CONTENTS. ADDRESS to the Publishers of Great Britain and Ireland, CHAPTER I.-Geographical Extent and Boundaries-Pro- gressive Discovery of the Coast Line-Physical Charac- teristics-Mountains and Rivers-With the facilities presented for internal communication, CHAPTER II.-History and Progress of the Settlement, DIRECTIONS TO THE BINDER. V Sketch Map of Phillipsland to front Title page. Maps of Gippsland and the Western Plains and Lakes, at the close of the volume. Sketch of Government Offices and Signal Station, to front page 75. Sketch of Union Bank, to front page 76. Sketch of Hobson's Bay, to front page 103. ✓ Sketch of Native weapons of war, &c., to front page 134. ERRATUM. In page 136, for "one of 100 white men, who were killed by the natives," read "one of two white men." TO THE WORSHIPFUL COMPANY OF PUBLISHERS IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. GENTLEMEN, It was from no desire to invade your peculiar province in the Royal Domain of Literature that I was induced to undertake the publication of this Work at my own risk, and on my own account, but simply from having ascertained from two of your number in the British Metropolis, and from at least as many here in Edinburgh, that our unfortunate Colony of New South Wales, including the District of Port Phillip, had sunk so low in public estimation in this country, under the protracted tyranny of its late Governor, Sir George Gipps, that none of you would venture even to publish a book about it. Now, as I had determined that another book should be published about it-nay, and perhaps a second, and it may be a third; for the subject is of vast extent as well as the Colonial territory-I had no other resource than just, as we Australian colonists call it, to "Squat" among you in Stationers' Hall. I am quite aware that you may not altogether like such an addition to your select society; for we, authors, are in general such a lean scarecrow fraternity, as to form a perfect contrast to the sleek, fat, plump vi fraternity of publishers. Indeed, living, as I have been doing for many years past, next door to New Zealand, I confess I have had sundry suspicions and misgivings of my own, in occasionally contrasting our respective Corporations, as to whether something like a species of civilized cannibalism had not been systematically practised somewhere upon our unfortunate fraternity all along: you are so fat and we are so lean! But how could I help intruding into your company in such circumstances? You would surely not have had me walk up and down The Row, like a hawker and pedlar, to dispose of my inferior Colonial wares. Gentlemen, I am not at all surprised that our Colony should have sunk so low, as you say it has, in public estimation at home, especially in the circumstances you allude to. For after eight years and a-half of such wretched government as we have been doomed to suffer under our late incubus, the wonder is not that we should have been entirely lost sight of as a Colony at home-but that we should have still continued a Colony at all. Perhaps, indeed, the reason why we have is, that there happened to be no native-born Papineau or Heki to organize the ample materials the country afforded a few years ago for a general explosion; which, you will probably discover from the data supplied in my book, might have had a very different issue from those of Canada and New Zealand-insignificant and powerless as a community as we may be supposed to be. But as we have now got a Colonial Ministerthe Right Honourable Earl Grey-who is determined to do justice at length to Australia, and thereby effectually to prevent British interests and British connexion from being ever placed in such jeopardy again in the noble Colonies of that Continent, I feel confi |