Page:The A. B. C. of Colonization.djvu/30

This page has been validated.

25

earth; I believe we can raise a group from here, I am as anxious to go as ever I was, aad others as well; I shall be able to pay £10., perhaps more, but go I must, if I am kept in bondage after I get there for seven years. I shall take it as a favour if you give me further information." This poor man wrote to me about two years ago, telling me that he failed to get a free passage through the authorised channel, because Providence blessed him with one child more than the regulations allowed; these £10. he has since saved by pinching frugality. When then I see daily the ardent desire manifested by the industrious classes to emigrate in order to escape the continual struggle they have to endure in this country, when I know from personal observation the vast resources which Australia offers, the comfort, the abundance the people in these colonies enjoy, when I know again that there are vast regions there which have never yet been trod by the foot of Europeans, save by that intrepid and successful explorer, Sir Thomas Mitchell, and his small party, and who in writing of this new country calls it, "the fairest region on earth, plains and downs of rich black mould on which grew in profusion the panicum-læodine grass, and which was finely interspersed with lines of wood, which grew in the hollows, and marked the courses of streams." Of another part he says, "the country is adorned by lulls of the most romantic. form, presenting outlines which surpass in picturesque beauty the fairest creations of the painter," and the Melbourne Daily News, in calling attention to Sir Thomas' discoveries, observes, "In the course of his (Mitchell's) journey he came upon the largest river he had yet met with in Australia, and which he named the Victoria, The whole country through which he pursued this magnificent river, was