the injurious effects of impolitic and oppressive duties on commerce; he suggests various alterations and modifications of the present system, and, we think, very satisfactorily establishes the expediency of conceding a colonial legislature as the only effectual way of ensuring the prosperity of the settlements. He stoutly maintains the superior advantages of Australia in comparison with America; and he reasons on this point, if not fairly, at least shrewdly; but we conceive that this is so much a question of circumstances and partialities, as hardly to admit of a general application. Mr. O'Hara's book is a very respectable compilation from the various publications relating to New South Wales it is fairly written, and is altogether an acceptable work. It contains, moreover, a large selection of extracts from the Sydney Gazette; a paper which seems to vie with some of our own journals in making the most of every little occurrence, and describes the levees of Governor Macquarie, and the parties of his Lady, in a style which would not disgrace the finished productions of the court reporter' of Carlton Palace. We give Mr. O'H. some credit for this, since he has by this means furnished us with a better notion of the general trim of Port Jackson society and habits, than we could have obtained in any other way. From these three volumes, on the whole, persons desirous of information will obtain it more completely than from any other commonly accessible source.

The great novelty, however, remains behind; and we have purposely avoided referring to Mr. Oxley's work, that we might reserve it for an entire and uninterrupted analysis.-At a distance from the sea boundary of the colony, varying from forty to sixty miles, rises a range of lofty and broken elevations which have received the name of the Blue Mountains. Various attempts had been made to pass these, in order to ascertain the nature and aspect of the interior, but without success, till, in 1813, an effort was made which proved that at least no insurmountable obstacle to a further progress existed. Governor Macquarie, who seems to have been always on the alert to improve the condition and prospects of the colony, despatched in the same year, Mr. Evans with a party, to follow the opening thus made, and if possible to push fairly across the range. This was effected: streams running in the westerly direction of the interior, were discovered and traced downward until they united in a river of considerable promise, flowing towards the north west through a rich and open country, and offering every possible advantage to the grazier by the fertility of its banks, and the abundance of its supply; it received the name of the Macquarie. A road one hundred miles in length, not quite so level as the Bath-road, but yet tolerably practicable, having been made, the Governor determined to visit in person the newly VOL XIV. N.S. U

discovered tracts: accordingly, in 1815, accompanied by Mrs. Macquarie, he crossed the mountains, and fixed on a site for a town to be called Bathurst, in honour, as the phrase is, of the secretary for colonial affairs. While he remained here, he sent Mr. Evans on an exploratory tour to the south west; and this enterprise issued in the discovery of the Lachlan river, holding a westerly course with a less deviation to the north than that taken by the Macquarie. The results of this journey encouraged the Governor to prosecute the attempts which had been so successfully made to explore the interior. In 1817, a well equipped expedition was placed under the direction of Mr. Oxley, with instructions to follow the course of the Lachlan, which had been supposed to unite with the Macquarie, and to find its way to the sea between Spencer's gulf and Cape Otway, on the southern coast of Australia. Boats were provided to accompany the party; and to relieve the horses from part of their burden. The first movements of the march lay along the right or northern bank of the stream, through a country of course varied, but generally unprofitable, partly from poverty of soil, partly from the prevalence of swamp, and partly from the frequency of inundation in wet seasons: in fact, it was only in consequence of long continued drought, that the party was able to proceed so far. The tract bordering on the Lachlan is remarkably level, and, in Mr. O.'s opinion, was once under water, until drained by the present channel, the banks of which are still remarkably low. Without any apparent cause, since no rain had fallen, and this singular river has no tributaries, the water had been for some days rising, and so small was the elevation of its margin, as to awaken considerable apprehension in the minds of the travellers, entangled as they were among marshy flats, and in danger of being irretrievably swept away by a further rise of only four feet. At length, the stream separated itself into branches, and these on investigation were found to terminate in immense marshes' which seemed to form vast concavity' to receive the great body of water thus continually supplied. Here then, in latitude 33. 15. 34. S. and longitude 147. 16. E., Mr. Oxley determined, though intercepted in this quarter, to cross the country to the south west, and to make for the coast in an oblique course, with the view of intersecting any river which might run towards the sea in that direction On the 17th of May, leaving the boats and such heavy articles as the horses were unable to carry, the party commenced their journey toward the coast; but after persevering for more than three weeks in this purpose, through a barren and desolate region nearly destitute of water, two of the horses having failed, and the rest being much debilitated, it became necessary either to return or to change the track. The last step being preferred,

8

about the middle of June, the travellers struck off to the north, along the base of a range of mountains which trended nearly north and south. Bearing up against oppressive privations and difficulties under which more of the horses sank, they pressed forward until the 23d inst. when they came suddenly upon a river, which proved to be the Lachlan, diminished in magnitude, from the loss necessarily sustained by absorption and evaporation in the marshes, but still running with a tolerably brisk stream to the westward.' It was now determined to follow the stream until the state of the provisions should be barely sufficient to secure the return to Bathurst. Fish were found in the river, water was always at hand, and the party were in high spirits. The 7th of July, however, closed every hope of ultimate discovery in this line of progress; for, after following the westerly direction of the river through a country perfectly level, sterile, and swampy, and observing the gradual diminution of its channel, they again lost all traces of it amid stagnated lagoons and morasses.' Further progress now became impracticable: one boundless flat, without the smallest elevation, extended on every side, and no timber was visible, excepting in the few stunted gum-trees which grew on the immediate borders of the now stagnant Lachlan. In his official report to the Governor, Mr. Oxley thus describes his keen disappointment.

This unlooked for and truly singular termination of a river which we had anxiously hoped, and reasonably expected, would have led to a far different conclusion, filled us with the most painful sensations. We were full five hundred miles west of Sydney, and nearly in its latitude; and it had taken us ten weeks of unremitted exertion to proceed so far. The nearest part of the coast about Cape Bernoulli, had it been accessible, was distant above one hundred and eighty miles. We had demonstrated beyond a doubt, that no river could fall into the sea between Cape Otway and Spencer's Gulf, at least none deriving its waters from the eastern coast; and that the country south of the parallel of 34 degrees, and west of the meridian 147, 30. E. was uninhabitable, and useless for all the purposes of civilized men.'

Perhaps there is no river,' (Mr. Oxley writes in his regular journal,) the history of which is known, that presents so remarkable a termination as the present: its course in a strait line from its source to its termination exceeds five hundred miles, and including its windings, it may fairly be calculated to run at least twelve hundred miles; during all which passage through such a vast extent of country, it does not receive a single stream in addition to what it derives from its sources in the eastern mountains. I think it a probable conjecture that this river is the channel by which all the waters rising in those ranges of hills to the westward of Port Jackson, known by the name of the Blue Mountains, and which do not fall into the sea on the east coast, are conveyed to these immense

inland marshes; its sinuous course causing it to overflow its banks on a much higher level than the present, and, in consequence, forming those low wet levels which are in the very neighbourhood of the government depot. Its length of course is, in my opinion, the principal cause of our finding any thing like a stream for the last one hundred miles, as the immense body of water which must undoubtedly be at times collected in such a river, must find a vent somewhere; but being spent during so long a course without any accession, the only wonder is, that even those waters should cause a current at so great a distance from their source; every thing however indicates, as before often observed, that in dry seasons the channel of the river is empty, or forms only a chain of ponds. It appears to have been a considerable length of time since the banks were overflowed, certainly not for the last year; and I think it probable they are not often so; the quantity of water must indeed be immense, and of long accumulation, in the upper marshes, before the whole of this vast country can be under water.'

These conjectures are, no doubt, in part accurate: that they are not wholly so, appears from the fact, that the Lachlan cannot be the drain for all' the westward waters of the Blue Mountains, inasmuch as the Fish and Macquarie rivers obviously answer the same purpose, and, we should imagine, to a greater extent. Nor does it seem quite correct to assume this point as the termination of the river, since it is noted in the journal, and marked on the map, that a large arm' diverges from the north bank, before the supposed main channel spreads into a marsh. As in an earlier stage of its course, the Lachlan is lost in swamps whence it again emerges, it is by no means improbable that such may be the case at this point.

The direction of their future route, became now a subject for anxious reflection. The marsh-miasma had been of late exceedingly offensive, and every individual of the party was more or less affected by dysentery. To return by the same exhausting track on which they had travelled hither since quitting the boats, was scarcely practicable, and would have thrown no new light on the objects of the expedition; and Mr. Oxley and his companions seem to have at all times deemed their own comfort and even safety entirely subordinate to these. It was therefore resolved to trace the present division of the river quite up to the apex of that triangle of which their late journey had described the base, and by this route to ascertain the fact that the present stream was in reality the continuation of the former channel. The time of their return was extremely critical and providential, for they found the sluggish stream, which before was so shallow as to admit of wading, now rolling along its agi'tated and muddy waters nearly on a level with the banks;' and had this fresh' reached them on the lower ground, they would have been placed in circumstances of extreme peril.

Traces of natives had been observed in the neighbourhood, and at one place they had noticed a small tumulus. It was Mr. Oxley's intention, to cross the river at a favourable point, but every attempt at the construction of a temporary bridge, was rendered ineffectual by the rise and consequent rapidity of the stream. On the route, several lakes were seen, and an arm of considerable width branched off from the right bank. On the 29th of July, they discovered a tumulus, of which a coloured plate is given, and had the curiosity to open it, when they first came to three or four layers of wood, lying across the grave, serving as an arch to bear the weight of the earthy cone or tomb above;' below this, a quantity of bark was found, and then dry grass and leaves. The body was placed east and west, the head to the east,' the face downwards, and the feet bent quite up to the head: it had been

very care

fully wrapped in a great number of opossum skins. The depth of the grave was four feet, and the mound over it was about five feet high and nine in length. Three rows of seats formed by trenching up the earth, composed the segments of three circles, of fifty, forty-five, and forty feet respectively, on one side of the grave, and the other was closed in by a single elevation of the same kind. On the 3rd of August, after many unsuccessful attempts, the travellers effected the passage of the river by means of a raft, and having ascertained the connexion between this part of the Lachlan, and the marshes in which the former merged, they struck off in an easterly track for the Macquarie. The early part of the route was through a sterile and unwatered country, but it soon became varied, and after passing through much fine scenery, and crossing several streams, on the 19th they came upon the Macquarie flowing in a broad and majestic stream to the north-west. On the 29th, after an absence of nineteen harassing weeks, the party arrived at Bathurst.

The hopes of a communication with the sea by means of the Lachlan having been thus completely destroyed, it became desirable to examine the much more hopeful course of the Macquarie; and a second expedition under the same leader, was fitted out for that purpose. On the 28th of May, 1818, it quitted Bathurst, and crossing the river, proceeded along its northern bank. Fine scenery and a promising country every where presented themselves during the earlier part of the progress: sandy and gravelly beaches, with rocky promontories, diversified the immediate borders of the stream, rapids and cataracts had been passed, and every thing indicated that the present journey would have a very different result from the former. But when they had reached the distance of about two hundred miles from Bathurst, the scene began to change, the country to sink and