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Northern continents and islands) above the level of the sea. That interior hollowness, or basin-like formation of the surface, which is the cause of the running of so many of its rivers inland, instead of to the sea, is not the least of the circumstances which may justify such an idea; for it is common, both with the sea, and with great rivers, to raise, by means of their deposits, either in storms or inundations, their immediate shores and banks above the level of the remoter soil which they thus engirdle. It is thus, so often, with the downs, or dunes, or hills upon the seacoasts; and it is thus that the immediate banks of the Missisippi (for example) are natural dykes, or higher than the lands behind them. But, in such a structure of its surface, New Holland is not peculiar; or, rather, the peculiarity consists only in the lateness of the day at which we see it. In the heart of Northern Asia, and lying between Northern Mongolia and Northern China, quite to the Chinese Wall, is a vast and hollow tract of country, in which every thing demonstrates its being the dry bed of an ancient sea. The Mongols, upon the authority of tradition, assert that it anciently contained a sea, and add, that it will receive a sea again. The Chinese call it Han Hae, or the Dried-up Sea; and assert, that the people of Corea, if so disposed, by availing themselves of this inland basin, and opening a passage to it, through their mountains, from the great ocean upon its coast, might inundate, not only all Mongolia, but all Russia at the same time! This vast hollow, the Shan Mo of the Chinese, and True Gobi, Cobi, Desert, or Desert of Gobi, or Cobi (written Kobi on our maps), is in the midst of the more extended Gobi, from which it is separated by the Boossoo Shilolm, or Girdle of Rocks: Gobi,

in the Mongolian tongue, signifying the same with Sahara, in the north of Africa; that is, a country without wood and water; while by the opposite term, Changgae, is to be understood a fertile, hilly, wooded, and well-watered country. In the True Gobi, or the Mo of the Chinese, which, however, is small, as compared with the whole country, the sands and clays are abundant in salt; there are little salt lakes still left; and the plants are a peculiar species of the genera that are found upon the sea-coasts *. I compare," added Mr. Paulett," with this changing state of a sunken and internal portion of the North of Asia, the internal basin of New Holland."

"But what say you to the natives?" pursued Mrs. Paulett.

“I believe, in the first place," answered her husband, "that they are decried to excess by the Europeans; and, in the second place, I account for their deficiencies, bodily and intellectual, such as they are, from the acknowledged deficiencies of their country, and from their depressed and unassisted situation. I believe that they belong to the great family of man, and not to that of the oran-otang, to which so many would consign them. There are persons so ignorant as to assert that they are without any form, or even sentiment, of religion; as if man any where, or at any time, has subsisted in such a state; and as if, in point of fact, these very persons did not, in the same breath, inform us of circumstances which make manifest their possession of a religion! In a cave, in a certain direction, has been found a carving of a figure

Recent Journey of Dr. Bunge, from St. Petersburg to the Frontiers of China,

of the sun, and of certain other symbols; and I doubt not these people belong to the ancient and simple congregation of sun-worshippers, or fire-worshippers, whom the sage of Persia, not founded, but instructed! They are accused, by our colonists and convicts, of being thieves and murderers; but the point is pretty well settled, that even allowing for the natural resentment and resistance of the people of an invaded country, Europeans, and not the aborigines, are the ordinary aggressors, and that what follows is less robbery and murder, than war and vengeance, and even a struggle for life and food. But what Europeans ask for, and more commonly obtain, is the full power and all privilege to plunder, and commit enormities, without suffering by any reprisal; and from this habitual course of things, their surprise is even as real as their outcries are astounding, if, by any chance, they receive blow for blow! Even when things have taken some shape of order between the strangers and the natives, the outrages of the former, and the patient suffering of the latter, become the established order also. I remember, that when I was in the neighbourhood of the Tuscarora Village, at Lewistown, upon the river Niagara, in North America, and when in other similar neighbourhoods; I never failed to hear, upon white authority itself, that the Indians were discouraged from all attempts at cultivating their little plots of ground, by the constant plunder of the white people; so that for the former to plant corn, or beans, or me lons, or cucumbers, with any hope of gathering either, would be absurd! That the Indians would plunder the grounds or gardens of the white people, nobody so much as dreamed of; but that the white people would plunder those of the Indians, was held as cer

tain as it was cruel! Except that, in general circumstances, savages are universally found more honest and less corrupt than the men of civilization, there is no reason why we should expect the natives of New Holland to be more free from crime than their European invaders; but that, while the latter are hourly diminishing the supplies of food, by the destruction of the cangaroos, and of 'such small deer,' which is the whole that their country affords, the former should fall under the temptation to molest the flocks and herds of the settlers can hardly be thought, even in savages, very extraordinary!"

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You are so stout a champion," said Mrs. Paulett, "for the natives of New Holland, who, be it remembered also, are at least in a very inferior condition of humanity to those of the adjacent islands, particularly New Zealand; that I long to hear what you will say for its plants, and still more, for its animals?"

"The plants of Botany Bay, my love," cried Mr. Paulett," are certainly not scanty, however limited may be the number of those that are singularly useful or ornamental; but here, as well as in what belongs to the naked surface of the country, is space for that progress of improvement upon which I reckon so largely for the future. I have supposed that New Holland is comparatively a new country from the hand of nature, and it is certainly new under the hand of man; and this latter point brings us round again to our singing-birds, and our Robin-red-breasts; and to some other considerations which I am willing, in this discussion, to press upon the memory of our children, as lessons of a fruitful wisdom, to accompany the formal lessons of their geography. We seldom think of, and more seldom, perhaps, do we

justly appreciate, all the changes, direct and indirect, upon the surface of the earth, as well as the more obvious accommodations, which are wrought and fashioned by the labour of man; that is, what advantages, in these respects, belong to one country above another; and what just division we ought to make in our thoughts, between the works of nature, and the works of art, as we find them upon the surface of the globe.

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My dear children," continued Mr. Paulett (but addressing himself, as he now spoke, more immediately to Emily and Richard); "that acquaintance with the sites, the circumstances, and the natural productions of foreign and distant countries, which, with so many other matters of fact, it is, in an especial manner, the education of the day to attempt the fixing of in youthful memories like yours, and to which I am now contributing my 'share; all this is estimable, no doubt, as connected with what is called liberal knowledge, and to prevent (as is the more common motive) young persons from showing,' as it is said, 'their ignorance;' that is, because there are certain, and, in short, innumerable things, of which it is expected that persons, and even children, of a certain condition and opportunity in life (by ancient allusion called the liberal or free condition, and by familiar and not unconnected usage, the respectable, the gentle, or genteel), should never be seen in ignorance. But this memory of facts is, at the last, of very little use or dignity, compared with the higher wisdom which, from instance to instance, it is our duty and our happiness to draw from them; and which, when we are either too young, too dull, too thoughtless, or too ill-informed, to draw it for ourselves, we should learn from the lips of others. Now, the facts of which we have been speaking this

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