In all new countries, the discovery of the course of rivers is most important for many reasons. It is along

their borders that the most fertile land is to be found, and in consequence the chief settlements are to be formed. It is by proceeding along their course, that the chief facilities for exploring the country are to be obtained, by boating, &c. The volume of their waters, also, gives strong indication of the country in which their source lies. If it is large, it probably comes from a mountainous region. If its current is slow and placid, that region is probably distant; if rapid, it is probably near. Even the nature of its mud determines the country from which it comes; and finally, if it reaches the sea, or communicates with some other river, it supplies an opening into the land, or leads to the discovery of another stream; and in either case, it offers an advantage to the land, nearly of the same kind as a new artery in the human frame. In 1833 it was suggested to the local authorities at Sydney by the Colonial Office, that the river Darling, which runs to the northwest of the British settlement, might be beneficially explored. Major Mitchell, as Surveyor-General, took upon himself the command and arrangement of the expedition. Two light whale-boats were constructed at the dock-yard of Sydney, and placed in a boat-carriage, or large waggon, made on the ingenious model suggested by Mr Dunlop, the King's Astronomer at Paramatta. The expedition consisted of twenty-one men, besides Mr Cunningham the botanist, Mr Lorimer, a surveyor, and the Major himself. The time will come when those details, apparently trifling as they are, will have a weighty interest; when some great empire, or vast range of powerful communities, will cover the desolate spots traversed by such expeditions, and posterity will look to their solitary wanderings, their indistinct objects, and even their imperfect successes, as we now look to the early history of Greece, or trace the footsteps of the original invaders of Italy.

But another circumstance of immediate interest is, the conduct of the men composing this little troop of discoverers. They seem, on both occasions, to have been chiefly, if not wholly, convicts; yet the Surveyor-General appears never to have had any ground of complaint against them, under circumstances of serious difficulty, severe privations in point of food, water, and rest; trying at all times, but certain to have brought out symptoms of violence and bitterness, if those feelings were in their nature, and incurable by discipline. On his second expedition he even took nine of those who had attended him before; and their conduct deserved the same panegyric which had been given to their former comrades.

We feel a strong interest in directing the public consideration to those faets, coming from so respectable an authority. We point to them, as offering the strongest possible argument against the penitentiary system, which to enormous expense adds enormous cruelty, and in ninety-nine instances out of a hundred finishes by enormous failure. To take a single instance, the Penitentiary at Millbank on the Thames cost, we believe, upwards of a million sterling; what it has cost since in repairs, in its establishment of governor, officers, and attendants, aud what it costs daily iu the support of the prisoners, notoriously amounts to a sum that would purchase the feesimple of a province. As to the humanity of the scheme, what cruelty can be greater than shutting up a foolish maid-servant, who has purloined a pocket-handkerchief of her mistress, or been tempted by the glitter of a ring, or a brooch worth a few shillings, and condemning this giddy and ignorant creature to an incarceration where she might nearly as well be in her grave, or perhaps better? since no discipline, short of solitary confinement, can prevent her receiving many a lesson of vice; and against solitary confinement the common sense and common feeling of the country protest; for solitary confinement often

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inflicts insanity, a suffering which the law certainly never contemplated in the sentence. This woman, if sent into the world again, comes without a character, and probably falls into still worse habits. But if sent to Sydney in the beginning of her punishment, she might have been a wife and a mother before the regular term of her penitentiary punishment had half expired; and be leading a life of health, decency, and industry, instead of being turned into a career which can only increase her own suffering, and the shame of society. As to the nonsense talked about gradations of punishment, expatriation, &c. &c., they may figure in the speeches of itinerants, the cheap-charity and wordy-humanity people; but what comparison can be made between the wretchedness of being buried alive in the impure air, and more impure association of a huge prison, and being sent to a country abounding with every advantage for mankind, singularly healthy, unlimited in its extent, offering the hope of competence, and even of wealth, and offering what is perhaps a more powerful and consoling stimulant to the human mind, the consciousness that their past shame may be blotted out, and their course be begun anew?

It is for the last reason among others, that we deprecate the attempts, which we see making, to restrict the colonization of Australia henceforth to settlers of a better order; or even to offer peculiar encouragement to settlers of this description in Sydney, and the original convict provinces. The land is wide enough for general emigration, and the new settlements on the South and West are capable of containing all the superfluous population not only of England but of Europe. But the great point is, to preserve a place in which the convict, shaking off the depression which hangs on every man's face publicly humiliated, shall be put to shame no more, but shall be able to recommence life with the hope of attaining character; an object to which all others in the colony ought to give way-a great moral renovation, which is a thousandfold worth all the commercial or territorial advantages of this mighty settlement; and which alone can entitle it to its highest name, that of an illustrious experiment in the restoration of our fallen fellowmen to the qualities

and merits which fit them for their social duties here, and for the infinite hopes and purposes of their existence, when they shall have passed away from the world.

On the 9th of March, 1835, the party left Paramatta for the journey. The boats were in the carriage, which was followed by seven carts, and as many packhorses, carrying provisions for five months. Two mountain barometers were borne by two men, the only service required of them during their travel. As the point where the operations were to commence was at Buree, 170 miles from Sydney, and the way was over a mountainous country, the Major sent the expedition on before him, and, attending to the business of his department in the meantime, followed them on the 31st of March.

On his way to the point of rendezvous, the Major gives us details of the country, which in that direction is chiefly mountainous, and at present barren, but which may yet form an Australian Switzerland, and be the resource of the fashionable invalidism of the South against the heats of summer. But the heights at last terminate, and Bathurst plains stretch before the eye. Here we have some striking evidences of the progress of civilisation, and some of those observations on settlement, which, from a man of sense and experience, are always so well worth recording. The houses of the people are scattered over the extensive open country, which give a cheerful appearance to what was so lately a vast solitude-" Those open downs, only a few years before, must have been as desolate as those of a similar character are still on the banks of the Nammoy and Karaula. Peace and plenty now smile on the banks of Wambool (the native name for the Macquarrie); and British enterprise and industry may produce in time a similar change on the banks of the Nammoy, Gwydic, and Karaula, and throughout the extensive regions behind the coast range further northward, all still unpeopled, save by the wandering Aborigines, who may then, as at Bathurstown, enjoy that security and protection to which they have so just a claim."

Some important remarks are made upon the precipitancy of building before a general plan has been formed; a