditches, and pallisadoes. They give no quarter, and feast with apparent relish on the bodies of their enemies, which they cut up and broil in holes dug in the earth; they suck out the brains, and preserve the skulls as trophies. They made no hesitation in devouring human flesh in presence of the English officers, and their provision baskets had generally a head or a limb of a human subject.

The only quadrupeds on the islands are dogs, small and ugly, and rats, the former of which they eat, and with their skins cut into strips they adorn their clothing; but their principal food consists of fish, and the bruised roots of fern. They cultivate, however, and with great neatness, sweet potatoes, eddas, and gourds, all planted in regular rows; and Cook observed near the villages both privies and dunghills. Their houses have a ridge-pole to the roof, which, with the sides, are built of sticks and grass, and lined with bark; they sleep on the floors covered with straw; and the furniture consists of a chest to hold their tools, clothes, arms, and feathers, provision baskets, and gourds to hold water, which is their only beverage; the New Zealanders being among the very few people, civilized or savage, who are ignorant of the means of intoxication.

Their double canoes or whale boats are admirably constructed with planks from 60 to 70 feet in length, and their prows and sterns are tastefully and curiously carved and ornamented; all of which is performed by adzes and axes of a hard black stone, or green talc or jade, and with chisels of human bone or jasper. Of these materials also their offensive weapons are made: these are lances fourteen feet long, sharp at both ends, of hard wood neatly carved; and a battle-axe of jade or bone about a foot long. Their war canoes carry from 60 to 70 men each; they keep exact time with their paddles, singing, with great vociferation and distorted features, their savage war-song, when bound on any hostile expedition. Their war-dances are conducted in the same furious and extravagant style; the only musical instrument, if it can be called one, which they use, is a triton shell, which sounds like a cow’s horn.

They have, however, a taste for music, and the women are said to sing in a soft, slow, and mournful cadence, making use of semitones. When their husbands are slain in battle, they cut their legs,' arms, and faces, with bone· or sharp shells; and there are few of them who do not wear scars on their bodies as testimonials of their affection and sorrow for their deceased friends.

The natives of New Zealand exhibit a strange mixture of civilized and savage life. It was hoped, from the state of their cultivated grounds, of which several hundred acres were seen, that presents of hogs, kids, and poultry, would have been most acceptable, and considerable numbers were left with them on the first and second visits of Captain Cook; but, excepting the cocks and hens, which had bred plentifully, and flew about wild in the woods, the others had been wantonly destroyed. In 1791 Vancouver touched at Dusky Bay, and remained there for some time, examining the bays and creeks in the neighbourhood; but he did not see one human being. And in 1793 D’Entrecasteaux passed between the Three Kings’ Island and Cape Maria van Diemen, but had no other communication with the natives except in their canoes. Unlike in every respect to the Otaheitans, they have evidently a common origin; their language not differing more than the language of the two New Zealand Islands from each other. The few notions they have of superior beings also accord with those of Otaheite. (See Cook’s Voyages?)

A missionary of the name of Marsden, from merely seeing some New Zealanders in New South Wales, had the hardihood to accuse Captain Cook of having drawn “a false picture of the New Zealanders.” He undoubtedly thought so, and went to the islands with a view of converting the natives to Christianity. He soon, however, abandoned this “noble race of men,” as he calls them, being unable, by his own account, “to lay the first stone consoling himself for his disappointment by the reflection that “the pious Israelites could not build the walls of Jerusalem without holding the sŵord in one hand and the trowel in the other.” Captain Cook’s accuracy is too well established to be shaken by such authority. The following horrible transaction proves how well he described the character of these cannibals. In December 1809, the ship Boyd, from Port Jackson, was at Wangarrooa, in the Bay of Islands, and admitted, without due caution, too large a number of natives on board, when the crew were suddenly attacked, overpowered, and slaughtered. Captain Alexander Berry, of the ship Edinburgh Castle, being on the coast, was soon after apprized of this horrible event; and, proceeding to the bay, found the remains of the Boyd, which had been burned by the savages. On landing, he discovered that the massacre had been directed by Tippahee, the old chief who had been so much caressed at Sydney. The bones of the unfortunate men lay scattered on the ground, where their bodies had been devoured by the savages. Sixteen were murdered and cut up on the deck of the vessel; five others, who had fled for safety upon the yards, were told by the old cannibal, that if they would come down their lives should be spared, which, after some hesitation, they consented to do. They were sent on shore, and in five minutes after their dead bodies lay on the beach. The only survivors which Captain Berry contrived to save were, a woman, two children, and a boy. Well might Captain Berry conclude the narrative of his horrid murder by an admonition, “Let no man trust a New Zealander.”

Commerce, however, that great civilizer, has done more for the Zealanders than the missionaries could effect. An active and increasing trade is carried on between these islands and New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land; and the southern whale-fishery ships are constantly calling there for refreshments. The result has been not only an improvement in the condition of these islanders, but a [7:4:217]• softening down of their ferocious disposition, and a steady ’march in progressive civilization.

To the eastward of New Zealand is an island of considerable extent and well peopled, discovered by Mr Broughton in 1791, when on a voyage round the world with Vancouver. He called it Chatham Island. The people and the productions are the same as those of New Zealand. (See Vancouver’s Voyage.)

It may be proper here to notice a recent discovery of a group of islands directly south of the south cape of Tavai Poenammoo, one of the New Zealands, named Lord Auckland’s Group by the discoverer, Mr Bristow, master of a South Sea Whaler, in gratitude to the nobleman whose name they bear, for having, when a boy, procured him admission into the school of Greenwich Hospital. This group, seven in number, was first seen on the 10th of August 1806; and on the 20th of October 1807 Captain Bristow came to anchor with his ship, the Sarah, in a fine harbour on the largest island, which he called Enderby, and to the harbour he gave the quaint name of Sarah’s Bosom. They are situated in lat. 50° 40' south, and long. 166° 35' east. Wood and water being plentiful and easily procured, they are represented as holding out, in this desolate and remote region, considerable advantages to the southern whale-fishery. The climate, however, is unusually severe, and the weather tempestuous. In the middle of summer (December) every day was attended with snow, sleet, or rain. Yet this severity of climate appeared to make no unfavourable impression on the vegetable productions, as the woods were covered with verdure as early in the spring as October. He observed four kinds of timber trees, the principal of which was said to be mangrove, growing to the height of 30 or 40 feet; but the trunks were so twisted and turned by the violent winds that it was difficult to find a straight piece of ten feet in length. There was no want of shrubbery and herbaceous plants; there were neither men nor quadrupeds of any kind, but seals, sea-elephants, and sea-fowl, in great plenty. The woods abounded with a variety of singing birds with sweet melodious notes, and among them was a species of lark; wild ducks, teals, and snipes, were plentiful; and he caught a kind of rock-cod with the hook and line.

To the southward of the group another small island was discovered in 1811, to which was given the name of Campbell’s Island; and to the south-west of them Macquarrie’s Island, in latitude 55° south and longitude 160° east. Several other islands are scattered about those of New Zealand; Chatham Island to the eastward of it, and a group of small ones near it, seen by Cornwallis in 1807; Bounty Island to the south-east; and to the southward of the latter a little island which, from its position with regard to England, has been named Antipodes Island. (Bristow’s MS. Letter.)

IX. Between the parallels of 48° 30' and 50° south, and •longitude 69° east, lies the barren and uninhabited Land of <erguelen, so named from the French officer who first discovered it in 1772, and who, on a second visit in 1773, discovered some small islands near it, but on neither occasion was able once to bring his ships to an anchor upon any part of the coast. Captain Cook was more fortunate. He had heard of Kerguelen’s discovery at the Cape of Good Hope, and wondered he should not have seen this land when he passed it so closely in 1770. In 1776, however, he fell, in with these islands, and as no account of Kerguelen syoyage had been made public, he gave new names o each island. Speaking of the main island, “I should,” says Cook, “from its sterility, with great propriety call Ma I g l an d 0 f Desolation, but that I would not rob *1. de Kerguelen of the honour of its bearing his name.” He changed, however, the Baie de l’Oiseau of the French, where they had landed in a boat and lodged a piece of parchment in a bottle, into Christmas Harbour ; and called a round high rock Bligh’s Cap, which had been named by Μ. de Kerguelen the Isle of Rendezvous,—although, says Cook, “I know nothing that can rendezvous about it but fowls of the air; for it is certainly inaccessible to any other animal.” Kerguelen thought he had discovered the Terra Australis Incognita, but Cook soon determined that it was of no great extent.

The hills were but of a moderate height, and yet in the middle of summer were covered with snow; not a shrub was found on this island, and not more than 17 or 18 different plants, one half of which were either mosses or grasses. The chief verdure was occasioned by one plant not unlike a saxifrage, spreading in tufts, and forming a surface of a pretty extensive texture, over a kind of bog or rotten turf: the highest plant resembled a small cabbage when shot into seed, and was about two feet high. No land animals were met with, but great plenty of the ursine seal (Phoca ursina). Penguins were very abundant, as were also shags, cormorants, albatrosses, gulls, ducks, pet-terels, and sea-swallows. A few fish of the size of a haddock were taken with the line, and the only shell-fish were a few limpets and muscles.

The steep cliffs towards the sea are rent from the top downwards, but whether by rains, frost, or earthquakes, could not be determined. The productions of the hills were composed chiefly of a dark blue and pretty hard stone, intermixed with small particles of glimmer or quartz. Lumps of coloured sandstone, and of semitransparent quartz, are also common. Nothing appeared like an ore or metal of any kind. (Cook’s Third Voyage, vol. i.)

X. These small uninhabited islands are interesting only; in a geological point of view. Situated in the midst of the great Indian Ocean, at the distance of 2000 miles í from the nearest land, and removed but 18 or 20 miles from each other, they have no common point of resemblance; the one being the product of a volcanic eruption scarcely yet cooled, with a few mosses and grasses on its surface; the other composed of horizontal and parallel strata of rock, covered with frutescent plants—an appearance which led the scientific gentlemen in D’Entrecasteaux’s expedition to conclude that an organization so regular could not proceed from a volcanic origin. A French seal-catcher from the neighbouring island had set fire to the shrubbery, which continued to burn when the navigators passed the island; and imagining that they saw pits of smoke issuing from the crevices between the strata, some of them were disposed to consider this circumstance as infallible indications of subterranean fire. Perron, the seal-catcher above mentioned, with the gentlemen of Lord Macartney’s embassy, who explored the southernmost island, Amsterdam, says that the shores of St Paul’s abounded with pumice stone; but the presence of this light material is by no means an infallible criterion of a proximate eruption.

Of the recent creation of Amsterdam there can be little doubt; indeed, it is scarcely yet cooled, and is altered considerably since its first discovery by Vlaming in 1696. From every part of the sloping sides of the crater, which is nearly 1000 yards in diameter, and into which the sea has forced its way, either smoke, or hot water, or hot mud, is seen to issue; and everywhere is felt a tremulous motion, and a noise heard like that of boiling water. In many parts of the crater, in the centre of which the water is 174 feet deep, the sea-water is tepid from the hot springs below; and numbers of these springs are found on the margin, below the high-water mark, of various temperatures, from 100° to the boiling point. One very copious spring, slightly chalybeate, issues, in a copious [7:4:218]stream, into the crater, nearly on a level with the lowest state of the tide. These springs cannot possibly descend from the summit of the island, the highest part of which is the edge of the crater, about 600 feet; and the whole area of the island is not more than eight square miles, a surface totally inadequate to collect and condense the clouds, so ns to produce these permanent springs. Why some modern geologists, and among them Μ. de Humboldt, should doubt of sea-water being converted into steam, and undergoing the process of distillation by subterranean fire, we are at a loss to know; or in what other manner they would account for such large and permanent streams of fresh water so situated as those are of Amsterdam Island.

Another singularity which this island presents is in its mosses and grasses, which are all European. To these may be added the Sonchus oleracea, or sow thistle, and the Apium petrosilenum, or parsley; and the common Lycopodium, or club-moss, which grows luxuriantly on the bleak heaths of North Britain, seems to thrive equally well on the boggy soil of Amsterdam, heated, at the depth of a foot below the surface, to the temperature of 186° of Fahrenheit’s scale.

The crater abounds with an excellent perch of a reddish colour, which is easily caught with the hook, and may be dropped at once into one of the hot springs on the margin and boiled alive; and, so caught and dressed, we are told it affords an excellent repast. The bar across the mouth of the crater is represented as one mass of cray-fish; and in the sea, outside the bar, are vast multitudes of whales, grampuses, porpoises, seals, and sea lions, so as to be dangerous for boats to pass. It was the same in Vlaming’s time, who “found the sea so full of seals and sea lions that they were obliged to kill them to get a passage through; when they steered from the shore there was also an astonishing number of fish.”

XI. From the volcanic island of Amsterdam, we must now take a glance of those innumerable low islands and reefs of rocks which are scattered over the greater part of the Australasian Sea to the eastward and northward of New Holland, and which are produced by an operation of nature different from that which lifted up Amsterdam; less violent, indeed, and with less eclat than the latter, but equally, if not more firmly established on the solid foundations of the deep abyss. A volcanic island not unfrequently breaks down its supporters, and sinks back into the cavity out of which it was hurled, as was recently the case with the Sabrina Island, near St Michael’s; but the island of coral, created by slow and imperceptible degrees, hardens with time, and becomes one solid mass from the summit to the base.

We know very little as yet of the nature of the marine polypi that construct these wonderful fabrics, but we cannot be blind to the effects of their operations. Throughout the whole range of the Polynesian and Australasian islands, there is scarcely a league of sea unoccupied by a coral reef or a coral island; the former springing up to the surface of the water perpendicularly from the fathomless bottom, “deeper than did ever plummet sound and the latter in various stages, from the low and naked rock, with the water rippling over it, to an uninterrupted forest of tall trees. “I have seen,” says Dalrymple, in his Inquiry into the Formation of Islands, “ the coral banks in all their stages; some in deep water, others with a few rocks appearing above the surface: some just formed into islands, without the least appearance of vegetation; others with a few weeds on the highest part: and, lastly, such as are covered with large timber, with a bottomless sea at a pistol-shot distance.” In fact, as soon as the edge of the reef is high enough to lay hold of the floating seawreck, or for a bird to perch upon, the island may be said to commence. The dung of birds, feathers, wreck of all kinds, cocoa-nuts floating with the young plant out of the-shell, are the first rudiments of the new island. With islands thus formed, and others in the several stages of their progressive creation, Torres Strait is nearly choked up; and Captain Flinders mentions one island in it covered with the Casuarma, and a variety of other trees and shrubs, which give food to paroquets, pigeons, and other birds, to whose ancestors it is probable the island was originally indebted for this vegetation. The time will come, —it may be ten thousand or ten millions of years, but come it must,—when New Holland, and New Guinea, and all the little groups of islets and reefs to the north and north-west of them, will either be united into one great continent, or be separated only by deep channels, in which the strength and velocity of the tide may obstruct the silent and unobserved agency of these insignificant but most efficacious labourers.

A barrier reef of coral runs along the whole of the eastern coast of New Holland, “among which,” says Captain Flinders, “we sought fourteen days, and sailed more than 500 miles, before a passage could be found through them out to sea.” Captain Flinders paid some attention to the structure of these reefs, on one of which he suffered shipwreck. Having landed on one of these creations, he says, “we had wheat sheaves, mushrooms, stags’ horns, cabbage leaves, and a variety of other forms, glowing under water, with vivid tints of every shade betwixt green, purple, brown, and white.” “It seems to me,” he adds, “that when the animalcules which form the coral at the bottom of the ocean cease to live, their structures adhere to each other, by virtue either of the glutinous remains within, or of some property in salt water; and the interstices being gradually filled up with sand and broken pieces of coral washed by the sea, which also adhere, a mass of rock is at length formed. Future races of these animalcules erect their habitation upon the rising bank, and die in their turn, to increase, but principally to elevate, this monument of their wonderful labours.” He says that they not only work perpendicularly, but that this barrier wall is the highest part, and generally exposed to the open sea, and that the infant colonies find shelter within it. A bank is thus gradually formed, which is not long in being visited by sea birds; salt plants take root upon it, and a soil begins to be formed; a cocoa-nut, or the drupe of a pandanus, is thrown on shore; land birds visit it, and deposit the seeds of shrubs and trees; every high tide and gale of wind add something to the bank; the form of an island is gradually assumed; and last of all comes man to take possession.

If we should imagine one of these immense coral reefs to be lifted up by a submarine volcano, and converted into an insular or continental ridge of hills, such a ridge would exhibit most of the phenomena that are met with in hills of limestone.

It is worthy of remark, that, in this great division of the globe, fully equal in extent to that of Europe, there is no quadruped larger than the kangaroo; that there is none of a ferocious character, and, in many of the islands, none of any description. Man only in Australasia is an animal of prey; and, more ferocious than the lynx, the leopard, or the hyaena, he devours his own species, in countries too where nature has done every thing for his comfort and subsistence. The consequence is, that population is so much checked and thwarted, that the number of all the natives who have been seen on the coasts of all the islands, from the first discovery to the present time, would not in the aggregate amount to 20,000 souls. The only hope of improvement must depend on the future colonization of these healthful and fertile regions of the globe by some European power.
[7:4:219]