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dent that we shall ere long make such rapid progress in the right direction, and make such noise in the world too in doing so, that instead of turning up your noses and saying " Another book on Australia!-poh! poh !— mere rubbish like all the rest won't sell can't have any thing to do with it!"-you will all be scrambling to have it first; that is to say, provided it should be a good book-like mine.

I have the honour to be,

GENTLEMEN,

Your most obedient Servant,

EDINBURGH, 24th April 1847.

THE AUTHOR.

[BY THE SAME AUTHOR.]

In the press and speedily will be published, in a uniform size with the present volume,

COOKSLAND; or the Northern Division of the Colony of New South Wales: its characteristics and capabilities as the future Cotton-field for Great Britain. With a Disquisition on the Origin, Manners and Customs of the Aborigines.

Preparing for publication,

AN HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF NEW SOUTH WALES, both as a Penal Settlement and as a British Colony. Third edition, bringing down the history of the Colony to the close of the Administration of Sir George Gipps. Two vols. 16mo.

INTRODUCTION.

THE vast territory hitherto comprehended under the general designation of the Colony of New South Wales, has evidently been designed by the great Author of Nature to form three separate and independent Colonies or States.

The first of these-known for the last few years as the Middle District, or New South Wales Properextends from Cape Howe, the south-eastern extremity of the land, to the Solitary Isles, or the 30th parallel of South latitude. The second-known as the Northern or Moreton Bay District-extends from the 30th parallel of South latitude to the Tropic of Capricorn. And the third-known as the Southern or Port Phillip District-extends from Cape Howe to the 141st meridian of East longitude, which forms the present Parliamentary boundary, to the eastward, of the Colony of South Australia.

Each of these divisions of the present unwieldy Colony possesses a coast line of about 500 miles; that of the Middle and Northern Districts being towards the Southern Pacific, and that of the Southern or Port Phillip District towards Bass' Straits and the Great Southern Ocean. They have each a sufficient extent of available territory for the settlement of a numerous population and the establishment and maintenance of a respectable Colonial Government; and they have each also a magnificent harbour for foreign commerce,

A

conveniently situated at nearly an equal distance from the opposite extremities of their respective coast lines; the harbour of Port Jackson or Sydney being the great emporium for foreign commerce for the Middle District or New South Wales Proper, that of Moreton Bay for the Northern District, and that of Port Phillip for the Southern.

The boundaries of the great Colony of New South Wales, either towards the neighbouring Colony of South Australia to the westward, or towards the Moreton Bay country to the northward, have not yet been definitively fixed; for it is not surely too much to assume that the present Parliamentary boundaries of the 141st meridian of East longitude, as the common boundary of the Colonies of New South Wales and South Australia, and of the 26th parallel of South latitude, as the boundary of New South Wales to the northward-evincing, as these boundaries do, the want of everything like reason and common sense, as well as an utter disregard for the convenience and comfort of the future inhabitants of these extensive regions-were merely intended to serve a temporary purpose, till the country should be fully explored, and its great natural features ascer tained, and the proper boundaries, for the great con- · terminous British communities of which it is evidently destined to become the local habitation, fixed and determined.

Neither has the permanent boundary between the Middle District or New South Wales Proper and the Southern or Port Phillip District been definitively fixed, although the subject is at present under consideration by Her Majesty's Government, in consequence of the earnest desire of the inhabitants of Port Phillip, expressed in a petition to Her Majesty the Queen, from the whole of the Representatives of the District in the

present Legislative Council of New South Wales, to be erected into a separate and independent Colony.

The object of the following work is to describe the actual condition, and to point out the extraordinary capabilities for extensive emigration and colonization of the third of the Districts above-mentioned-the Southern or Port Phillip District of the great Colony of New South Wales. And this District I propose, for the reasons following, as well as in accordance with the opinion and desire of several of its most intelligent and influential inhabitants, to designate PHILLIPSLAND.*

1. It is expedient and necessary that every separate and distinct Colony of the British Empire should have a distinctive and appropriate name; and as the province of Port Phillip must necessarily have this character and standing very soon, if not immediately, it is desirable, on many accounts, that it should have such a name forthwith. Now, the name proposed is in perfect accordance with the genius of our language, as well as with common usage in a variety of other parallel cases; as, for example, England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Poland, Friesland, Jutland, Iceland, Greenland, Lapland, Finland, Newfoundland, Maryland, Van Dieman's Land, Heligoland.

2. Port-Phillip is already the distinctive and appropriate name of a magnificent inlet of the ocean, forming a splendid harbour for commerce for the extensive territory in which it is situated; but it is by no means

* Sir Thomas Mitchell has named the western part of this province, which he discovered and traversed in the year 1836, Australia Felix ; but this is rather a poetical designation than a proper name—as when we call Great Britain "the sea-girt isle," ог "the Queen of the seas ;" and besides, it does not extend to the whole province.