island,

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is that elderly gentleman with the silvery hair? That," said he, " is Mr. White, the owner of the brig, originally a convict, but now a person of great wealth, and this dashing fine little craft he has built to sail into England, to surprise with it his old friends!" "The elderly lady is his wife, I suppose, and the two neat elegant sisterly girls are most likely his daughters?" "No; Mrs. Clayton has lived with White for many years; she left her own husband, preferring to live with White; the husband grumbled a little; but White gave him a dozen sheep for her, and he was satisfied." And in such a moral atmosphere were those two very fair, modest-looking, neatly attired, and really very superior-seeming young ladies, brought up. They were natives of Van Diemen's Land, and were full of anticipation and hope, no doubt, on their way to pay a visit to their unseen kindred, in that, to them, most wonderful of famous lands-England.

MAJOR LETTSOME'S EXPEDITION FROM SYDNEY TO MELBOURNE, FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-THREE MILES, AND BACK AGAIN.

A FAITHFUL COLONIAL HISTORY.

Rumours perpetually reached Sydney through the medium of the Port Phillip press, and were not less frequently aimed at the government authorities through private channels, of the continual depredations committed by the aborigines on property of one kind or other, cattle speared, sheep driven off, and, last but not least, of shepherds and hut-keepers killed from time to time in that fine and extensive pastoral province Australia Felix. It really was a trying time, and these reports grew every day more alarming.

At length it was resolved to send a portion of the military to allay the apprehensions of the inhabitants of that famous district; to subdue the refractory; and by some brilliant display of military prowess, to strike dismay into the blood-thirsty cannibals, to restore order, and leave tranquillity behind them.

In due time, and amidst much rejoicing, Major Lettsome arrived in Melbourne, attended by twenty horse-soldiers.

It was allowed on all hands that they performed prodigies of horsemanship and valour. They scoured the whole of that immense country as though it were a small saucepan. Many grave announcements appeared from time to time of the Major's doings, and his whereabouts. One while they might be amongst

!

the Pyrenees, on the Grampians, or threading the mazes of the Youyong. Then, in how marvellously little time! they were traversing the Edward, a tributary of the Murray. Then crossing and re-crossing the River Goulbourn. Then they might, for aught any body knew to the contrary, be making sulphurous work on the Devil's River. Surely they, both the Major and his men, had some strange ubiquity of person, or great skill in making the best of their numbers and appearance, for they seemed here, there, and everywhere at once.

This was singular enough, but there was yet something more singular. Campbell sung that

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Coming events cast their shadows before,"

and certainly it must have been so, for wherever the gallant Major and his troopers appeared, trees there were, dead trees in abundance for them to tumble over, stony wildernesses on and over which they did penance; but for natives, a hush and a sleep attended our warriors through the primeval forests as though it had been unbroken from the creation. They beat scrubby marshes mile after mile, popped into hollow gum-trees, o'ertopped the highest mountains, traversed wildernesses, thrust their noses and swords into dens and caves; but for natives, they had surely gotten "the receipt of fernseed," and "walked invisible none could they find. Had they, thought the Major, taken themselves away by some sudden and mysterious movement into the heavens, or into the earth, there could not have been a more complete vanishing, a stronger feeling of silentness and desolation breathed through the land, in the length and the breadth of it. Nay, he was thoroughly satisfied that were a reward to be offered for the apprehension of one native, he would not be forthcoming in the districts which they had so valiantly and laboriously traversed. Still the gallant Major felt certain there had been natives, not long ago, in many places visited by him; of this their camp-fires, not always extinguished, were intimations. He knew them to be where they were not wanted, sturdy pieces of black human nature, intolerably real; and that were he to doubt two of his senses, eye and ear, another, conscious of their going by him to windward, would set the matter at rest.

He had done his duty as an officer; he was satisfied of that. He was not sent down from Sydney to make black fellows where there were none; but if any were troublesome, to consign them over to punishment, if he could catch them.

What was to be done? he had canvassed marsh and moor,

heath and holm, like a true sportsman, but was able to spring none of the black game on Nature's out-of-the-way manors. Still there was the Protectorate station-there were the preserves. That was a good idea. There might be some pretty picking amongst them.

Once more in Melbourne, the Major felt a little mortified that, like the prophet Jonah, he had been sent on so great an embassy without any visible result. He, therefore, lost no time in making inquiries as to the number of natives in the Protector's charge, that were of villanous or doubtful character. This settler and the other were applied to, and, at last, how fortunate! seven aborigines were set down in the Major's black catalogue. To capture these he thought would be an easy and solacing adventure. He applied to Mr. Thomas, Assistant Protector, to assist in the delivery, as he termed it, of these natives up to justice; but Mr. Thomas respectfully declined, not choosing to betray those whom it was his duty and inclination to defend. Moreover, Mr. T. assured the military leader, that these denounced cannibals were very decent creatures; nay, the very paragons of black fellows! Major Lettsome shook his head incredulously; and decided to fetch them in the morning.

From Melbourne in the morning rode the Major and his troop. They crossed the Yarra at the Melbourne Punt; and thence rode up the south side of the river, eight miles, to the native encampment. They had met with some delay, not being familiar with that part of the country, so that just before noon they came up to Mr. Thomas's tent, round which stood in groups or singly, not the natives, but their miams, houses of bark and boughs; for, singularly enough! the black people had evaporated. There were the embers of many half-extinguished fires; pieces of red gum with their lead-coloured bark, sinking down drowsily amongst white ashes; old dilapidated tins; bones, empty bottles, ragged clothes in heaps; mat sugar-bags; fragments_of opossum skins, empty miams, but nowhere a native. Far below, flowed deeply betwixt precipitous banks the glassy river. On the other side, right before them, in another encampment, the wild people walked about, or lay lazily stretched out in the sun, very much at their ease. Not so was the Major. The scene was beautiful: most graceful shrubs, huge fantastic trees dipping their pendant boughs in the water; greyly mirrowed rocks, with grand curves and sweeps of steep embankments, but he had no eye for them. He writhed and jerked himself about in his saddle; upbraided Mr. Thomas for making known to the natives his intended visit; and eagerly inquired where

the river was fordable. Here again he was destined to disappointment. Only three miles hence was the crossing-place, at the junction of the Merri and the Yarra ; but holding too far out into the bush he missed it, and not until he had touched again and again, did he manage to get over the river, and then, in the evening, was twenty miles from Melbourne. Off they rode all speed for the new native encampment; not humming to themselves that wicked distich, though had there been one wag in the company he must have been reminded of it

"The King of France with forty thousand men

Marched up a hill, and then marched down again."

Afar off our heroes descried the miam village, for a gentle breeze just then wafted the night-fires into sudden brilliancy. But on arriving there, a great quietness received them. There was nothing of that mingling of wild noises; no loud wrangling ; no shrill lamentations of children, blest with the snarls, yells and barkings of myriads of curs and mongrels. All was still. Only on the other side of the river were still brighter fires than those around them; and the measured strokes of the native dance. explained at once what there was inexplicable in the matter. Safe were they on the other side.

The Major rapped out a soldierly oath, slapped his hand upon his thighs; clapped spurs into his horse, and he and his twenty troopers, hungry as death and jaded with travel, rode into Melbourne.

The next day, alas for the poor blacks! news reached Melbourne that the Gipps'-land natives had made an attack on Mr. Jamieson's station at Western Port, and Mr. Thomas was despatched by the superintendent of Port Phillip to see into the affair.

Now, Major, is your time! the natives lie at your mercy; the Protector is gone!

And, indeed, he lost no time. The seven poor wretches were seized, ironed, and duly committed to take, there being then no Supreme Court in Melbourne, their trials at Sydney.

Thus shackled, they were put into a boat, and were sent in the custody of two men down the river to be put on board a vessel at anchor in the bay, in which they were to be forwarded to their place of destination.

That place was nearer than they expected. The two men got drunk before setting off; and no sooner was the boat a little way out of the sight of Melbourne, than the natives jostled their keepers aside, jumped into the Yarra and disappeared. Did

they go to the bottom? No! they only made their way, like so many frogs under water, to breathe amongst the reeds on the river's margin, until the boatmen went back thinking them drowned. Then there was a rush and a scramble to hide themselves till night amongst the tea-tree scrub. This they did effectually, although there was, almost immediately, the strictest

search.

It would have been a good joke had the Melbournites dragged the river, but that I believe they did not do.

Several hungry days were over before the poor fellows got out of their irons. They, however, remembered one amongst the settlers in whom they knew they could confide. To him they went; he received them kindly, and secretly liberated them. Still it was sometime before they ventured to show themselves openly, or to join their old comrades at the native encampment.

So ended Major Lettsome's bloodless expedition. Thanks to him and his men! Such people as they are public benefactors. Out of the matter-of-fact, every-day dulness of life they draw, like lightning from darkness, something new to surprise and delight us. They are the only true heroes, and theirs the only true victory.

Their name and exploits are, in Melbourne and elsewhere, a perpetual entertainment. Thanks to them!

COLONIAL HAWKS AND EAGLES.

There is a marvellous difference betwixt petty depredators and the race of genteel freebooters. The souls of the former, to use Ben Jonson's term, were born in a narrow alley; their thoughts have a restricted range, and their attention is perpetually engrossed by small objects : whilst the latter, better educated, look down as from the world's eyrie like the eagle, with ample breadth of land and sea before them. Their eyes behold much that is valuable on the earth, and what they see, they determine, somehow or other, to make their own. How finely, how fittingly the mercantile portion of this class of men were designated by John Keats, "the hawks of ship-mast forests." The busiest part of the noisy, dusty, brick-wall town is their fitting birth-place for the hardness of external objects and the dryness of the dust is in their souls. Their histories and romances, the amusing books of their childhood, are The Young Man's Best Companion, The Ready Reckoner, Day-Books, and Ledgers: whilst to use the words of Milton, their

"Childhood shows the man as morning shows the day."