Australian natives is as mysterious as the genius of their language. One fact appears certain-they recognise a God, though they never name him in their vernacular language, but call him, in English, "Great Master," and consider themselves his slaves. Hence perhaps, it is, that neither the gift and privilege of life, nor the means provided to maintain it, excite in them the least feeling of obligation or gratitude. All those things which are pointed out to them as the free gifts of Providence, and therefore as deserving of acknowledgment, they consider that it is no more than the duty of the "Great Master" to supply them with. They believe in an immortality, or afterexistence, of everlasting enjoyment; and place its locality in the stars, or other constellations of which they have a perfect knowledge. They do not dread the Deity; all their fears are reserved for the evil spirit, who counteracts the doings of the "Great Master;" and consequently it is to the evil spirit that their religious worship is directed.

There are three distinct classes, or social gradations observed amongst them. These are attained through age and fidelity to the tribe; but it is only the last, or third class, consisting commonly of the aged few, which is initiated into the details of the religious mysteries, and which possesses the occult power of regulating the affairs of the tribe. Great secrecy is usually maintained in the ceremonies of admitting the youth to the first class, and in raising those of the first to the second; but the secrecy is most rigidly observed whenever an initiation into the third class takes place.

One or two tribes usually attend the meetings of the first or second class; but when those of the third are called, the tribes within seventy miles assemble; and on these occasions I was warned off, and could

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not, without personal danger, approach nearer than ten miles to the spot.

The foundation of their social edifice may, like that of civilised nations, be said to rest on an inherent sense of the rights of property. As strongly attached to that property, and to the rights which it involves, as any European political body, the tribes of Australia resort to precisely similar measures for protecting it, and seek redress and revenge for its violated laws through the same means as an European nation would, if similarly situated. Thus, if his territory has been trespassed upon, in hunting, by a neighbouring tribe, compensation or a reparation of the insult is asked for. If such be refused, war ensues; and when both tribes display equal force and courage, in most cases ends in a feud which is bequeathed to future generations.

Every tribe is subdivided into families, and each, in its family affairs, is regulated by the authority of the elders. The customs and ceremonies observed on the occasion of births, marriages, sickness, funerals, and festive meetings are independent of that authority: they are traditionary, and, particularly in point of etiquette, are as rigorously adhered to as amongst civilized nations. A great many of the superstitious practices connected with the rights of hospitality*

"From the rugged and broken crest of the mountain, we at length beheld at our feet, in the shade of a thicket, the long-looked-for pond of water, walled round as it were by the smoking wigwams of an encamped tribe. Impatience, almost amounting to frenzy, to relieve the thirst which had consumed us for days, took possession of me: my strength and spirits rallied, and I rushed headlong towards the longed-for spot. 'Stop, for Heaven's sake,' cried my native guide; stop, or we are lost.' Seized and retained by him, I stopped short: we altered our course, speedily gained the foot of the hill, and, instead of entering the circle of the wigwams, squatted ourselves down at about sixty yards from them. A quarter of an hour had already passed away: already angry impatience, and the pangs of hunger and thirst, were about to burst asunder all the restraints of reason, when a piece of burning wood was thrown

are closely allied to those which the writer noticed in the prairies of North America, amongst the Indians of South America, and in some of the South Sea islands.

This identity or analogy seems to prove, that either the social age, which the Australians have attained in the course of human progress, is the same as that of the nations alluded to, or that these similar customs and superstitions have resulted from similar interests, passions, propensities, or exigences.

Their superstitious spirit watches eagerly the coming and passing of every event, and not less eagerly seeks to draw, from the present, intimations of the future. The mysterious belief in good or evil omen, links the present and future of the Australian in one unbroken chain of anxieties, fears, hopes, and anticipations. His life, then, like that of the Arabs, possesses, amidst the monotony of existence, elements of excitement in infinite variety, both painful and pleasurable.

towards us from the nearest wigwam. My guide then rose, and proceeded to pick it up with a measured step; returned, kindled a fire, put on it an opossum, which we had in store; resumed his position, continuing to gnaw his stick, and at times stirring the fire, at times casting his looks sideways. In ten minutes more a calabash of water was brought by an elderly woman, and left midway between their fire and ours. The calabash was followed by fish, laid on a neat strip of bark, which, like the piece of burning wood, was brought to our hearth by the guide. Hunger and thirst were soon appeased, and extreme fatigue had just begun to close my eyes, when an old man in the camp rose up and advanced towards us. The guide met him half-way, and a parley ensued, in which the object of my wanderings was inquired into, and ascertained. On the return of the old man, a thrilling and piercing voice was heard relating the subject to the meeting. Silence followed for a few moments, when, instead of the expected invitation to join the camp, we were ordered to return from whence we came. There was no appeal against this decision. We rose and began to retrace our steps. Simple child of nature! faithful to her inspirations, the native of Australia proceeds in the discharge of hospitality by a way exactly the reverse of our own he first satisfies the wants of a traveller, and afterwards asks him those questions which in our civilisation precede and regulate the kind and quantity of the hospitality to be accorded, and sometimes prompt its refusal altogether."— MS. Journal of the Author.

His poetry evinces the same activity and exuberance of imagination as his superstition: it is lyrical, wild, and primitive; but love, that most beautiful object and element of all poetry, is excluded from it. Mysticism, and sometimes valour in combat, but more frequently licentiousness and the praise of sensual gratification, are his favourite themes. This poetry is never recited: it is sung; and, when once composed, passes through all the tribes that speak the same language with surprising rapidity.

Migration, the chase, fishing, and occasional war, alternated by feasting, and lounging in the spots best adapted to repose, fill up the time of an Australian. The pangs and gnawings of ambition, avarice, discontent, or weariness of life, the distress caused by oppression or persecution, the maladies arising from the corrupt or artificial state of society, are unknown to him; as are also the cares and anxieties of arts, sciences, and industry; from all of which, the physical condition of the country, and the manifold provisions of a beneficent Providence have preserved him; whilst that share of health and content which falls to his lot, rewards him amply for his faithful adherence to the dictates of nature.

Few spectacles can be more gratifying to the philosopher than to behold him and his in their own as yet uninvaded haunts; and few can exhibit a more striking proof of the bountiful dispensation of the Creator, than the existence of one whose destiny the singular presumption of the whites, in their attachment to conventional customs and worldly riches, has stigmatised and denounced as "savage, debased, unfortunate, miserable." To any one, however, who shakes off the trammels of a conventional, local, and therefore narrow mode of thinking,-to any one who studies and surveys mankind in personal travels, and by personal observation,-it will

appear evident that Providence has left as many roads to the threshold of contentment and happiness as there are races of mankind; and when he beholds the serene, calm, mild, yet lively countenances of the Australasian natives, their dance and song, those uncontrollable manifestations of attained felicity,-he finds really in the scene a corroboration of what otherwise a mere inference, from the goodness and omniscience of the Creator, might have taught him to believe.

Placed by that Creator, in perfect harmony with the whole economy of nature, in his allotted dwelling and destiny, the Australian is seen procuring for himself all that he wants, regulating all his social affairs, and securing all the worldly happiness and enjoyment of which his condition is capable.

The arrival of Europeans disturbed this happy economy; and the hearths of the natives, like the wigwams of the American Indians, retreated or disappeared before the torrent of immigration.

The manifold calamities*, - but more particularly

* The slave trade, that stigma which the sordid thirst of gain has fixed on European civilisation, is not one of the least frightful of those evils which result from our intercourse with indigenous tribes. England has nobly avenged the cause of outraged humanity, by placing herself at the head of that most noble of crusades engaged in the abolition of this infamous traffic. Ignorance of the evils which this traffic entails can alone have been able to calumniate a christian policy, and to represent it as a series of tortuous and unworthy intrigues, of which the ruin of Brazil and of the Antilles, and the further aggrandisement of the East Indies, were to be the only result.

Let those who in the abstract principle of slavery see nothing disgraceful to the legislation of our age, reflect on the individual misery it produces, and the feelings of horror they must then experience will suffice to refute all the arguments of a false and worn-out logic.

To those innumerable pictures of suffering which the slave trade has furnished, and which have so often been exhibited to the public, I will add the following, of which I was myself an eye-witness. I find it inserted in my journal of 1836.

Rio Janeiro, 22nd January, 1836. - Yesterday, Her Britannic Majesty's sloop of war, the "Satellite," Captain Smart, brought into this