tempt in that quarter, and returned to the fort. But they had acquired some knowledge of the river, which being remarkably transparent, they had seen the nature of its bed, masses of ferruginous clay; they had also seen large fishes in shoals, suspended "like birds in the air." On their return they came in sight of two of the natives fishing in two canoes. On observing the boats, they took to their paddles and fled to the bank, leaving their canoes behind them. These vessels were models of the most primitive construction; simply a sheet of bark with a little clay at each end. Yet in each of them there was a fire, as the weather was then very cold. In these canoes the native stands erect, and propels them with his fishing spear. He moves very rapidly. Proceeding once more on horseback, the exploring party came again in view of the Darling, on the 4th of June. On their way they passed what seemed to them an expanse of clover, but with a yellow flower. "The verdure and perfume were new to my delighted senses," poetically observes the Major, "and my passion for discovering something rich and strange was fully gratified; while my horse, defying the rein, seemed no less pleased in the midst of so delicious a feast as this verdure must have appeared to him." But his next gratification, that of finding the river again, with its channel broader and deeper than ever, was rather allayed by his coming into the presence of the blacks. Judging from their fires, he had arrived in the quarters of a large tribe. Their roads appeared in all directions, and their women were fishing in the river. The buzz of population gave the banks the cheerful character of a village in a populous country." The blacks exhibited but little of either surprise or alarm. A sturdy man hailed him from a distance, and came boldly up, followed by seven others, with an old woman. The Major alighted and met them, first sending, at their request, the horses out of sight. The old woman "was a loquacious personage, scarcely allowing the elder of the men to say a word." She was probably his wife, and asserted her sex's privilege; human nature is the same every where.

But all were not content with this strife of tongues. As the party followed the downward course of the

On

river, the natives became more numerous and more hostile. One of the men, who had been tending the sheep, came in one morning reporting that one of the blacks had pointed a spear at him, and had prevented the sheep from being driven home. Major Mitchell's hastening to the spot, with three men, he found the black still there, and receiving their pacific approaches and their green branch with manifest contempt. He, and a boy who was with him, threw dust at them with their toes, a singular coincidence with the Oriental style of scorn. The savage, in the meanwhile, talked loud and long. However, the affair ended, for the time, without mischief, the savage retiring, but with his spear stiil pointed, and evidently retiring only to summon his tribe. Late in the afternoon the result of the morning's meeting was found, in the arrival of a party of the savages, exhibiting the most violent gestures, refusing to sit down as usual with the people, tossing the branches angrily, and spitting. One of them attempting to take the pistols from the Major's belt, he fired it at a tree, to try the effect upon them. The effect was unexpected and extraordinary." As if they had previously suspected that we were demons, and had at length a clear proof of it, they, with tenfold fury, with hideous shouts and demoniac looks, crouching and jumping to their war-song, repeated all their gestures of defiance, spitting, springing with the spear, and throwing dust at us, as they slowly retired. In short, their hideous crouching, measured gestures, and low jumps, all to the tune of a wild song, and the fiendish glare of their black countenances, now all eyes and teeth, seemed a fitter spectacle for Pandemonium, than for the light of the sun. Thus these savages slowly retired along the river's bank, all the while dancing in a circle, like the witches in Macbeth, and leaving us in expectation of their return, and perhaps an attack in the morning."

There are few things more remarkable than that the idea of enchantments and superstitious influences should be discoverable in every part of the globe, however fierce, ignorant, and savage. The idea itself would seem to imply some degree of refinement, as it is scarcely natural, and as it evidently requires some thought,

and that thought of a different kind from any thing connected with the necessities of daily life. The natives advanced on the next day, but with more formality. They came " with a kind of processional chant, slowly moving their green boughs." The appearance of one of the savages was striking. "There was evidently some superstition in the ceremony, the man being probably a coraje, or priest. He was an old man, with a large beard, and bushy hair. None but himself, and some other old men, wore any kind of dress, and this consisted only of a small cloak of skins fastened over his left shoulder. While this man of the woods waved his bough aloft, and chanted that monotonous hymn, the idea of the Druids arose in my mind. It was obvious that the ceremony belonged to some strange superstition." He occasionally turned his back to wards them, touched his eyebrows, nose, and breast, as if crossing himself, then pointed his arm to the sky, then laid his hand on his breast, all the while chanting, with an air of remarkable solemnity, and as if quite abstracted. This, however, was not followed by any immediate attack, as it was probably a previous devotement of the strangers to their infernal gods.

On the 12th of July, the expedition turned its steps homewards. The course of the river had been traced for upwards of three hundred miles, through a country which did not supply a single stream, and in which there grew but little grass or trees. The hostility of the natives, too, doubtless rendered the advance of so small a party likely to be wholly frustrated. The identity of the Darling with the river seen entering the Murray, seemed nearly ascertained, and the continuation of the survey to that point was not an object worth the peril likely to attend it.

There are few men who feel no gratification in the approach to home; and the sight of the blockhouse, which they had named Fort Bourke, and which they reached on the 10th of August, raised the spirits of the whole party. From the fort they had travelled 600 miles in direct distance. It is true, that they were still 300 miles from the frontier of the colony, which was 170 miles from Sydney. Still they were on their way home.

The

Darling was found to have run through a desert, yet the time will come when the use of such a stream to the desert itself will be felt. It had been traced 660 miles without receiving any tributary; its water sparklingly transparent, and its stream undiminished; the bed of the river being at an average depth of 60 feet below the general surface of the country.

Thus ended the expedition of 1835. A vast extent of country had been explored, which, though not exhibiting much fertility, yet in no instance seems to have been incapable of supporting tillage. Immense tracts of it are evidently open to irrigation, and large levels on the river's banks are annually overflowed. This, of itself, gives good promise. But if the soil were more inauspicious than it has ever been found, it will yield for what has not yielded?-to the intelligence, activity, and patient vigour of British enterprize. From the strong interest which the public take in Australian discovery, we shall now advert to the subject of Major Mitchell's third and most important journey.

Towards the close of the year 1835, Major Mitchell was appointed to conduct a new expedition, for the purpose of ascertaining the course of the Darling. On the 17th of March, he took the field, at the head of an army of two-and-twenty men, prepared to conquer all the resistance which nature could offer, in the shape of the wilderness, and march over territories free and fearless, where in after times, probably, every step would be contested by horse, foot, and artillery, or by some of those still more formidable instruments of warfare, which the ingenuity of man seems to take such delight in inventing. The recollections of a soldier during the last five-and-twenty years, lie amongst stirring scenes. The Major says, "I put the party in movement. We found the earth parched and bad, but a fine cool breeze whispered through the open forest, as we bounded over hill and dale, and this felt most refreshing, after the hot winds of Sydney. Dr Johnson's Abidah was not more free from care on the morning of his journey, than I was on this the first morning of mine, which was also St Patrick's day, and, in riding through the bush, I had again leisure to recall past scenes, connected with

this anniversary. I remembered that exactly on that morning, twenty-four years before, I had marched down the Glacis of Elvas to the tune of "St Patrick's day in the morning," as the sun rose over the beleaguered towers of Badajos."

At Buree, the expedition was entertained with a dance by the natives. This they call the Corrobery, and is a very curious and fantastic specimen of Australian saltation. It always takes place at night, and by the light of blazing boughs. They danced to beaten time, accompanied by a song. To supply this measure, they stretch a skin very tight over the knees as a drum, which Major Mitchell very naturally regards as the tympanum in its rudest form. The dancers paint themselves white, but with such variety, that no two indivividuals are like. The sound in darkness seems necessary to the effect of the whole; all those dances being more or less dramatic, the painted figures coming forward in mystic order from the obscurity of the back ground, while the singers and beaters of time are invisible. Each dance seems progressive. The movement being at first slow, and introduced by two persons, others one by one drop in, until it warms into the truly savage attitude of the Corrobery jump; the legs striding to the utmost, the head turned over one shoulder, the eyes glaring, and fixed with savage energy in one direction, the arms raised towards the head, the hands usually grasping warlike weapons. The jump now keeps time with each beat, and at each leap, the dancer takes six inches to one side, all being a connected line, led by the first dancer. The line is doubled or trebled, according to space or numbers, and this gives great effect; for when the first line jumps to the left, the second jumps to the right, and the third to the left again, and so on until the action acquires due intensity, when they all simultaneously and suddenly stop. The excitement which this dance produces in the savage is very remarkable. However listless, lying half asleep perhaps, as they usually are, when not intent on game, set him to this dance, and he is fired with sudden energy. Every nerve is strung to such a degree, that he is no longer to be recognized as the same individual.

On the 13th of April, they fell in with a large party of the natives. The singular alternations of heat and moisture in Australia, render it difficult to ascertain the exact condition of the country from any previous description. Thus, what Mr Oxley, who had traversed this tract some years before, described, as a "noble lake," was now seen a luxuriant plain, with some water, 'tis true, lodged in one corner of its surface, but not more than a foot deep. But even this was full of life, and must have exhibited a striking and interesting contrast to the vast, lifeless regions over which the party had

come.

"Innumerable ducks took refuge there, and also a great number of black swans and pelicans, all standing high upon their legs above the shallow water." Another attraction to these birds, as well as to the natives, was an abundance of fresh water mussels, which lay in the bed of what was once the lake. But subsistence in those wild countries is generally an object of jealousy, and wherever any thing was to be found for food, the savages showed ill-will to the expedition; this deepened as they advanced into the interior, but in the beginning was exhibited chiefly in watching their movements. The expedition at length reached the Murray, the principle river of Eastern Australia, into which the Darling flows, and which conveys the chief waters of that great province to the sea by a southerly course. The river here was a fine stream, 165 yards broad, with a bank twenty-five feet high. After passing through a wood, and finding that it encircled " a beautiful lake, full sixteen miles in circumference," they also found that its beach and surface swarmed with natives. As the party continued their march, the natives followed. "Among them were several old men, who took the most active part, and who were very remarkable from that bushy fulness and whiteness of their beards and hair. The latter growing thickly on their backs and shoulders gave them a very singular appearance, and accorded well with that patriarchal authority which the old men seem to maintain to an astonishing degree among those savage tribes. Those aged chiefs from time to time beckoned to us, repeating,

very often and fast, "gowky, gowky, gowky," which means, "come." Notwithstanding this invitation, it may be presumed, as Major Mitchell, states, that they accepted it with peculiar caution, when they discovered that those were the actual tribe with whom they had the skirmish on the Darling. The major had "certainly heard, when still far up the Lachlan, that those people were coming down to fight him;" but he by no means expected that they were to be the first natives whom he was to meet on the Murray, nearly two hundred miles from the scene of their former encounter. "There was something so false in a forced loud laugh, which the more plausible among them would frequently set up, that I was quite at a loss to conceive what they meant by this uncommon civility." In the course of the evening they got together all their women and children in groups before the camp. Among those were two daughters of a woman who had been unfortunately killed in the former rencounter. The younger was the handsomest female that they had yet seen among the natives. "She was so far from black, that the red was very apparent in her cheeks. She sat before us, in a corner of the group, nearly in the attitude of Baily's fine statute of Eve at the Fountain, and apparently equally unconscious that she was naked." But a true touch of barbarism follows. "As my eye," says Major Mitchell, lingered upon her for a moment, while deeply regretting the fate of her mother, the brother of the dead chief, whose hand had more than once been laid upon my cap, as if to feel if it were proof against the blow of a waddy (club), begged of me to accept her in exchange for a tomahawk."

Of course, the party in the presence of those savages was kept in continual expectation of an attack, and the state of men so many hundred miles advanced in the desert, and with every chance of general hostility rising against them, must have been extremely anxious. It seems evident that none of those expeditions were made in sufficient force. Why was there but one man of science attached to each? Why but one botanist? Why but a handful of men as the escort? The expedition should have consisted of a hundred men at least, and would

have been only the more effective if it had had twice the number. But, by the starved nature of those experiments in the desert, we find every thing continually on the point of ruin at every change of temper in the savages; the smallness of the escort actually inviting hostility, and the fate of the intelligent officer at their head, and of the brave and faithful men, constantly hazarded, until the return amounted to scarcely more than an escape.

Night had closed in, and the groups hung still about them, having lighted up large fires, which formed a cordon round the camp. Piper (the native interpreter) was desired to be particularly on the alert. At length information was brought in that the savages had sent away all their women, that there was no keeping them from the carts, and that they seemed bent on mischief. Piper also took the alarm, and came to the major, inquir. ing, apparently with a sense of reponsibility, what the governor had said about "shooting black fellows." "These," he continued, "are Myalls" —(wild natives). His wife had overheard them arranging that three should seize and strip him, while others attacked the tents. The major told him that the governor had said positively, that they were not to shoot black fel. lows, unless their own lives were in danger. He then drew up the men in line, and they were ordered to give three cheers on the sending up a rocket. This proof of their being on the alert, put the blacks to flight. They, however, were not without their savage cunning. For, on escaping out of the immediate contact of those masters of fire, they hailed them from the wood, to come and see their dancing. This artifice not succeeding, which was probably intended for the massacre of them all, the dance soon died away, and the party were left in anxious expectation of an attack.

During the night all was still; but soon after day-break, the tribe were seen to be in motion. Their first manoeuvre was to set the fallen branches on fire. Those in the rear were soon seen busy in setting the thickets on flame, and the party, as the wind blew towards them, were likely to be enveloped in smoke. The major on this ordered his rifle to be brought from the but, and the men to stand to their arms. Two old savages, who had been kind