Thamanampalli Surekha

others, mingling higgledy-piggledy with the tidy neatness of their more orderly cabin-mates, present a scene that would be ludicrous, were it not for the sufferings of the latter. Many were the complaints brought before the captain by ladies who occupied cabins in this portion of our ship against the filthy habits and language of those whom circumstances had thrown them amongst. But what could he do to amend matters? he could only appeal to their feelings of shame, which, in most instances, were entirely blunted. Here his authority ended. He could not enter the cabin of the filthy indolent passengers, whose bedding had not been aired during the voyage, and oblige him to get up. Neither could he compel him to wash his greasy plates and dishes, which were stinking under the nostril of his cabin-mates. In this respect, government emigrant ships have the advantage; for in them cleanliness and are enforced by officers appointed for the purpose; whereas in the others no discipline can be maintained, simply because the passenger who pays his way considers his cabin as his castle, and will do as he likes in spite of every body, within the bounds of mutiny. The captain and his subordinate officers have the ship's duties to attend to; and they generally consider that the comforts of such passengers do not come within the sphere of that duty. A top-gallant breeze just adapt the beam soon carried our good ship on her course again; and the thirtieth day from Cape Agullus we were in the longitude of Cape Leeuwin, in the south-westerns angle of the great island-continent of the Australia, as some geographers term it. Here, in latitude 39° south, we got into foggy weather and baffling winds, having all the indications of our proximity to land, the thermometer rising to 70° At last we had reached the latitudes of this far-off land, a circumstance which at once engrossed the attention of every one on board from the cabin distance from the mother-country; the sum of which , although generally known, will be none the worse for being inserted here, merely to refresh the memory of the reader, whom we request to glance cursorily at its position on the chart of the world, already referred to during our voyage, and as we found it advantageous afterwards to re-read, carefully about this distance from the part of our destination all the available books to be had in the ship upon the subject, we advise all intending colonist to make a note of this in their journals. The same desire to turn all attention towards the goal of our enterprise seemed universal throughout the ship, In fact, it was only now, on reaching the latitude and longitude of the Australian shares, that our motley assemblage of passengers began calmly and n seriously to think and speak of the prudence of the step they had undertaken; forb the hard rubs encountered in elbowing the crowd of people whom they could not avoid on the passage out seemed to give them a foretaste of what they should meet with in the land of their adoption. The excitement and, in many instances, the romance which had prompted numbers of our fellow-passengers to emigrate, had long since passed away, and the reality of their position for the first time presented itself, when they were just upon the eve of landing on the shares of the promised land; and if the secret feelings could have been recorded of many on board, no doubt they would gladly have returned to the certain comforts they had left for the uncertain visions of wealth they imagined in the land before them. A seriousness, nay even a gloom, pervaded the conversation on board, as our fellow- passengers spoke of their future proceedings. To all such who may have similar fears of what is inn stare for them, we say, Be of good cheer, the land you are proceeding to is not a foreign land; the some sympathies which followed you form the homes you have left will greet you when once you mingle in the domestic circles of the people of Australia. To return to our lesson in geography. We take it for granted that the reader is acquainted with the geographical position of Australian on the globe, viz that it is situated in the southern hemisphere, and that it is the largest island in the world, the details of which are, that its greatest breadth from east to west is about 2700 miles, and at its widest part, from north to south, about 2000 miles, its general superficies being nearly three million square miles, or two thousand millions of square acres of land, a superficies not for short of the extent of Europe. At the same time it must not be supposed that the entire area of this immense island is equally fertile with the European continent, or capable of supporting as dense a population. As a tract of country, it is more allied, in its geographical features, to the African than the European continent, where the amount of available land for the support of man is limited to a tithe of its actual extent. From the data of travellers and explorers such as Sturt, Leichhardt, Strzelecki, and Mitchell, we are justified in concluding that the interior of Australia is a desert, a second Sahara; by geologists considered the recently upheaved bed of a portion of the Indian Archipelago, with scarcely an oasis upon it to famish nourishment for the subsistence of its aboriginal inhabitants. Upon its borders are found salsolaceous plants, but on its desert plains vegetation ceases, and the western rivers, which rise in its golden cordillera, vanish occasionally in its sandy bosom. Within that position which is the more immediate object of our notice, known as south-eastern Australia, we may reasonably conclude is limited the extent of territory for many years to come, for