WHILE the commercial nations of Europe were pushing discoveries, and making territorial acquisitions in the Eastern and Western hemispheresthe Old and the New World; while England had been colonizing the lands of America, and conquering the kingdoms of India, the wide tracts of the South Pacific and South Indian Oceans embosomed in unknown solitude a number of vast and populous islands, which, since their discovery,

VOL. I.

B

2

POLYNESIAN ISLANDS.

have been named and classed as a fifth grand division of the globe under the title of Polynesia.

The most prominent in geographical importance of the Polynesian islands are Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea; but while the latter with its group of sister islands, forming a connecting link between Asia and Australia, has been hardly explored, the former with their dependencies have become British colonies, second only in wealth and value to the Canadas, and the West Indian Islands.

The chief, as it is the oldest colony planted by Great Britain on the continental island of Australia, is New South Wales; and it is the history and general description of this settlement that we now propose to compile for the information of the English reader, and for the perusal of our native youth.

After a course of fifty years, as a penal colony, New South Wales is now ranked in the list of the free dependencies of the Crown, and besides the highly curious and interesting field of research and narrative which its early history affords, it has now arrived at a point in its career which indicates the present as the fittest time for the composition of a work embracing its past history, its actual position, and its future prospects. The institution we mean is that of a local legislature, combining the principles of elective representation with the representation of the Crown interests,

and the establishment of this fixes a date up to which the previous progress of the colony forms of itself an era, or period of history: it is through the details of that period, that we now purpose to carry the reader.

The plan upon which the following work is composed, is of a descriptive as well as statistical nature, combining the mode and style pursued by Lang and Martin. It has always appeared to us that the former is too generally descriptive, the latter too sterile in his materials for general interest. Lang is exceedingly meagre in his statistical details, and weak in his financial views; Martin is replete with figures, but such as are often incorrect and sometimes contradictory. In the following papers, the early history which is connected, we consider, with the first distinctive period that we have described, is made to contain a narrative of the earliest discoveries of Australia down to the naming and taking possession of New South Wales by Cook, the Navigator; the formation of a penal settlement at Port Jackson, or Sydney under Captain Phillip, the first Governor of the territory; and a brief but complete and faithful memoir of the several administrations of his successors in the government of the colony. We have given, however, in a separate chapter, a larger proportionate space to the administrations of Sir Richard Bourke and Sir George Gipps, both from the greater development of the country during their

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EARLY DISCOVERY

term of vice-regal sway, and because, as yet, the political state of New South Wales under their rule has been nowhere succinctly described-the history written by Dr. Lang only proceeding so far as the first year of Sir Richard Bourke's go

vernment.

The continental island of Australia was visited, it is now generally agreed, by De Quiros, a Spanish navigator, in 1609, who, evidently desirous to emulate in this new tract of country the adventures and successes of Columbus and his followers in America, proposed to the reigning monarch of Spain to fit out an expedition for its conquest and possession. For once, however, the swelling ideas of the Hispanian Princes on the subject of universal monarchy were limited, if not suppressed; the Court of Madrid was satisfied with the acquisition of all the Americas, and allowed the Australias to remain an open field for the enterprise of other Kings.

During the next forty years several Dutch navigators at various dates fell in with the land on the northern and western coasts, and through their combined observations was obtained a tolerably faithful knowledge of the outline of the country from its south-western extremity (at which the colony of Swan River is now situated) to the northwestern promontory or cape which borders on the Gulf of Carpentaria, and is the site of Port Essington, and the present settlement of Victoria.

Nor did the discoveries of the Dutch stop here; for another navigator, sent thither for the purpose of surveying by the Dutch East India Company, discovered and named Van Diemen's Land, which up to that time had been supposed to be a cape or extremity of Australia. The same commander, Tasman, also sailed round the northern extremity of the island of New Zealand, which he named Cape Maria Van Diemen-the two discoveries thus christened, being called by him after the Governor of the Dutch settlement of Batavia and his daughter, under whose auspices he had undertaken the exploratory voyage.

The Gulf of Carpentaria lying just to the eastward of the northern cape, which we have described as one of the termini of the early Dutch surveys, was entered, explored and named after himself by a commander of the name of Carpenter. The name, therefore, which one half the island of Australia bears-that of New Holland, or as it is written in the original Dutch, "Niew Hollandt” is justly and properly retained by modern hydrographers, whilst the remaining half is called generally New South Wales, from the eastern coast having been so first designated by Captain Cook, to whose enterprise and that of other English navigators, the eastern and southern coasts of Australia more particularly owe their discovery.

It is to be observed that these are the two main divisions of Australia. Portions of territory have,