—♢— The following Letters were most of them written in Australia in 1867, and were published in the Spectator in the course of that and the following year. Some are reprinted without alteration, others have been added to and altered, and others are new. No attempt has been made to mould them into a continuous or complete account either of the past history or present condition of the three colonies which they endeavour to describe. Those of the colonies which are old enough to possess a history h

A VOYAGE TO AUSTRALIA. Some people who have been to the Antipodes and back will tell you that a voyage to Australia in a good sailing ship is a very pleasant way of spending three months. Seen through the halo of distance it may seem so; certainly it leaves pleasant and amusing reminiscences behind. But I doubt if one person in twenty on board our excellent ship the Mercia , provided as she was with every comfort, or on board any other ship whatsoever, if cross-examined during the voyage, would

MELBOURNE. ‘ All I can see is my own, and all I can’t see is my son’s,’ was the complacent remark, it is said, of John Batman, as he stood, some thirty-two years ago, looking over a vast tract of country which he thought he had bought as his own freehold from the aborigines for a few blankets and tomahawks. That tract of country comprised the ground whereon now stands Melbourne, nearly if not quite, the largest city in the southern half of the globe; in importance, actual or prospective, in the

BALLARAT. Two hours’ railway travelling will take you from Melbourne to Geelong, over rich, flat, grassy plains, with scarcely a tree, nothing but ugly posts and rails to break their outline. In summer these plains must be parched and dreary beyond description; but it is May now, and the autumn rains have made them green as an emerald and pleasant for the eye to rest on. Geelong is scarcely worth stopping at, unless to speculate upon why it is not Melbourne, and Melbourne it, as might have been

SQUATTING IN VICTORIA. It sometimes happens that the commonest circumstances of life in distant countries are scarcely realised at home because they are too much matter of every-day experience to be spoken about. I doubt whether people in England appreciate the fact that the greater part of Australia is, in its natural state, for eight or nine months in the year almost entirely destitute of water. To a new comer it sounds strange to hear an up-country Squatter remark that he has no water on his

POLITICS IN VICTORIA. Strange to say, it is a fact notorious in Victoria that a proportion of the Legislative Assembly, sufficient to sway its vote on almost any measure that may be introduced, is altogether corrupt and amenable to bribes! How long this has been so I know not, or how long it has been a matter of notoriety; but attention has been particularly drawn in this direction lately by the scandalous disclosures made in the case of Sands v. Armstrong , which was tried in May. The plaintiff

TASMANIA. The heat, and drought, and dust of summer begin to make Melbourne unpleasant by December. In Sydney and Adelaide it is hotter still, and in Queensland there is almost as great heat as in India, without all the elaborate Indian appliances and luxuries for making it bearable. Christmas holidays and lawyers’ Long Vacation are just beginning. Hence there is a considerable migration about this time of year of Australians on the mainland who may be ailing or wanting a holiday, to the cool fr

TASMANIA ( continued ). Circumstances have made Tasmania lean more than any other of the Australian Colonies towards sober conservatism in its ideas and its social and political aspect. Perhaps the youthful ideal of those who are now middle-aged and influential was generally the British regimental officer, as he was to be found, some twenty or thirty years ago, in quarters at Hobart Town, or retired and occupied with his grant of land up the country. For in those days there were sometimes a coup

TASMANIA ( continued ). I must recall even the little I have said in a former letter in dispraise of the Tasmanian climate. In the valleys it may be too mild and enervating, but there are other parts where it is very different. Go in the coach, for instance, for sixty miles along the high road to Launceston, which is still the main artery of the settlement, having been made in the old times, with enormous expenditure of labour, by huge gangs of convicts, clusters of whose ruined and deserted hut

SYDNEY AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. The chief towns of the five principal Australian Colonies are separated by nearly equal intervals. The distances from Adelaide to Melbourne, from Melbourne to Hobart Town, from Melbourne to Sydney, and from Sydney to Brisbane are not very different. That from Melbourne to Sydney is a little the longest of them. It is rather more than a two days’ and two nights’ voyage. To go by land is a tedious and laborious journey, except for those who know the country and its in

AN INSTITUTION OF NEW SOUTH WALES. In New South Wales a considerable proportion of the population is of convict descent. It is impossible to say what proportion, for the line of separation is no longer strictly preserved, as it once was, between free settlers and emancipists; and questions are not often asked nowadays about origin and parentage. The tendency of the convicts when they got their liberty was to go to the country districts, rather than to the towns. Many became shepherds or hutkeepe

POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES OF NEW SOUTH WALES. If the British public is as ignorant of other things as it is about Australia, it must be quite as ignorant a public as Mr. Matthew Arnold would have us believe. It appears to be under an impression that Australians habitually carry revolvers. It has always persisted in believing that Botany Bay was the place to which convicts were sent out, and has a misty idea that that much libelled bay is the port of Sydney. A person at Hobart Town is requested by a

ARISTOCRACY AND KAKISTOCRACY. The members of the Upper House or Legislative Council of New South Wales are nominated for life by the Governor, not elected, like those of Victoria and Tasmania, by a higher-class constituency. This plan was adopted by the framers of the Constitution with the intention of giving it a Conservative character. The effect has been the reverse of what was intended. A nominee of the Governor is generally in reality a nominee of the Ministry for the time being. Subject to

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. There exists in England a school of politicians, or economists, which considers it desirable that the Australasian colonies should at once, or before long, be cast loose from the Mother-country. There are doubtless some amongst the colonists who are of the same opinion; but I believe that they are very few in number, and that it will be England’s fault, more than that of her colonies, if—in our day at least—the Empire is broken up. Of course it is easy to point to mistakes m

HOME AGAIN. The voyage home from Australia is a less easy and pleasant one than the voyage out. Owing to the prevalence of strong westerly winds for the greater part of the year in the South Pacific and Southern Indian Ocean, homeward-bound ships almost invariably sail eastward round Cape Horn, though the distance that way is greater, instead of westwards by the Cape of Good Hope. In rounding Cape Horn they must go to at least 56° south, and these latitudes have a disagreeable reputation for hea

CHANGE OF AIR. As travelling becomes easier all over the world, an increasing number of people who suffer from English winters are tempted to migrate annually in pursuit of sunshine and a more genial climate. Formerly fewer pleasant places were accessible, and there was comparatively little choice; and as to keep a consumptive person warm through the winter was supposed to be the one thing needful, little attention was paid to other peculiarities of climate. It is only of late years that doctors

A PLEA FOR AUSTRALIAN LOYALTY. [The Spectator of May 23, 1868, contained a letter signed ‘An Australian Cynic,’ and also an article founded on it, commenting on the extraordinary outburst of excitement and indignation at Sydney occasioned by the attempted assassination of the Duke of Edinburgh, as manifested in the passing of the Treason-Felony Act and in other ways. These manifestations, and the attitude of the Australians generally on the occasion were attributed to a ‘starved appetite for ran

LOYALTY AND CYNICISM. Personally I do plead guilty to holding the belief or doctrine to hold which you call ‘veiled cynicism.’ But I beg you will not suppose that I am asserting that the late demonstration of the Australians necessarily implied that they hold it, or that their loyalty as a people was not wider and more comprehensive than any particular phase of it which may specially present itself to me or to any one person. In the following remarks I shall speak only in my own defence, and try