Thamanampalli Surekha

small township from its being the first which greets them in Australia when bound for this port, and from its possessing some good stone-built houses, stares, and hotels. But it is a place of very little importance in the colony, although from, its advantageous situation, it should have become the principal sea-port in Victoria, the drawback to its success is the want of fresh water, which is not to be found in its vicinity, and the inhabitants are actually obliged to send to Melbourne for every drop of fresh water they use. It can easily be imagined, therefore, in these gold-digging times, that this necessary article would cost much to bring down. We read in the newspapers that one pound seven shillings was given for a load of water, for the use of the watch-house, a load being 800 gallons. As we saw no use of idling our time away in this poor place, we went an board the next steamer for Melbourne, which was the Aphrasia from, Geelong, as smart a river boat as any on the Thames or Mersey. There was a large company of people on board, of all classes, and from all parts of the country, amongst wham, we freely mixed, and conversed upon all subjects. In that short voyage from Williamstown to Melbourne we obtained a more correct estimate of the character of the colonists, and the resources of the province, than we had gathered from all the books we had ever read. Therefore, gentle reader, in the following unvarnished narrative, we shell only expect to convey to you but a shadowy knowledge of the substance which exists in that land of realities. You must go there and judge for yourself; you should hear the clear hearty laugh of those prosperous colonists, to estimate fully the hilarity of Australian temperaments; you must breathe the air of that intensely blue sky; to conceive the bright glaring matter-of-factness which reigns over the material world of Australia; you must listen to the graphic and truthful expressions of the people, to credit the buoyancy and activity with which the perceptive and imaginative faculties come into play in that sunny clime. For ourselves, we felt at once, as we paced the deck of the Geelong steamboat, that we had already mingled in the business of the colony, and we talked and laughed with people who were perfect strangers to us with something approaching to familiarity, we did not feel that we were in a strange land; the voices, the faces, the manners of the people were a reflection of our own; and we appeared to be steaming up some quiet river in the old country upon a summer excursion. First impressions are not always to be relied upon for their correct judgment of men and things; still we are of opinion that, when faithfully related, they convey to others the general character of both, which subsequent experiences give in detail, and rarely obliterate from the memory. Such, at all events, were our first impressions the day we landed on the shares of Australia; and however much we may have forgotten the beauty or novelty of scenes afterwards lingered upon, we have not forgotten them. After leaving the ship- which seemed the last link in the chain that bound us to the old hemisphere-we felt as if a cloak of prejudices had fallen from our shoulders, and we were relieved from the burden. Those superstitious feelings which are cherished so much amidst the gloomy ruins and dark skies of the north, had apparently not travelled so for with us. Even the pleasing romantic notions we had entertained of this for-off land before starting fled from our recollection the moment we put foot on share. We could not imagine fairies to haunt those dry open thin- leaved forests, or ghosts to hide themselves from, the clear daylight or moonlight which prevailed. These impressions never left us during our sojourn in these unromantic every-day-looking regions. Our imagination became divested of all ideas of grandeur or romance upon viewing the occupations of the people, or the quiet scenery of the country. Amongst the former, we saw, merely an industrious community, tailing and labouring for a subsistence or an independence, which came readier to the hand than in other lands; and as the latter opened upon us at intervals, we seldom, found the prevailing features of the mountains and valleys, the plains and forests, the rivers and lakes, soaring into the sublime; more frequently revelled in the beautiful, and as rarely sunk into the insignificant as they fell into the monotonous. With the flood-tide in our favour, we entered the Yarra-Yarra river, signifying in the aboriginal language "flowing-flowing," from the circumstance of its containing always a current of fresh water, while other streams to be about a mile wide, its eastern bank being low, marshland, with very few, trees on it, and the western bank a stony ridge, with stunted gum-trees upon it, scarcely dense enough to be called forest-land. For about three miles you ascend the river in a northerly direction, retaining its width pretty nearly all the way, when it suddenly narrows into a small stream, not more than two hundred yards wide; and this is again lessened a little further on, where it is divided into two branches, what appears to be the main branch still continuing in a northerly direction, the lesser stream meeting it at a right angle from the eastward. The former is called the Salt-water river, and ceases to have the appearance of a river ten miles from, this junction; the latter is the Yarra-Yarra, which derives its source from a range of mountains, known as the Snowy Mountains, fifty miles to the eastward. About fifty years age, this river was ascended by government surveyors, to report upon its capabilities for the formation of a settlement. Pursuing the northern branch, which they found destitute of