BLACKWOOD’S
                          EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

              NO. CCCCLXVII. SEPTEMBER, 1854. VOL. LXXVI.

                               CONTENTS.

       THE HOLY LAND,                                         243
       BELLEROPHON. A CLASSICAL BALLAD,                       256
       THE COMING FORTUNES OF OUR COLONIES IN THE PACIFIC,    268
       SPECULATORS AMONG THE STARS,                           288
       MRS STOWE’S SUNNY MEMORIES,                            301
       THE CRYSTAL PALACE,                                    317
       THE SECRET OF STOKE MANOR: A FAMILY HISTORY.—PART IV., 336
       THE SPANISH REVOLUTION,                                356

                               EDINBURGH:
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           PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

                              BLACKWOOD’S

                          EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

 NO. CCCCLXVII.          SEPTEMBER, 1854.                    VOL. LXXVI.

                           THE HOLY LAND.[1]

Strong and many are the claims made upon us by our mother Earth; the
love of locality—the charm and attraction which some one homely
landscape possesses to us, surpassing all stranger beauties, is a
remarkable feature in the human heart. We who are not ethereal
creatures, but of a mixed and diverse nature—we who, when we look our
clearest towards the skies, must still have our standing-ground of earth
secure—it is strange what relations of personal love we enter into with
the scenes of this lower sphere. How we delight to build our
recollections upon some basis of reality—a place, a country, a local
habitation—how the events of life, as we look back upon them, have grown
into the well-remembered background of the places where they fell upon
us;—here is some sunny garden or summer lane, beatified and canonised
for ever with the flood of a great joy; and here are dim and silent
places, rooms always shadowed and dark to us, whatever they may be to
others, where distress or death came once, and since then dwells for
evermore. As little as we can deprive ourselves of the human frame, can
we divest our individual history of its graceful garment of place and
scene. Such a thing happened, we say; but memory is no bare chronicler
of facts and events, and as we say the words, the time starts up before
us, with all its silent witnesses;—leaves that were shed years ago,
trees cut down and gone, yet they live in our thoughts with the joy or
the sorrow of which they were silent attendants. We have caught and
appropriated these bits of still life—they are a part of our history,
and belong to us for ever.

In some degree every mind must have its own private gallery of pictures,
impossible to be revealed to the vision of another,—from the homely
imagination which cherishes that one bit of sunshine on its walls, “the
house where I was born,” the old childish paradise and ideal, rich with
such flowers and verdure as can be found in no other place, to the
stately and well-furnished recollection which can roam at will through
all the brightest countries in the world; but wherever we go, we weave
ourselves into the landscape, and make every milestone a historical
monument in the chronicle of our life.

And so it comes that natives of a country never expatriated from their
home-soil, grow into a passionate veneration and love for their own
land. The hills which are radiant for ever with their dreams of
youth—the rivers whose familiar voices have chimed into every sound of
their lamentation and their joy—the roads that echo to their daily
footsteps, and all the silent accessories upon which, as on so many
props and pillars, their thoughts for years are hung—the very sight of
which recall a hundred fleeting fancies—the very name of which spreads
pictures lovelier than reality before closed eyes—the “kindly” country,
which seems to respond with a voice borrowed from our own past thoughts
to the thoughts of to-day, suggesting ancient comforts, ancient
blessings, silently speaking hope from experience, solace present from
solace past, lays claims upon us, the most intimate of our confidants,
the nearest to our bosom; and Nature lavish in her demands upon our
sympathy—perpetually calling upon us to weep with her and to rejoice
with her—makes liberal recompense, and softens around us with a visible
embrace our mother country, our sympathetic and consolatory home.

And scarcely less are we moved by localities sacred to the heroes of our
race—storied ground, peopled with names and persons historic in the
national annals, or consecrated to other lives than ours. It is natural
for us to seek those spots with eager interest, to believe ourselves
brought nearer to the great Spirit whose habitation made them famous,
and to linger with visionary satisfaction, looking at things which _he_
must have looked at, realising his life where he led it. Pilgrimages
many grow out of this natural sentiment. The cottage of Shakespeare—the
palace of Scott—the “warm study of deals,” where the Scottish Reformer
belaboured Satan—and the dark-browed rooms where hapless Mary
accomplished her fate. From these shrines we come no wiser—not a whit
better acquainted with the saint of each—notwithstanding we stand in the
same space, we look upon the same walls, we have over us the hallowed
roof, and the instinctive superstition is satisfied with this limited
result of our faith.

But places sacred to one nation are indifferent to another—one class of
men exult over a monument, which to their neighbours is but a block of
stone. Yet there is one holy place where all the nations of the earth
come together to worship—one country rich with a perpetual attraction.
The soil thrills to the consecrating touch of love and grief; the ages
of the past dwell in it as in a sanctuary. Making no account of the
wandering handful of wild Asiatics who surround him, the traveller there
seeks not scenes of to-day, but cities of the dead. The place has a
solemn array of lofty inhabitants, undying fathers of the soil;
generation after generation, conquerors, defenders, devotees, have come
and gone and departed. But we do not search this country for traces of
the Saracen or the Crusader; passing beyond them as modern visitors, a
more ancient race claims the universal awe. It is not the city of
Godfrey of Bouillon, but of David of Bethlehem, which shines on yonder
cluster of hills; and these are not the knightly names of romance which
sanctify the tombs. The brave Crusaders claim memories in other
countries, but they have no memory here where their blood watered the
sacred soil. Turk and Christian, creatures of to-day, stand on the same
platform as we do,—beyond the earliest of them are the true monuments
and memories of this country—

              “Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,
              Which eighteen hundred years ago were nailed
              For our redemption to the bitter cross.”

The story begins and ends in this great figure appearing visibly before
our eyes, and we bow our head to acknowledge Jerusalem, the universal
centre of pilgrimage—Judea, Galilee, the Holy Land.

A land which, if it could be possible to sweep it altogether out of
earthly knowledge, would still live in the pages of one wonderful Book,
and to the readers of that Book be of all countries the most familiar
and well known. Many an untutored peasant, who knows no more of the road
to our own capital than the half-mile of dusty highway under his own
eyes, knows of the way to Bethany, signalised by many wonders—knows of
the road to Gaza which is desert—knows of that road to Damascus where
the traveller was solemnly arrested on his way; and is better aware of
the wayside grave where her heart-stricken husband buried Rachel, “sweet
Syrian shepherdess,” and of Absalom’s tomb which he built to preserve
his name, than of where the royal ashes lie in our own land. Many a
humble scholar, untaught in other history, is learned in the ancient
wars of Israel, and apprehends Moab, and Edom, and Assyria with a
stronger sense of reality than he can apprehend the Russian hordes
embattled against ourselves; and sees Pi-ha-hiroth shut in with its
mountains, Egypt behind and the sea before, as no description, however
vivid, will ever make him see the marshes of the Danube, though he have
a son or a brother militant on that disastrous shore to-day. Strong
security has God taken for the universal remembrance of that beloved
country, blessed by His own Divine preference: while there is a Bible,
there must be a Judea; the landscape in all its glorious tints is
associated for ever with the wonderful artist’s name; and neither its
wretched population nor its heathen rulers, nor all its melancholy
meanness and desolation, existing now, can make Christendom forget that
this discrowned city is the city over which fell the tears of the Lord.

We have no Crusaders in these days; all that remains of our ancient
chivalry finds holier work at home than that impossible redemption of
the Holy Land, which God reserves for His own time, and His own hands;
nor do we need to depend on the vagabond saint of antique times, the
hero of scallop-shell and pilgrim-staff, for our knowledge of Palestine.
Neither travellers nor reports are wanting, and we are by no means
afflicted with monotony of tone or sameness of aspect in the revelations
of our modern pilgrimages. The weary man of fashion who loiters over
Palestine in search of a new sensation—the curt and business-like Divine
who goes thither professionally on a mission of verification and
proof—the wandering _litterateur_ who has a book to make—the
accomplished _savant_ and man of science, follow each other in rapid
succession. Dreamy speculation—decisions of bold rapidity, made at a
glance—accurate topography, slow and careful—each do their devoir in
making known to us this country of universal interest. Nor does even the
lighter portraiture of fiction shrink from the Holy Land, though here
our novelist is a statesman, as much beyond the range of ordinary
novelists, as the locality of that last brilliant romance which it has
pleased him “to leave half told,” differs from the English village or
Scottish glen of common story-telling. To follow Disraeli and Warburton
is no easy task, neither is it quite holiday work to go over the ground
after Robinson and De Saulcy. Lieut. C. W. N. Van de Velde, the latest
traveller of this storied soil, is neither a born poet, nor an
accomplished bookmaker, nor a great divine; but whosoever receives his
book into their household, receives a social visitor, distinct and
tangible—a real man. It is impossible not to clothe the historian with
an imagined person—not to see him sitting down to his extempore
writingtable compounding his letters—not to form a good guess of the
measures of his paces, of perhaps now and then a little puff of Dutch
impatience, curiously wrought into a large amount of phlegm. From his
first offset he comes clearly out from among the shadows—we are at no
loss to keep the thread of personal identity, and are never dubious, in
picture number two, about the hero of picture number one. A most
recognisable and characteristic personage, we yet stand in no dread of
our pilgrim. He makes nothing of his cockle-hat and staff, or his sandal
shoon. Instead of calling to his reverent disciples to follow, he offers
his arm to any good neighbour who will make the tour with him. You may
help to set up the Aneroid, or level the telescope, if you will, but you
cannot doubt for a moment that Lieut. Van de Velde takes the angle of
yonder nameless villages as a conscientious duty, and when he makes his
survey of a bare hillside or Arab desert, does it with the full-hearted
and devout conviction that this is his highest capability of serving
God; for you ascertain immediately that this is not an expedition of the
pleasure-seeker, or a pilgrimage of the devotee. Surveying Palestine is
the _work_ of the traveller—his special end and object—and he sets about
it simply as his vocation, an enterprise which gives consistence and
necessity to all his travel.

One disadvantage of this accurate survey, as indeed of all scientific
expeditions, is the bare chronicle of unknown villages, a confusion of
barren names, and brief descriptions which take the life out of many
pages of this narrative. Lieut. Van de Velde has a very pretty talent
for making pictures in words, but to make a map in words is one of the
driest and least profitable operations of literature. Toil after him as
we may, it is impossible to keep in mind this long course which finds no
track, and leaves none—a mere piece of elaborate geography, with only
the point, here and there, of a hospitable sheikh, or a hastily-sketched
interior, to reward us for the toilsome interval of road. This, however,
is not a fault peculiar to M. Van de Velde, but belongs alike to all the
more serious explorers of Palestine, to whom every fallen stone has, or
ought to have, its separate history.

And notwithstanding this, which, indeed, is a necessary feature of the
conscientious and painstaking mind visible in these pages, there is much
of the picturesque in the travels of Lieut. Van de Velde. If his
sketches are as graphic and clear as his descriptions, it is very much
to be regretted that they are not added to this work, for we have
nowhere seen more rapid and vivid landscapes with so little pretension
on the part of the artist. We speak much of the poetic merit of
transferring one’s own mind and individuality into the scenery
described, and it is a poetic necessity—nevertheless, once in a way,
remembering that the real poet who can do this is not a very common
tourist, it is a refreshment to have the landscape without the
traveller—the hills and the valleys as they lie, without Mr Brown in the
corner taking their likeness. In these volumes our honest traveller
offers to your view what he saw, sometimes in an honest fervour of
admiration; but you cannot fail to be aware that his eye is on the
landscape as he draws it, and not upon the central figure I which
overshadows the scene. From first to last, indeed, Lieut. Van de Velde
never sees his own shadow between himself and the sunshine, never is
oppressed by his own claims to be looked at—in fact, is not troubled
whether you look at him at all, but demands of you, most distinctly, to
look at his picture, and claims from you an interest in it equal to his
own. With strong religious feelings, and a mind deeply leavened with
Gospel truths, and the Gospel history of which this soil is redolent,
our pilgrim travels onward, not without perturbations, yet full of
confidence in the special protection of God, and everywhere, a
single-hearted Christian, seeks his own “edification,” and to promote
the edification of others. We have said that his is not the pilgrimage
of a devotee, yet it is undeniable that though too orthodox to expect
any miraculous influence from these holy places, he yet looks for
“impressions,” for a more vivid realisation of those great events to
which our faith looks back, and a brighter apprehension of the Divine
teachings which were first delivered in this favoured land. Here is an
instance of one profane interruption of his devout meditations;—he is
seated by Jacob’s well:—

  “I placed myself in the same position, and could well figure to myself
  the woman with her pitcher on her head coming down out of the valley.
  He who knows all things, and whose free sovereign love has chosen His
  own to eternal life from the foundation of the world—He beheld her,
  the poor sinner, for whose preservation He had come down from heaven.
  He saw her as she came along under the olive trees, long before she
  was aware of His being there. And when she saw Him, she hesitated,
  perhaps whether she should approach Him, perceiving that he was a Jew.
  But what should she be afraid of, she the lost, who had lost all, for
  whom there seemed to be nothing but despair? Therefore she came on,
  and——

  “Thus was I musing with myself, as I sat alone at the side of the
  well, and had just begun to read the fourth chapter of John, when I
  was suddenly roused by the blustering voice of a gigantic Arab, who
  had come up without my observing him, and addressed me thus, with all
  the characteristic repulsiveness and loathsomeness of the Arabs:

  “‘Marhhabah chawadja! baksheesh, baksheesh!’

  “This disturbance was most unwelcome. Think what a contrast: To be
  lost, as it were, in heavenly thoughts, and then all at once to be
  aroused by such a thief-like clamour for baksheesh. He was a fellow
  with a face enough to frighten one, filthy and disgusting—so filthy
  and disgusting as none but an Arab can be. I replied to his
  salutation, and begged him to leave me alone.

  “But no—he had no idea of doing that.

  “‘Baksheesh, baksheesh!’ he roared, and sat himself down at the
  well-side, opposite me, at the same time taking out his pipe and
  lighting it with such composure as to convince me that he had not the
  smallest intention to leave me for some time at least.

  “And before five minutes had elapsed, half-a-dozen of his fellows
  appeared, who forthwith placed themselves all round me in a very
  social circle, so that I had to abandon all thoughts of proceeding
  with my meditations on the favourite chapter.

  “A chorus of ‘baksheesh!’ with all sorts of variations on the same
  theme, was now raised about my ears. I asked them through Philip on
  what pretence they wanted a baksheesh, begging at the same time that
  they would withdraw. Their answer was to this effect: ‘The land and
  the well belong to us, and no foreigner has any right to come here
  without paying us a baksheesh. Would you like to go down into the
  well? Here is a rope that we have brought with that view. We will let
  you safely down; you can see the well from within, and on coming up
  again pay us a baksheesh.’

  “‘But what makes you suppose that I want to examine your well? I know
  quite the appearance of the well from within, and thus have no need to
  go down into it. Be, then, so good as to take your rope home again,
  and leave me alone.’

  “I had almost added, ‘then I will give you a baksheesh;’ but I thought
  if these rogues see that a baksheesh is earned by merely allowing a
  stranger to be left alone at the well, then there is every chance
  that, as soon as they are gone, another similar party will come down
  to me, and give me still more molestation than these.

  “‘If the Chawadja will not go down into the well, then will we go down
  instead of him, and tell him how it looks on our return; but anyhow,
  we must have a baksheesh.’”

A sore trial to the righteous soul of our traveller is at all times this
demand for “baksheesh;” and he complains feelingly of the extravagant
example of former travellers who have encouraged the Arab, only too
willing to be encouraged, in his shameless exactions. No small grievance
this for the pilgrim of duty or science who must economise; but, from
railway porters to Bedouin chiefs, human nature is the same. We suspect
the London cabman, compelled to take his legal fare, would turn out as
troublesome as Abu Dahuk, if it were not for the terror of the police
magistrate; and where there is no such heaven-appointed institution—no
guardian angel in blue coat and leaden buttons—no Mr Commissioner
Mayne—it is scarcely to be expected that your master of conveyances in
the desert—your grand representative of railway and public roads for the
district of the Dead Sea—should content himself with the polite
information of what “a real gentleman” would offer, as your cabman must
be content to do.

Reaching by Smyrna and Beyrout the land of his destination, and rising
with serious enthusiasm to hail the first glimpse of Lebanon, Lieutenant
Van de Velde wanders for some time along “the coasts of Tyre and Sidon,”
stepping aside now and then to a mission station on the skirts of
Lebanon, or to a native village, where, among discordant patches of
Roman Catholics, of Greek Catholics, and of Mahommedans, he finds
nothing but strife and bitter animosities, with not so much as a shadow
of the religion for whose name, a vain badge, they hold each other in
the direst hatred. Druse and Maronite and Moslem, Greek and Latin and
unbeliever, every village hates its neighbour heartily and with a will;
and though the Druse patronises the English Protestant, and the Maronite
takes the French Catholic under his protection, Christianity vainly
seeks a resting-place with either: but, where all cherish the natural
intolerance of another faith than their own, the Greek Church, ignorant
and bigoted, carries this evil principle farthest. Brutal violence and
legal injury are alike the fate of every unfortunate convertite who
ventures to embrace the somewhat different gospel preached by the
missionaries of the Evangelical churches in these coasts, so long the
habitation of the Gentiles. The first instance which strikes the
traveller is the state of the persecuted missionary churches at
Hâsbeiya, whose history he thus relates:—

  “Hâsbeiya has a population of 6000 souls, of whom about
  three-fourths belong to the Greek Church: of the remainder, 1500 are
  Druses, about 500 Maronites, about 100 Jews of the class called
  Sephardim, and as many Mahommedans belonging to the court of the
  Emir _Sad-Ed-Din-Shepebi_, with some few Anzairies. Mr Bird, one of
  the American missionaries, was the first who attempted, twenty-five
  years ago, to diffuse the gospel here. He established a school, and
  obtained a native teacher; but his effort met with no success, and
  the school dwindled away. In 1842 the brethren sent a colporteur
  from Beirût to Hâsbeiya with tracts; and it was from this man that
  the people first learned to attach to the name Protestant the
  meaning it bears among them—a true Christian. The books he left
  behind him would perhaps have had a good effect, if the Greek
  priests—like all priests who dispute with the only High Priest,
  Jesus Christ, his right to supremacy over the souls of men—had not
  found means, in their hatred of the gospel, to get possession of the
  books and burn them.

  “It was about this time that the Emir imposed certain new taxes, which
  caused great dissatisfaction. These taxes fell particularly hard upon
  the poor, who had no protector; and the thought occurred to them, ‘We
  may possibly find protection from the missionaries; they are merciful
  men.’ In this hope, forty-five of them went to the brethren at Beirût,
  to enrol themselves, as Protestants, under their protection.

  “The missionaries did not, of course, interfere with regard to the
  tax, but they ‘expounded to them the way of God more perfectly;’
  showing them, at the same time, how much true faith in the Son of God
  differs from such nominal Protestantism as has its origin in mere
  secular motives. The brethren then sent them back to Hâsbeiya with
  bibles and tracts, promising to give them spiritual help, if their
  future conduct should attest the sincerity of their wishes. Shortly
  after the missionaries found an opportunity of sending two native
  teachers to Hâsbeiya, who had, in a few days, a hundred and fifty
  people in attendance on them, desirous of receiving instruction. This
  was too much for the priests. The bishop threatened to excommunicate
  all who should adopt the Protestant heresies; but, seeing that this
  threat had no effect, he had recourse to that powerful weapon, by
  which, in the East, justice and right are so constantly assailed.

  “The head of the Greeks of Hâsbeiya is the Patriarch of Damascus, a
  certain Mathodios, who, as also the Emir of Hâsbeiya, is subject to
  the Pasha of Damascus. The Bishop of Hâsbeiya had no difficulty,
  through his superior in Damascus, in purchasing from the Pasha an
  order to the Emir, to the effect that the heretics should be brought
  back by force to the Greek Church. The Emir obeyed but too willingly.
  The new converts had to endure the bitterest persecutions. They were
  pelted with stones, and spit upon in the bazaars; they were beaten and
  insulted in their houses, as well as in the public places; they were
  no longer safe anywhere, and were debarred all social intercourse.
  Many attempts were made even upon their lives; and so severe was the
  persecution to which they were exposed, that, at one time, all but
  three, who remained faithful, drew back; but around those three, forty
  others soon gathered. After consultation, they agreed that it was best
  to disperse, and quitted Hâsbeiya to take up their residence at Abeyh,
  or elsewhere in Lebanon. In this attempt, however, they failed; the
  means of earning their bread were wanting, and, after a few months,
  they were compelled to return to Hâsbeiya. Then arose, in the silent
  night, from their closed dwellings, many a heartfelt and united prayer
  to the Lord of the Church; eagerly and trustfully His promises were
  sought out from His holy Word; and, like the phœnix rising from the
  flames, the youthful Christian congregation lifted its head anew.
  Persecution had no longer any terrors for them. At the request of the
  Patriarch, the Emir ordered his janissaries to drive them with
  scourges to the church; but his wrath was unable to compel them to
  kiss or worship the images. A certain Chalîl-Chouri, himself the son
  of a priest, but now converted to Christ, was sent by his family to
  Constantinople; here, by the help of the American consul, he obtained
  a firman from the Sultan, granting freedom to the Protestants of
  Hâsbeiya. Some amelioration in their lot was the happy result, but
  only to a certain degree; for the artful Mathodios managed, during
  five weary years, to bribe the Pasha of Damascus to assail them with
  all kinds of secret social persecutions.”

While this is the state of the Greek Church, and these the difficulties
which all the labours of a purer faith must encounter among our
so-called Christian brethren in the East, Lieutenant Van de Velde does
not share in the popular idea of the greater liberality of the dominant
religion. “Mahommedans,” he says, “have been hitherto, by the very laws
of the Koran, inaccessible to the gospel. The Sultan is the faithful
assertor of these laws, and punishes with decapitation every Mussulman
who abandons the doctrines of the Prophet. It is not three years since a
respectable young man was beheaded in the streets of Constantinople for
having abjured Islamism. Think, then, what is implied in a Mahommedan’s
even giving an attentive ear to the gospel.” If this statement is
correct, as we presume it to be, it throws rather a singular romance of
disinterestedness upon the present services of the most prominent
nations in Christendom to this empire of heathenesse.

Notwithstanding the discouragements, almost amounting to
impossibilities, which beset him on every hand, M. Van de Velde’s friend
and travelling companion, Dr Kalley, does not fail, with unceasing
devotion, to proclaim to the thronging hosts of invalids who surround
the Hakim at every resting-place, the unchanged faith which, eighteen
hundred years ago, proceeded from this very soil. The scene is
thoroughly Oriental, and strangely reminds us of many a sacred scene.
Crowds of the sick and helpless throng to the door where the wandering
physician sits with his medicine-chest. A high compliment to the
beneficent science of healing is in the eagerness of these mendicant
patients. They believe in a man who goes from village to village for no
other purpose than to alleviate their pains and heal their distresses,
but they find it extremely hard to believe in one who comes with no
medicine-chest, but only with outlandish instruments of science, and
have no faith in topography. It may be that the popular imagination has
a far-off traditionary remembrance of that sublime Traveller, under
whose touch and at whose voice the very dead arose; but it is certain,
that while they do not understand travelling for pleasure, nor
travelling for discovery, nor any other kind of expeditionary
enterprise, the wandering hakim has but to disclose his errand to secure
their perfect faith and most respectful welcome. Poor children of
Ishmael, materialism is too strong for spirituality with them. They may
gape at the antiquary with the scorn of ignorance, but the physician, to
those who have so much need of him, is half divine.

At Hâsbeiya an untoward accident arrests our traveller. During a short
excursion, the house which he had taken there is robbed, and all his
valuables lost. Appeal to the Emir proves fruitless, and M. Van de Velde
almost resigns himself to returning home. This, however, is fortunately
prevented by letters of encouragement and promises of help; and with a
less ambitious retinue he sets forth again undismayed, keeping his way
along the coast of the Mediterranean from the Lebanon towards Carmel,
from which place he strikes farther inland through the fallen remains of
royal Samaria to Jerusalem.

It is not possible to follow our author through his course—this unknown
country, sprinkled with names that are familiar to us as household
words—nor can we pause to point out how many pictures he makes by the
way, how fine an eye this unostentatious artist has for colour, and how
even these pale pen-and-ink sketches brighten and glow with the rich
tints of Oriental landscape; neither can we do justice to his interiors,
with their smoky haze, and wild Arab figures, and primitive hospitality.
These are by the way—but as he comes into a country which is distinctly
historical, and not only hazy, like one of these same desert castles,
with a mist of antiquity, the results of his careful examination become
more apparent. Your charlatan is your most universal cosmopolitan, and
with an indefatigable hand has he dotted over this sacred territory. Not
disposed, however, to receive with blind faith the spot pointed out by
the Carmelites (whose monastic order was instituted by Elijah!) as the
true scene of Elijah’s sacrifice, M. Van de Velde and Dr Kalley set
about examining for themselves, and the very interesting result of their
examination, guided by the traditions of the Arabs and not of the
Church, is as follows:—

  “Here, then, are the details of what we observed on ‘the burnt place.’

  “Having seated ourselves beneath the shade of a huge oak, we once more
  opened our Bibles at chap. xviii. of 1st Kings, and examined what was
  required in the place of sacrifice, in order to its agreement with the
  account given in the Bible. According to verses 18th and 19th, it must
  have been ample enough in size to contain a very numerous multitude.
  El-Mohhraka must at that time have been quite fitted for this,
  although now covered with a rough dense jungle. Indeed, one can
  scarcely imagine a spot better adapted for the thousands of Israel to
  have stood drawn up on than the gentle slopes. The rock shoots up in
  an almost perpendicular wall of more than two hundred feet in height
  on the side of the plain of Esdraelon. On this side, therefore, there
  was no room for the gazing multitude; but, on the other hand, this
  wall made it visible over the whole plain, and from all the
  surrounding heights, so that even those left behind, and who had not
  ascended Carmel, would still have been able to witness, at no great
  distance, the fire from heaven that descended upon the altar.
  According to verse 30th, there must have been an altar there before,
  for Elijah repaired ‘the altar of the Lord that was broken down.’ It
  is well known that such altars were uniformly built on very
  conspicuous eminences. Now, there is not a more conspicuous spot on
  all Carmel than the abrupt rocky height of Mohhraka, shooting up so
  suddenly on the east. Verses 31st and 32d point to a rocky soil, in
  which stones were to be found to serve for the construction of the
  altar, and yet where the stones must have been so loose or so covered
  with a thick bed of earth, that ‘a trench’ could have been made round
  the altar, whilst not of so loose a composition of sand and earth as
  that the water poured into it would have been absorbed. The place we
  were examining met these requisitions in every respect; it showed a
  rocky surface, with a sufficiency of large fragments of rock lying
  around, and, besides, well fitted for the rapid digging of a trench.
  But now comes the grand difficulty of both believers and unbelievers,
  who have not seen this place: Whence could Elijah have procured so
  much water as to have it to pour over the offering and the altar in
  barrelfuls, so that he filled the trench also with water, at a time
  when, after three years of drought, all the rivers and brooks were
  dried up, and the king in person, and the governor of his house,
  divided the land between them to pass through it, to see if,
  peradventure, any fountains of water might be found, and grass to save
  the horses and mules alive?—(Verses 1–6). To get rid of this
  difficulty, some pious travellers, with imaginations stronger than
  their judgments, have said, ‘O, as for that water, the thing speaks
  for itself; it must evidently have been got from the sea.’ But less
  religious persons, who were sharp enough to perceive that the place
  where Elijah made the offering could not have been at the seaside,
  have rightly remarked, that it must have been impossible, from every
  other point of Carmel lying more inland, on account of the great
  distance from the sea, to go thither and return on an afternoon, much
  more to do this three several times, as is expressly stated in the
  34th verse. Such persons, therefore, have rejected altogether this
  absurd explanation, without, however, themselves arriving at any
  better solution of the difficulty; and this has led unbelievers, in
  their prejudiced haste, to assert that the Bible narrative is a mere
  fiction, that being the view which, best suited their purpose. Dr
  Kalley and I felt our mouths shut in the presence of this difficulty.
  We saw no spring, yet here we were certain the place must have been;
  for it is the only point of all Carmel where Elijah could have been so
  close to the brook Kishon, then dried up, as to take down thither the
  priests of Baal and slay them, return again to the mountain and pray
  for rain, all in the short space of the same afternoon after the Lord
  had shown, by His fire from heaven, that He, and He alone, was God
  (see verses 40–44). El-Mohhraka is 1635 feet above the sea, and
  perhaps 1000 feet above the Kishon. This height can be gone up and
  down in the short time allowed by the Scripture. But the farther one
  goes towards the middle of the mountain, the higher he ascends above
  the Kishon, because Carmel rises higher then, and the plain through
  which the river flows runs lower down. Add to this that the Kishon
  takes a course more and more diverging from the mountain, and the
  ravine by which people descend to the river’s bed is exceedingly
  difficult to pass through, so that three full hours are thought
  necessary for traversing the distance from Esfiëh to the stream.
  Nowhere does the Kishon run so close to Mount Carmel as just beneath
  El-Mohhraka. Pious expositors, who would transfer the scene to the
  seaward side of the mountain, seem quite to have left out of sight the
  required condition—that it must be near the brook Kishon.

  “Well, then, we went down to the Kishon through a steep ravine, and,
  behold, right below the steep rocky walls of the height on which we
  stood—250 feet, it might be, beneath the altar plateau—a vaulted and
  very abundant fountain, built in the form of a tank, with a few steps
  leading down into it, just as one finds elsewhere in the old walls or
  springs of the Jewish times. Possibly the neighbourhood of this spring
  may have been the inducement that led to that altar which Elijah
  repaired, having been built to the Lord in former times. Possibly,
  too, the water of this spring may have been consecrated to the Lord,
  so as not to be generally accessible to the people, even in times of
  fearful drought. In such springs the water remains always cool, under
  the shade of a vaulted roof, and with no hot atmosphere to evaporate
  it. While all other fountains were dried up, I can well understand
  that there might have been found here that superabundance of water
  which Elijah poured so profusely over the altar. Yes, the more I
  consider the matter, the more am I convinced, that from _such_ a
  fountain alone could Elijah have procured so much water _at that
  time_. And as for the distance between this spring and the supposed
  site of the altar, it was every way possible for men to go thrice
  thither and back to obtain the necessary supply.

  “Further, the place of Elijah’s offering—the same, probably, where he
  cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees,
  in offering thanks to the Lord for the divine power He had hitherto
  displayed, to beseech Him for the further fulfilment of His promises,
  that of rain for the parched-up ground—the place of Elijah’s offering,
  I say, behoves to have been so screened by a rising ground on the west
  or north-west side as to intercept a view of the sea; for he said to
  his servant, ‘Go up now, and look toward the sea.’ Moreover, the
  distance to that height must not have been great; for the passage
  runs—‘Go again seven times,’ (verses 42–44). Now, such is the position
  of El-Mohhraka, that these circumstances might all quite well have
  been united there. On its west and north-west side the view of the sea
  is quite intercepted by an adjacent height. That height may be
  ascended, however, in a few minutes, and a full view of the sea
  obtained from the top.”

There is nothing we hear of more frequently than of the great additional
light thrown upon the Bible by modern researches; and with Scripture
geography and Scripture botany, with Eastern usages and ancient customs,
this modern time professes a much clearer apprehension of the Bible than
did the elder age, which was ignorant of all this minutiæ of
illustration. But the science is overdone. The illustration smothers the
text, and we become suspicious of every new attempt of that
over-explanatory teaching which toils to bring the material and
framework of the sacred record down to “the meanest capacity,” almost
wearying us into incredulity where, if left alone, we could not choose
but believe. Holy Writ, by far the truest and most life-like picture of
its own time, explains itself with small assistance—but we are glad
always to light on such an illustration as this, which brings before us,
in all its striking features, the locality of one of the most striking
scenes of the old dispensation.

Like every other traveller in this singular country, M. Van de Velde is
struck by the evident tokens everywhere of long-restrained and dormant
fertility. The land is still a land of milk and honey. Folded into the
unseen recesses of Carmel, where there is scarcely an eye to look on it,
the soil is lavish of the richest vegetation, matted with plants and
flowers; and everywhere the same teeming fruitfulness peers through the
uncultivated waste, which notwithstanding is a barren waste bound with
the visible restrictions of Providence, forbidden and interdicted to
spread forth its riches, and waiting solemnly, with the life pent up in
its great bosom, till the call of God shall wake it into the luxuriance
of old.

A grand romance is in the position of this desolate but unexhausted
land—ruled by strangers, inhabited by an alien race, and desecrated by
an idolatrous worship, yet with all its rich faculties hidden in its
heart, and its heirs, scattered yet indestructible, waiting for return
to it as it waits for them. M. Van de Velde cannot restrain his
impatience with Turkish rule in Palestine. Disgusted with the universal
corruption, universal mismanagement and oppression, he chafes at the
idea of the Christian Powers upholding the _effete_ and tyrannical
government of the Porte, under whose sway, he says, everything withers,
from commercial enterprise to family comfort, and in whose hands
everything becomes a failure. Setting political motives aside, it is
indisputably a singular position which England and France hold in this
contest. A few hundred years ago, Christendom resisted with desperation
on these very boundaries the invasion of the Turk, and it is strange to
see the leading powers of Christendom crossing the very same line in
these days to fight under the banner of the Crescent, and mingle the
knightly symbols, whose fame has been dearly won in the battles of the
faith, with the ensigns of the unbeliever. Well, letting alone the
balance of power and such imperial considerations, show us the
Englishman who will stand by and see the poor heathen Hindoo, whose
pathetic silence craves alms upon our streets, fall into the hands of
some big Saxon bully, without lifting hand or voice for the rescue of
the weak, and we will say that such a man, but no other, has a right to
stigmatise this crusade of right against might, and condemn the
Christian nation for defence of the Infidel. But for our ally, with his
magnificent indifference, his passive fatalism, his misgovernment, and
all his sins, let us be thankful that we do not need to adopt his faults
when we vindicate his right—rather that our vindication of his rights,
our association with himself, our help and brotherliness, are better
modes of vanquishing the Oriental, who has proved his mettle in these
days, than a new crusade, such as M. Van de Velde longs for, to restore
to the Hebrews their old inheritance. With God, and not with us, does it
remain to decide when the Jew is ready for his new existence—when the
time of prophecy shall be accomplished, and that revolution begun which
is to call out of all lands and places the wandering nation, the great
pilgrim of centuries, and bring Israel home. It is not easy to realise
the possibility of such an event, and there is no wonder in all past
history equal to what this will be—but the work is manifestly out of
man’s hands. At this moment, find him where you will, the qualities for
which the Jew is distinguished are not those which win the respect or
admiration of his neighbours—he is barren and desolate like his country,
and has no beauty in him. Harsh sounds and unmelodious—at the best, a
wail of blind inquiry, and long suspense—are all the harp of Judah is
capable of now; and till the hand of the Divine musician touch the
strings, it is a vain hope that any human finger can wake them to the
measure of David or of Solomon, the lofty strains of old.

One thing these modern times, with all their fairy works of science and
mighty rush of “progress,” ought to do for both Mahommedan and Jew—to
convince them that there is but one faith, which never becomes
obsolete—one religion, which, all independent of climate or temperature,
is from God, and embraces all mankind—which is abashed by no discovery,
and thrown into the shade by no improvement. The creed of Mahomet is
antiquated, and in its dotage. To live a Jew in these days is to live
among the tombs. Paganism is dead and gone long centuries ago. Only
Christianity, in its sublime unfailing youth, is never out of date, but
works as handily with the instruments of to-day as with those of a
thousand years ago, and, knowing neither culmination nor decadence, is
perpetually the same.

But to M. Van de Velde, the charm of attraction which binds the devout
mind to the children of Abraham, the chosen people, is very strong. He
cannot sufficiently execrate the Turkish occupancy, which gives this
historic country to the race of all others most indifferent to its
holiest memories, and when he sees the soil itself indicating, by many
evidences, its inherent riches, yet lying scorched and barren under the
eye of heaven—when he sees a government which discourages every
exertion, a people who have no heart to make any, conscious, as he says,
of the usurpation of these lands, which are not their own—our fervent
pilgrim burns with natural impatience to accelerate the slow course of
events, and can scarcely bring himself to tolerate the support given to
this “Empire of Turkey,” which he apostrophises, with all its tyranny at
home and impotence abroad. Far better service, as he thinks, these same
victorious European arms would render, if they expelled the Crescent
from Palestine, and established the Hebrew in his immemorial fatherland;
but it is a hard thing for a man to set about accomplishing prophecy—the
work is above his hand. M. Van de Velde mentions, however, almost with
enthusiasm, the enterprise of a small American colony which, established
at Bethlehem, professed an intention to prepare the soil, to “break up
the fallow-ground,” in preparation for the return of the banished
Israelites. The idea gratifies his eager mind; but the colonists, after
all, turn out but indifferently, and the enterprise is found to fail.

The present _questio vexata_ of these sacred localities occupies some
space in the journals of M. Van de Velde. This controversy, originating
in the real or alleged discoveries of M. de Saulcy, calls up one of the
most remote and mysterious events ever brought under human
discussion—the destruction of the cities of the plain, Sodom, Gomorrah,
Admah, and Zeboim. The original idea, touching these guilty objects of
the Divine wrath, wrapt in awe and mystery as their fate was, seems to
have been, that the Dead Sea, itself the gloomiest and most appalling
object in creation, had been called into existence by the same miracle
which annihilated the condemned cities, and that its deadly waters swept
every trace of them out of sight for ever. But modern travel has taken
from the Dead Sea much of its mysterious desolation; it is found that
sweet fountains spring, and luxuriant vegetation flourishes, within
sight of its waters, and that itself bears no evident trace of its
deadly qualities, but appears, as one and another of its visitors say,
only a “splendid lake,” an inland sea, mirroring clear skies and
picturesque mountains, sublime, but not terrible. Traces of the most
frightful convulsions of nature surround it on every side; extinct
volcanoes and tremendous chasms, mountains dislocated and shattered in
pieces, and tracts of unparalleled desolation; but still it is
impossible to regard the lake itself as the fatal object which former
ideas held it to be. As the subject clears from the superstitious
veneration of less informed times, a new theory is propounded. Near the
end of the present Dead Sea, a peninsula strikes into the water, almost
cutting off into a separate lake the southmost portion of the sea. This
portion, beyond the promontory El-Lisan, is found to be extremely
shallow, and in more than one spot fordable, presenting a striking
contrast, in this particular, to the main body of the water, which
reaches the depth of 1300 feet. This shallow end of the lake, guarded by
its broad peninsula, Dr Robinson, the eminent American traveller, takes
to be an inundated plain; in other words, the vale of Siddim, the
ancient site of the condemned cities. According to the Scripture
narrative, the soil of this fertile valley was “full of slime-pits,” a
bituminous underground to the surface of tropical luxuriance; and Dr
Robinson’s theory holds, that the fire which destroyed Sodom and
Gomorrah broke up the superficial soil, ignited the bitumen, and lowered
the surface of the plain below the level of the lake, which immediately
flooded over the sunken valley, and formed the shallow piece of water at
the south end of the Dead Sea. A glance at the map will show how the
form of the lake justifies this theory, in which many travellers, and
among them Lieutenant Van de Velde, fully concur.

On the other hand, M. de Saulcy affirms positively to finding extensive
ruins at a place called Kharbet Sdoum (ruins of Sodom), at the foot of
Djebel Sdoum, or Mountain of Sodom; and on the edge of this submerged
plain he finds also other ruins bearing the name of Sebaan, which he
concludes to be Zeboim, and still others called by the Arabs Zouera, or
Zuweirah, which he reckons Zoar. These consist of walls, of now and then
a distinct building, and of masses of fallen stones, to such extent as
to merit the term “stupendous ruins.” Here the reader, who can only
compare testimony, is put completely at fault; for, as confidently as M.
de Saulcy affirms his discovery of these ruins, does M. Van de Velde
deny the existence of any such. No former traveller has lighted upon
them; no after traveller has confirmed the story; but what shall we make
of the distinct assertion of M. de Saulcy, with his little band of
companions, who declared themselves to have twice visited and examined
these extraordinary remains, and to be perfectly convinced of their
authenticity? Limestone rocks, corrugated and channelled by winter
torrents, and worn into the resemblance of layers of building, explains
M. Van de Velde—stupendous ruins, veritable remains of the cities of the
Pentapolis, says his adversary: both produce battalions of
testimony—which is right?

In real locality, we apprehend, the controversy makes little difference,
since both sides of the question mutually agree in choosing this
southern end of the Asphaltic Lake for the position of the destroyed
cities. M. De Saulcy places Zoar on the western side; Dr Robinson and M.
Van de Velde, and all preceding travellers, settle its position on the
eastern coast, upon the peninsula. The Frenchman finds his tangible
memorials of Sodom, and the wonderful event which destroyed it, his
large burned stones, and destroyed buildings, recognised by Arab
tradition, on the still remaining soil; the American and the
Netherlander cover these awful remnants of Almighty vengeance with the
bitter waters wherein no life can be. The former proposition may admit
of proof palpable to the senses, since “stupendous ruins” are not things
to be ignored by an honest examination; but the waters of the lake, if
they contain it, will not open to disclose _their_ secret;—so all the
advantages of proof are on M. de Saulcy’s side. As it is, however, the
question does not seem to us a question for ordinary discussion, but
simply one of comparative credibility of testimony—are there ruins, or
are there not? Has there been glamour in M. de Saulcy’s eyes, or has
obstinate scepticism obscured the vision of M. Van de Velde? The
question is not one on which we are prepared to give a judgment. Our
impetuous Gallic champion stands alone, defying the civilised Bedouin
Criticism, as he defied the Ishmael of the desert; but an army of heavy
artillery fights on the side espoused by M. Van de Velde. What shall we
say?—in prospect of a magnificent duel pending between the head of the
one party and the sole and indivisible representative of the other, only
that our present author boldly throws himself into the discussion,
flings his glove manfully in the face of the Frenchman, denies his
premises, scouts his conclusions, and is thoroughly convinced in his own
mind that not a vestige remains above ground of the submerged cities of
the plain.

M. Van de Velde, who travels economically, without thinking it necessary
to secure the attendance of sheikhs of half a dozen tribes, seems to
meet with a very much less degree of annoyance and obstruction than is
common to travellers in Palestine. We cannot fail to observe, in the
midst of many complaints of the rapacity and perpetual exactions imposed
by the tribes of the desert upon wandering pilgrims, that every
traveller has at least one faithful Arab, who, if not entirely superior
to baksheesh, does yet deport himself with exemplary conscientiousness,
and gain the entire confidence and friendship of the party he conducts.
A good omen this, for a race so completely beyond the rules of ordinary
law. There are some cases, too, where, cast almost upon their charity,
sick, exhausted, and undefended, with no greater retinue than two
unwarlike servants and one Bedouin guide, M. Van de Velde meets with
unexpected kindness and hospitality from these children of Ishmael, and
in his experience the Bedouins seem to contrast rather favourably with
the resident villagers through whose domains his former course had been.
Notwithstanding, though the unobtrusive traveller, who trusts himself
without a guard among them, may meet with less annoyance than the
richly-equipped expedition, prodigal of piastres, one does not see how
controversies, historical or geographical, touching this mysterious
territory, can ever be rightly determined so long as the investigators
are compelled to hurry from point to point, and are kept in terror of
the least divergence from their projected course, lest an enemy pounce
upon them in the wilds where no help is. A railway to the shores of the
Dead Sea is scarcely to be feared or hoped for these few centuries, but
there surely might be an expeditionary band, strong enough to disregard
the wild inhabitants of this land, which piques and tantalises with
imperfect revelations the curiosity of science. An expedition which
should dare to take time, which should venture into deliberate and
careful examinations, and which was sufficiently strong to overawe the
lawless lords of the soil, might do much to settle the jars of opinion,
and reveal to the general knowledge this terrible country, scarred and
marked for ages by the chastising hand of God.

A minor difficulty in the way of reconciling one traveller’s experience
with another’s, is the perpetual variation of proper names. Taken down
as these must be from the guide of the moment, it is easy to account for
the orthographical vicissitudes through which they pass; but it were
surely well even to sacrifice a point and take our predecessor’s
spelling instead of our own, rather than throw this mist of perplexity
over the whole scene. Many a learned puzzle has come out of this
peculiarity in the sacred records themselves, the shifting of names, and
subtracting of syllables; and we are like, as it seems, to find the same
difficulty continuing with us. But it is not necessary, surely, that
every new traveller should set up an orthography of his own: with
submission, it appears to us that accuracy of place is of much more
importance than originality of name, and that he is to be the most
commended who enables you at once, and without perplexity, to recognise
the spot where, in his predecessor’s company, you have been before.

In taking leave of these pleasant volumes, we cannot help regretting
once more that the sketches to which such frequent reference is made are
not added to the text. Lieut. Van de Velde’s friend to whom his book is
addressed, seems to have rather an unfair advantage over the public in
this respect; and without detracting anything from the value of the
pen-and-ink sketches, which are admirable of their kind, it is
impossible not to feel a degree of injury, or to resist being provoked
and tantalised by such a sentence as this—“If my short description of
the vale of Shechem, with its mountains of Blessing and Curse, can in
any way elucidate to you the narratives of Scripture, I shall be very
glad. I hope my sketch will come in aid of my pen.”

And why, then, does not the sketch come in aid of the pen? The
worshipful public who read his book claims to be the dearest of dear
friends to an author, and suffers no such successful rivalry of its
pretensions. We trust to see M. Van de Velde rectify this mistake in his
second edition. A very animated book, full of life and motion,
atmosphere and reality, he has added to our store—a _good_ book, which
the best of us may read “of Sundays,” but which the gayest of us will
not find too dry for every day; and we will be glad to see Lieut. Van de
Velde complete, by the addition of his sketches, so worthy a
contribution to the little library of science, speculation, and
adventure, which treats of the Holy Land.

                              BELLEROPHON.

                       A CLASSICAL BALLAD.

           “Ὄς τᾶς ὀφίωδεος υιὸν ποτε Γόργονος
                   ἦ πολλ ἀμφὶ κρουνοῖς
           Πάγασον ζευξαι ποθέων ἔπαθεν
           Πρίν γέ οἱ χρυσάμπυκα κοῦρα χαλινὸν
           Παλλὰς ἤνεγκε.”—PINDAR.

           “Αλλ ὅτε δῆ καὶ κεῖνος ἀπήχθετο πᾶσι θεοῖσιν
           ἤτοι ὁ κὰπ πεδίον τὸ Αλήιον οἶος ἀλᾶτο
           ὅν θυμὸν κατέδων πἀτον ἀνθρώπων ἀλεείνων.”—HOMER.

[The beautiful Corinthian legend of Bellerophon is narrated by Homer in
the well-known episode of Glaucus and Diomede, in the sixth book of the
_Iliad_. In that episode the strong-lunged son of Tydeus meets in the
fight a face that was new to him, and before engaging in battle desires
to know the name of his noble adversary. The courteous request is
courteously complied with; and it appears that Glaucus—for such is the
champion’s name, though now serving in Priam’s army as a Lycian
auxiliary—was by descent a Grecian, the grandson of the famous
Bellerophon of Corinth, between whose family and that of Diomede a
sacred bond of hospitality had existed. This discovery leads to an
interchange of friendly tokens between the intending combatants; the
weapons of war are sheathed, and a bright gleam of human kindness is
thrown across the dark tempestuous cloud of international conflict.

The story of Bellerophon, as told in this passage of the most ancient
Greek poet, is a remarkable instance of how popular legend, proceeding
from the germ of some famous and striking fact, is gradually worked up
into a form where the actual is altogether subordinated to the
miraculous. In Homer there is not a single word said of the winged
horse, which is the constant companion of Bellerophon’s exploits, in the
current form of the legend afterwards revived, and which appears
regularly on the coins of Corinth. The reason, also, of the hero’s fall,
from the loftiest prosperity to the saddest humiliation, is only dimly
indicated by the poet, when he says that Bellerophon, towards the close
of his life, “was hated by all the gods,” and, “avoiding the path of
men, ate his own heart” (ὅν θυμὸν κατέδων); but whether it was that
Homer, knowing the sin of Bellerophon, with a delicate sense of
propriety, refused to set it forth distinctly in the mouth of his
grandson, or whether the simplicity of the oldest form of the legend
knew nothing more than what Homer tells, certain it is that the
ever-active Greek imagination could not content itself with the
obscurity of the Homeric indication, and the moral that “pride must have
a fall” was distinctly brought out in the later form of the myth. For
the rest, the writer has taken the topographical notices in the
following verses, not from his own conceit, but from the authority of
Pausanias in his Corinthian antiquities.

It needs scarcely be added that the legend of Bellerophon—in ancient
times equally the property of Corinth in Europe, and Lycia in Asia—has
now become in a peculiar manner the possession of Great Britain by the
labours of Sir Charles Fellowes, and the Xanthian Chamber of the British
Museum.]

                                I.

            The sun shines bright on Ephyré’s height,[2]
            And right and left with billowy might
                Poseidon rules the sea;
            But not the sun that rules above,
            Nor strong Poseidon, nor great Jove,
            Can look with looks of favouring love,
                Bellerophon, on thee.
            There’s blood upon thy hands; the hounds
                Of hell pursue thy path;
            Nor they within rich Corinth’s bounds
                Shall slack their vengeful wrath.
            Black broods the sky above thy head,
            The Earth breeds serpents at thy tread,
                The Furies’ foot hath found thee;
            A baleful pest their presence brings,
            A curse to peasants and to kings;
            The horrid shadow of their wings
                Turns day to darkness round thee.
            Flee o’er the Argive hills, and there,
            With suppliant branch and pious prayer,
                Thou shalt not crave in vain
            Some prince whose hands not worthless hold
            The sceptre of Phoroneus old,
            To wash thee clean, and make thee bold
                To look on men again.

                                II.

            Darkly the Nemean forests frown,
                Where Apesantian Jove
            From his broad altar-seat looks down
                On the Ogygian grove.[3]
            Fierce roars the lion from his den
            In Tretus’ long and narrow glen;
                And many a lawless man
            Here by the stony water-bed
            Lists the lone traveller’s errant tread,
                And wakes the plundering clan.
            Here be thy flight, Bellerophon,
                But danger fear thou none;
            For she, the warlike and the wise,
            Jove’s blue-eyed daughter from surprise
                Secure shall lead thee on.
            He flees: and where the priestess bears
                To Hera on the hill[4]
            The sacred keys, he pours his prayers,
                And drinks the scanty rill.
            He flees: and now before his eye,
            With wall and gate and bulwark high,
            And many a tower that fronts the sky,
                And many a covered way,
            Strong Tiryns stands, whose massy blocks
            Were torn by Cyclops from the rocks,
                And piled in vast array.[5]
            Here Prœtus reigns; and here at length
            The suppliant throws his jaded strength
                Before a friendly door;
            And now from hot pursuit secure,
            And from blood-guiltiness made pure,
                His heart shall fear no more.

                                III.

            The princely Prœtus opes his gate,
            And on the fugitive’s dark fate
                Smiles gracious; him from fear,
            And terror of the scourge divine,
            He purifies with blood of swine
                And sprinkled water clear.
            O blessed was the calm that now
            Lulled his racked brain, and smoothed his brow!
                Nor wildly now did roll
            His sleepless eyes; from gracious Jove
            Came down the gentle dew of love
                That soothed his wounded soul.
            And grateful was blithe face of man
            To heart now free from Furies’ ban,
                And sweet the festive lyre.
            Fair was each sight that gorgeous day,
            Spread forth in beautiful array
                To move the heart’s desire.
            Each manly sport and social game
            Thrilled with new joy his re-strung frame,
                And waked the living fire.
            Antéa saw him poise the dart,
            In the fleet race the foremost start,
            And lawless Venus smote her heart—
                She loved her lord no more:
            As no chaste woman sues she sued,
            Her guest the partial hostess wooed,
                And lavished beauty’s store
            Of looks and smiles, and pleading tears,
            And silvery words; but he reveres
            The rights of hospitable Jove,
            Chastely repels her perilous love,
                Nor hears her parley more.

                                IV.

            Who slights a woman’s love cuts deep,
            And wakes a brood of snakes that sleep
                Beneath a bed of roses.
            The lustful wife of Prœtus now
            To earthly Venus vows a vow,
                And in her heart proposes
            A fiendish thing. She, with the pin
            That bound her peplos, pierced the skin
                Of her smooth-rounded arm;
            And when the crimson stream began
            To trickle down, she instant ran,
                And with a feigned alarm
            Roused all her maids, and in the ear
            Of the fond Prœtus, quick to hear,
                She poured the piteous lie,
            That the false guest had sought to move
            Her loyal-mated heart with love,
            And with rude hands had dared assail
            Her virtue, cased in surer mail
                Than Dian’s panoply:
            Then, more to stir his wrathful mood,
            She bared her arm that streamed with blood,
                And scared his jealous eye.
            Hot boiled his Argive heart; his eyes
            Flash vengeance; but himself denies
                The reins to his own spleen.
            His public face in smiles is dressed,
            He joins the banquet with the rest,
            And tells the tale, and plies the jest
                With easy social mien;
            And to his high Corinthian guest
                Lets not a thought be seen.
            “Take here,” quoth he, “thou high-souled knight,
            To Iobates the Lycian wight,
                The brother of my queen,
            These tablets; he will honour thee
            Even more than I; and thou shalt see
            A famous and a fruitful land,
            With all Apollo’s beauty bland,
                And various verdure green.”
            Uprose the knight with willing feet,
            His heart was light, his pace was fleet;
            Girt for the road and venture bold
            He left the strong Tirynhian hold,
                And gaily wends his way
            O’er steep Arachne’s ridge, till he
            Passed Æsculapius’ sacred fane,
            That sendeth health, and healeth pain,
            And reached, with foot untired, the sea
            That beats with billows bounding free
                The Epidaurian bay.

                                V.

            Thoughtful a moment here he stood
            And watched the never-sleeping flood,
                The ever-changing wave;
            He knew no danger, feared no foes,
            But from his heart a prayer uprose
                To her that guards the brave.
            Wise prayer; for scarce the words are gone
            From thy free mouth, Bellerophon,
                When, struck with holy awe,
            Even at thy side in light arrayed,
            Serene with placid power displayed,
            The chaste Athenian Jove-born maid
                Thy wondering vision saw;
            And in her hand—O strangest sight!—
                A wingèd steed she led,
            That bent the knee before the knight
                And bowed its lofty head.
            “Fear not, thou son of Æolus’ race,
                Dear to the gods art thou;
            This steed, by strong Poseidon’s mace
            That leapt to life, through airy space
                Shall safely waft thee now.”
            Thus spake the goddess, wise as fair;
            And with the word, dissolved in air,
                Was seen no more. The knight
            Brushed from his eyes the dazzling glare,
                And scarce believed his sight.
            But when he saw the steed was there,
            He winged to Heaven a rapid prayer,
                And for the airy flight
            Buckled his purpose. Mounted now
                With rapid wheel he soars,
            O’er creek and crag, and rocky brow,
                And swift-receding shores.
            A lovely sight was there, I trow,
                Where high on wingèd oars
            He clove the pathless air. The sea,
            With various-twinkling brilliancy,
                Immense before him lay,
            With many a coast far-stretching seen,
            And many a high-cliffed isle between,
                And many a winding bay.
            High o’er Œnone’s isle he sails,[6]
            Where Æacus’ justest law prevails,
                And masted armies ride;
            O’er famous Sunium’s rocky steep,
            Where Pallas guards the Attic deep,
                He swept with airy pride.
            Ceos and Syros wondering saw
            His meteor-steed with humble awe;
                And sacred Delos deemed
            Apollo’s self, the fervid god
            His own ethereal regions trod,
                And with such brightness gleamed.
            Swift o’er the Bacchic isle he glides,[7]
            Where music mingles with the tides
                From many a Mænad throat.
            And nigh to Caria’s craggy shore,
            Cos with her blushing winy store
                His sweeping view can note.
            Anon, sublime he soars above
            Thy temple, Atabyrian Jove,
                The lord of cloudless Rhodes,[8]
            Where Telchins wise, with busy clamour,
            Who shape the steel beneath the hammer,
                Possess their famed abodes:
            And swiftly then he swoops, I ween,
            Down on the steeps of Cragus green
                Into the pleasant plain,
            Where Xanthus rolls his yellow stream,
            And Phœbus lights with glorious gleam
                The Patarean plain.
            Here he alights. His heavenly steed,
            With instant eye out-stripping speed
                Scorning the earthly loam,
            Wheels eastward far with vans sonorous,
            And o’er the rosy peaks of Taurus
                Sails to his starry home.

                                VI.

            The Xanthian gate is wide and free;[9]
                The Xanthian towers are high;
            The Xanthian streets are fair to see;
                The knight, with wondering eye,
            Beholds and enters. To the king
            A ready troop the stranger bring,
                And scan him o’er and o’er;
            Carious that one so spruce and trim,
            And with such light unwearied limb,
                Had reached the Lycian shore.
            With kindly heart the Xanthian lord
            Opes his high hall and spreads his board,
                And pours the Coan wine;
            Nor question asked (for Jove gives free
            To all a questless courtesy)
                Till days were numbered nine.
            His tablets then the knight presents;
            The monarch scans their dire contents,
                For here ’twas written plainly,
            “If thou dost hate who works amiss
            Let not his hand that beareth this
                Have sinned against me vainly;
            Thy Prœtus.” Sore vexed was the king
            That he must do a bloody thing
                Against so brave a guest;
            But vows were strong, and family bonds;
            Therefore, composed, he thus responds—
                “Brave knight, a fearful pest
            Afflicts this land: a monster dire,
            With, terror armed, and breathing fire,
                In Cragus holds her den,
            Chimera named: with savage jaw
            She bites, and with voracious maw
                Consumes both beasts and men.
            This hideous form its birth did take
            From hoar Echidna, virgin-snake;
                She to that fiery blaster,
            Typhon, Cilicia’s curse of yore
            A triform goatish portent bore,
            With serpent’s sting and lion’s roar,
                This Lycian land’s disaster.
            Harmless at first, for sport ’twas bred
                By Caria’s thoughtless king,
            And by his innocent children led
                Obedient to a string.
            Anon its hellish blood grew hot;
                It breathed a breath of fire,
            And tainted every household spot
                With gouts of poison dire.
            Full grown at length, and fierce and bold,
            She ranges freely through each fold,
                And licks the fleecy slaughter;
            And, when her humour waxes wild,
            No flesh she spares of man or child,
                Echidna’s gory daughter.
            Now hear me, noble Glaucus’ son,
            Most valiant knight, Bellerophon;
            Thou hast a face that seems to court
            A dangerous business as a sport—
                This thing I ask thee then;
            Wilt thou go forth, and dare to tame
            This murtherous monster breathing flame,
            And win thyself a deathless name
                Among the Xanthian men?”

                                VII.

            Thus he—(for in his heart he thought
            Such venture must with life be bought).
                But brave Bellerophon
            Guileless received the guileful plan,
            And, as an eager-purposed man,
                Buckled his armour on.
            Alone he went: of such emprise
                With this bold-breasted stranger
            No one shall share, a herald cries,
                The glory or the danger.
            By Xanthus’ stream he wends him then,
            And leftward up the hollow glen
            Where Pandarus’ city, like a tower,
            Rises begirt with rocky power;
                Then upward, still he goes,
            Where black-browed mountains round him lower,
            And ‘neath chill winter’s grisly bower
                The sunless water flows.
            Upon a steep rock hoar with eld
            A yawning cave his eye beheld,
            High-perched; and to that cave no trace
            Of road upon the mountain’s face,
                But, like an eagle’s nest,
            Sublime it hung. He looked again,
            And from the cave a tawny mane
                Shook o’er the rocky crest;
            And now a lion’s head forth came,
            And now, O Heaven! long tongues of flame
                Ran wreathing round the hill.
            No fear the son of Glaucus knew,
                But pricked his forward will
            The rock-perched monster to pursue:
            On right, on left, he sought a clue
                To thread that steep-faced hill;
            But though the day had much ado,
            When night came down with sable hue
                It found him searching still.
            Hid in the tangled brakes around
            Next morn a rugged chasm he found,
            That oped into an archway wide
            Right through the hollow mountain-side;
                Here plunged the knight; and then
            With eager foot emerging speeds
            Along a rocky ledge that leads
                To dire Chimera’s den.
            The monster hears his coming tread,
                And with a hideous roar
            Trails forth its length, and shows its head
                And mouth all daubed with gore.
            The brave knight drew his sword, and flew
                Like lightning on the foe,
            And on its hide of horny pride
                Dealt ringing blow on blow.
            In vain; that hide, Bellerophon,
            Dipt in the flood of Acheron,
                Is proof at every pore;
            And where thy steel doth vainly hack,
            A goat’s head rising on its back
                With living fire streams o’er;
            And from behind, a serpent’s tail,
                With many mouths that hisses,
            Rears round about thee like a flail,
                To give thee poisoned kisses.
            The flame, the smoke, the sulphurous breath
                Doth choke thy mortal life;
            Spare that dear life, for only death
                Can grow from such a strife.
            Backward the flame-scorched hero sped,
            And as he went, upon his tread
                The roaring Terror came.
            Along the ridge, so sharp and jaggy,
            Huge-limb’d it strode, horrid and shaggy,
                And swathed with sevenfold flame.
            Down through the archway opening wide,
            Far through the hollow mountain-side,
                It drove him wrathful on;
            Then through the black jaws of the rock
            It hurled him with a furious shock,
                And with a huge-heaved stone
            Blocked up the rift. There in the vale,
            Scarcely with life, all scorched and pale,
                Was left Bellerophon.

                                VIII.

            The evening dew was clear and cold:
            Upon the harsh ungrateful mould
            All stiffly lay the hero bold
                Thorough the dreamless night;
            But when the face of peering day
            Shot o’er the cliff its crimson ray,
            All stiff and aching as he lay,
                Sleep seized the weary knight—
            A blissful sleep; for when the sense
            Was bound with blindness most intense,
                With sharp-eyed soul he saw,
            Ev’n at his side, in light arrayed,
            Serene with placid power displayed,
            The chaste Athenian Jove-born maid,
                And worshipped her with awe;
            And in her hand—a well-known sight—
                The wingèd steed she led,
            That bent the knee before the knight,
                And bowed its lofty head.
            Raptured he woke; with sense now clear
                He saw the heavenly maid,
            And in her hand a massive spear,
                Firm-planted, she displayed;
            And thus she spake: “Ephyrian knight,
                Dear to the gods art thou,
            Not vainly did thy prayer invite
            My aid to wing thy airy flight
                To Cragus’ rocky brow.
            A friendly god is thy provider;
                If thou hast wisely planned,
            Fear not; the steed doth wait the rider,
                The spear doth claim the hand.
            That snake-born monster’s horny hide,
                That was not made to feel,
            May never yield life’s crimson tide
                To sharpest Rhodian steel;
            But with this spear from Vulcan’s forge,
            Right through the mouth in the deep gorge
                If thou shalt pierce it, then
            This dire Chimera, breathing flame,
                Thou with a hero’s hand shalt tame,
            And win thyself a glorious name
                Among the Xanthian men.”
            Upstood the knight, with hope elate,
            And felt the aching pain abate
                From all his sore-bruised limbs;
            The wingèd steed he straight bestrode,
            And to Chimera’s black abode
                Through liquid air he swims.
            The deep-mouthed Terror ’gan to bray,
            The forky fire-tongues ’gan to play,
            The fretful serpents hissed dismay
                Round all the rocky wall;
            But with direct and eager speed
            The rider and the heavenly steed
            Rushed to achieve the fearless deed
                At glorious danger’s call.
            The knight, with curious eye, did note
            The centre of the roaring throat,
            And while it gaped with gory jaws
                To thunder fear around,
            Forward he rode—nor any pause,
            But right into Chimera’s gorge
            He drove the spear from Vulcan’s forge,
                And fixed it in the ground.
            Up from the back the fell goat’s head
                Rose rough with swelling ire,
            And right and left long tongues were spread
                Of forky-flaming fire;
            But with immortal strength the steed
                Flaps his huge vans around,
            And straight the eager spires recede,
                And harmless lick the ground.
            Cowed lie the snakes, and with quick eye
            A tender place the knight did spy
                Where the neck joined the back;
            There with a fatal swoop he came,
            And through the fount of living flame
                He cuts with fierce attack.
            Down dropt the goat’s head in its gore,
            And with a sharp and brazen roar
                The writhing lion dies.
            The palsied snakes, with stiffened fang,
            Like lifeless leaves unconscious hang,
                And lose all strength to rise;
            And belching rivers of black gore
            Upon the clotted rocky floor
                The smoking carcass lies.

                                IX.

            A famous man was Glaucus’ son
                Then when Chimera died;
            In Lycian land like him was none
                In glory and in pride.
            At public feast beside the king
            He sate; him did the minstrel sing
                With various-woven lays;
            And old men in the halls were gay,
            And maidens smiled, and mothers grey,
            And eager boys would cease their play
                To sound the hero’s praise.
            The Xanthian burghers, wealthy men,
            Chose the best acres in the glen
                Beside the fattening river—
            Acres where best or corn would grow,
            Or vines with clustered purple glow,
            These, free from burden, they bestow
                On Glaucus’ son for ever.
            The Xanthian king, to Prœtus bound,
            For other dangers looks around,
                And finds, but finds in vain.
            ’Gainst the stout Solymi to fight[10]
            He set the brave Ephyrian knight,
                And hoped he might be slain;
            But from the stiff embrace of Mars
            He soon returned, and showed his scars,
                To glad the Xanthian plain.
            A Lycian army then he led
            Against the maids unhusbanded,
                Where surly Pontus roars.
            Before his spear the Amazon yields;
            The breastless host, with moonèd shields,
            Far o’er Thermodon’s famous fields
                He drove to Colchian shores.
            The Xanthian king despairs the strife—
            “Let Prœtus fight for Prœtus’ wife;
            I will not tempt the charmèd life
                Of valiant Glaucus’ son!”
            Nor more against the gods he strives,
            But with his hand his daughter gives
                To brave Bellerophon.

                                X.

            A prosperous man was Glaucus’ son
            Then when the queenly maid he won,
                The pride of Lycian land:
            The Lycian lords obey his nod,
            The people hail him as a god,
                And own his high command.
            Fearless he lived without annoy,
            Plucking the bloom of every joy;
                For still, to help his need,
            Jove’s blue-eyed daughter, when he prayed,
            Was present with her heavenly aid,
                And lent the wingèd steed.
            His heart with pride was lifted high;
            Beyond the bounds of earth to fly
            Impious he weened, and scale the sky,
                And sit with Jove sublime.
            Upward and northward far he sails,
            O’er Carian crags and Phrygian vales,
                And blest Mæonia’s clime.
            The orient breezes round him blowing
            He feels; with light the ether glowing;
            And from the planets in their going
                He lists the sphery chime.
            Bursts far Olympus on his view
            Snowy, with gleams of rosy hue;
                And round the heavenly halls,
            All radiant with immortal blue,
            The golden battlements he knew,
                And adamantine walls.
            And on the walls, with dizzy awe,
            Full many a shapely form he saw
                Of stately grace divine:
            The furious Mars with terror crested,
            Poseidon’s power the mighty-breasted,
                That rules the billowy brine;
            And, linked with golden Aphrodite,
            The heavenly smith, in labour mighty,
                Grace matched with skill he sees;
            And one that in his airy hand
            Displayed a serpent-twisted wand,
                And floated on the breeze,
            Both capped and shod with wings; and one
                That lay in sumptuous ease
            On pillowed clouds, fair Semele’s son,
                And quaffed the nectar’d bowl;
            And one from whom the locks unshorn
            Flowed like ripe fields of April corn,
            And beaming brightness, like the morn,
                Shower’d radiance on the pole;
            And matron Juno’s awful face;
            And Dian, mistress of the chase;
            And Pallas, that with eye of blue
            Now sternly meets the hero’s view,
                Whom erst she met with love;
            And, like a star of purer ray,
            Apart, whom all the gods obey,
                The thunder-launching Jove.
            The ravishment of such fair sight
            Thrilled sense and soul with quick delight
                To bold Bellerophon;
            Entranced he looked; his wingèd steed,
            Struck with the brightness, checked its speed,
                Nor more would venture on.
            Deaf to the eager rider’s call,
            Who spurred to mount the Olympian wall,
                It stood like lifeless stone
            A moment—then, with sudden wheel,
            Earthward its flight it ’gan to reel;
            For awful now were heard to peal
                Sharp thunders from the pole,
            And lightnings flashed, and darkly spread
            O’er that rash rider’s impious head
                The sulphurous clouds did roll.
            With eager gust the fiery storm
            Resistless whirled his quaking form
                Down through the choking air.
            Loud and more loud the thunders swell—
            Him with blind speed the winds impel;
            Three times three days and nights he fell
                Down through the choking air.
            At length, in mazy terror lost,
            Him the celestial courser tossed
                With fiercely-fretted mane;
            And, by the close-involving blast
            Impetuous hurried, he was cast
                On the Aleian[11] plain.

                                XI.

            Senseless, but lifeless not, he lay.
                The gods had mercy shown
            If they had slain, on that black day,
                The blasted Glaucus’ son;
            But all the gods conspired to hate
            The man, with impious pride elate,
                Who dared to scale the sky.
            Year after year, from that black day,
            He pined his meagre life away,
            Weak as a cloud or vapour grey,
                And vainly wished to die.
            On a wide waste, without a tree,
            The unfrequent traveller there might see
                The once great Glaucus’ son.
            Far from the haunts and from the tread
            Of men, a joyless life he led;
            On folly’s fruitage there he fed,
                Dejected and alone;
            Even as a witless boy at school,
            Would sit and gaze into a pool
                The blank Bellerophon;
            Or to bring forth the blindworm red
            That, creeping, loves a lightless bed,
                Would turn the old grey stone.
            And thus he lived, and thus he died,
            And ended to the brute allied,
                Who like a god began;
            And he hath gained a painful fame,
            And marred immortal praise with blame,
            And taught to whoso names his name,
                PRIDE WAS NOT MADE FOR MAN!      J. S. B.

          THE COMING FORTUNES OF OUR COLONIES IN THE PACIFIC.

From the earliest records of what has been termed profane history, down
to the present day, we have been accustomed to regard Europe as the
centre of civilisation and of wealth. From Asia, Greece and Rome in
early times, and the commerce of European nations more recently, exacted
tribute and rich products. Two centuries ago the precious metals and
tropical yield of South America and the West Indies excited the rapacity
of adventurers from this and other countries; and towards the close of
last century we had to recognise the germs of a great Anglo-Saxon power
occupying the Atlantic shores and territory of North America, which we
now see competing actively with us for a share in influencing the
affairs of the world. Still both Asia and the American continent were
regarded as merely the feeders of the commercial and political greatness
of Europe. Africa was and remains comparatively an unknown continent,
whilst the inhospitable regions of the north are shunned by all, save
the hardy mariners engaged in the pursuit of the whale and the seal, the
former for its industrial usefulness, and the latter as affording us
articles of comfort and luxury. The extreme southern hemisphere had,
indeed, been explored by Cook, Vancouver, Fourneaux, and others; and its
clusters of islands were laid down in our charts, and some of them
claimed as calling-stations for the shipping employed in our commerce
with India, whilst others were appropriated for their valuable tropical
productions. But beyond this the Southern Pacific and Antarctic Oceans
were comparatively unknown and unvalued. Below the latitude of Cape
Horn, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Indian Ocean, their waters were an
unbroken solitude, save that occasionally a ship bearing the British
flag might be seen steering for our penal settlement of Australia, there
to deposit its living freight of criminal outcasts beyond reach of
contact with the populations of the civilised world; and more recently
with a few adventurous colonisers going out to cultivate its untrodden
wilds, and, amidst privations and arduous toil, to wring from its soil
the means of living, which they had been jostled out of on that of their
own densely peopled fatherland.

A mighty change, however, has come over us—unlooked for and undreamt
of—the issue of which the wisest can scarcely imagine for himself; for
it is plainly not the unaided work of man which has brought about that
change, but an overruling Providence, carrying out a preordained decree
that one of the fairest portions of the globe shall be a solitude no
longer. In most of the ordinary revolutions which have taken place in
the world, human agency is directly traceable. We have witnessed in
Europe the hardy tribes of the north over-running the fertile soils, and
subjecting to their rule the degenerate populations, of the south. We
have seen similar changes in Asia; and one of these is now progressing
in Africa, the northern provinces of which are being subjected to the
Gaul. Colonisation and emigration are rapidly peopling the western
states of the northern continent of America. But to produce such a
change in the condition of those far-distant countries, whose shores are
washed by the Pacific Ocean, and which are comparatively inaccessible to
the ordinary movements of migratory populations, whilst they held out
little to invite conquest, an extraordinary stimulus was required. That
stimulus has been lately afforded in abundant and overpowering measure.
A popular outburst, excited by the love of territorial aggrandisement,
which is inherent in the nature of the people of the United States, and
which, indeed, is inseparable from the very character of their
institutions, led to the seizure by them of a portion of the territory
of Mexico on the shores of the North Pacific Ocean. Under ordinary
circumstances the acquisition was almost valueless. By land it was
well-nigh unapproachable. A wild and mountainous territory, occupied by
various Indian tribes, intervened between California and the settled
States of the Union. Commercially it was unimportant, and likely to
remain so for years, if not for centuries, whilst, as an agricultural
territory, it was inferior in fertility to those States. It had
certainly the advantage of nearer proximity to India and China; but
there was scarcely along any portion of the west coast of either the
United States or South America sufficient population to render that
advantage of value. But in 1848, only a few months after its acquisition
by the model Republic, the world was startled with the news that gold
had been discovered upon the Sacramento River, within a short distance
from the port and bay of San Francisco; and further advices informed us
that the deposits of that mineral extended over a territory five hundred
miles in length by forty to fifty miles in width; and that, in fact, it
promised to be inexhaustible in amount, as it was unrivalled in
fineness. A population immediately began to flock to San Francisco by
every possible route from the United States, from the west coast of
South America, and from the islands of the Pacific. Even China was
attracted by the flattering accounts promulgated of the richness of the
mines, and began to pour forth its population towards the scene. The
emigrating population of Great Britain swelled the tide; and, within
twelve months of the first discovery of gold, we heard of nearly three
hundred sail of shipping being assembled in San Francisco bay, deserted
by their officers and crews, who had joined their cargoes of passengers,
and run off to partake of the rich harvest provided for them. The
sufferings and privations endured by some of the early adventurers—the
crime, the outrage, and utter lawlessness, which spread over the entire
territory—were recorded in vain. No warning was heeded. The passion for
gain is one of the strongest in our nature. Men heard of fortunes being
earned in a day; of the poorest becoming suddenly rich; of revelry and
wild enjoyment ensuing after severe toil and privation; and the tide of
adventurers flowed on with increased volume as every day added to the
assurance that the attracting cause was a permanent one. It cannot be
forgotten by the commercial people of this country how vast was the
impulse given to the industry, and the agricultural, manufacturing, and
maritime interests of the American Republic, by this state of things.
Her people almost ceased to care about supplying Europe with farm
products. The wealthy settlers in her golden territory could now afford
to consume what had formerly been exported as a disposable surplus.
Their monetary circulation was being largely expanded; and to a
corresponding extent they were enabled to extend their commercial
operations to every country. Their shipping, having earned large
freights by the transport of passengers from the Atlantic ports round
Cape Horn to California, could afford to make the run across the Pacific
in ballast to India and China, whence they competed with us in homeward
freights on terms almost ruinous to the British shipowner. And although
they became, and have since continued to be, larger consumers than
formerly of our products of every kind, it is very questionable whether,
in the long run, this increased consumption would have compensated us as
a nation for the advantages which America had obtained over us, through
the possession of this new territory, with its mineral riches, in
carrying on the traffic between our eastern possessions and China and
the various markets of Europe.

The route westward, by the North Pacific to the Indian Ocean, was thus
for the first time established as a great maritime highway by the
enterprising mercantile community of the United States. We had ourselves
long previously used the route _via_ Cape Horn and the South Pacific in
our trade with Chili, Peru, and other countries on the west coast of
South America. It was reserved for us for the first time to open out for
the commerce of the world an eastern route from the Atlantic and from
Europe across the South Pacific Ocean; in fact, to bring into practical
use the voyages of Cook, Vancouver, and other circumnavigators of the
globe, whose achievements during the past century had hitherto been
regarded as interesting only in a geographical point of view. Here,
again, it was an all-wise Providence which directed our path. On the 6th
May 1851, it was first announced that gold had been discovered in our
convict settlement of New South Wales. The news spread like wildfire
throughout the colony; and in a very short space of time there were
upwards of four thousand “diggers” at Ophir, near Bathurst, where the
discovery was first made, whose success fully equalled that of the early
adventurers at the Californian mines. Additional gold-fields were found
shortly afterwards both in New South Wales and the province of Victoria;
and before the end of July the arrivals of gold at Sydney, Geelong, and
Melbourne were sufficiently abundant to create a perfect revolution in
the labour market, not only in those towns, but in the agricultural
districts of the entire colony of Australia. The ordinary pursuits of
the population were everywhere abandoned. Men of all classes, capable of
wielding a pick or a spade, and many to whom such instruments had been
previously unknown, were seen abandoning their farms, their shops, or
their counting-houses, to swell the throng which rushed forth from every
quarter to “prospect” for gold in the gullies and creeks whose
appearance or geological formation promised a yield of the precious
metal. At the first announcement of so startling a discovery, a large
portion of the public in this country were indisposed to credit it.
Would-be-wise people shook their heads, and hinted that a mania had
seized upon the Australian colonists, which in its issue must be
productive of their utter ruin. We had black pictures painted of the
effect of a neglected agriculture; and some wiser people than their
fellows—journalists and statisticians—indulged in laboured arguments to
show that picking up “nuggets” or dust must in a very short period
become an unprofitable avocation, and absorb more labour than would
yield a paying return, in comparison with the ordinary pursuits of
industry. But each fresh arrival from the colony showed the fallacy of
these anticipations and prophecies. Gold continued to be picked up in
abundance, sufficient to remunerate every person engaged in its search,
although the number of the searchers had been multiplied twenty-fold;
and a vast emigration began to flow from this and other countries
towards the new El Dorado. In 1851—the year when the discovery was first
made—there were despatched from the United Kingdom alone 272 ships, with
an aggregate tonnage of 145,164 tons, having on board 21,532 passengers.
In 1852, the number of ships despatched was 568, with an aggregate
tonnage of 335,717 tons, having on board 87,881 passengers. When using
this term, by the by, it ought to be borne in mind that _adult_
passengers are meant, children of tender years being counted as nothing,
whilst of young persons under fourteen years of age, two are counted as
a passenger. The emigration of 1852 would thus be at least a hundred
thousand souls. During the past year the number of ships despatched was
1201, with an aggregate tonnage of 553,088 tons, being an increase on
the year of 633 vessels and 217,371 tons over the amount of 1852. We
have not before us accurate data for determining the precise number of
passengers taken out by them; but it would certainly be equal to that of
the corresponding period of the previous year. Great Britain, however,
was not the only country which was adding to the population of
Australia. The United States of America were sending us practised
gold-diggers from California, which shortly began to be regarded as
affording a less profitable field for their labour. Germany had begun to
pour forth her emigrant classes to the colony; and even China was
joining in the movement. In the summary of the _Melbourne Argus_,
written for the mail of the 25th March, we find the following statement:
“In the course of the last month several separate ship-loads of Chinese
have landed on our shores.... Numbers of these people, strangers as they
are to our customs and religion, have been sought for and engaged at
good wages by employers, with whom they can only communicate by signs.
They have shown themselves, on the whole, one of the most inoffensive
races of the motley group who seek our golden land; and a colony of
them, that have been for some time established at the diggings, are
remarkable for the quietness of their demeanour, and the propriety of
their behaviour.” The growth of the colony is, however, best shown by
comparing the aggregate number of the population now, with what it was
at the period when gold was first discovered. In the commencement of
1851, it was ascertained that the province of Victoria, which contains
the most productive mines, was 77,360. The same journal from which we
have quoted estimates it to be now 250,000; and adds, that it is being
increased by the arrival of about 1000 immigrants per week. It is
doubtful whether the other provinces—New South Wales and South and West
Australia—are progressing at the same rate. The “diggers” are a
migratory race. The report of a new “find” attracts them from all
directions. In February last, the Tarrengower gold-field was opened out,
and discovered to be most productive; and the following is a description
of the state of things which followed, from one who had visited the
locality: “In leaving Bendigo, the comparatively deserted state of the
diggings along Kangaroo Flat, in Adelaide Gully, and the Robinson
Crusoe, is very apparent. The vast extent of the yellow mounds, where so
much bustle and activity formerly prevailed, is now in many cases
unenlivened by the presence even of a solitary digger. The want of
water, in the first instance, but chiefly the attractions of
Tarrengower, have almost depopulated this portion of the Bendigo. Many
stores have been removed, and a large number are closed up for the
present; yet there is a vitality about the place which shows that the
glory has not altogether departed. Some business is being done, and
those who still remain have infinite faith in the recuperative energies
of Bendigo. ‘When the winter sets in,’ they say, ‘we shall have the
diggers back.’” Similar migrations are continually occurring; and hence
it is most difficult to arrive at the actual population of any
particular province or district. It is most probable, indeed, that the
numbers of souls in the entire colony are considerably understated.
This, we think, will be apparent when we come to examine the consuming
powers of Australia, as tested by its imports. From a return, moved for
in the House of Commons by Mr Archibald Hastie, and ordered to be
printed on the 1st of May last, the following were the exports from the
United Kingdom to the colony in each of the three years ending the 5th
January 1854:—

                           Declared value exported.
                     1851,               £2,807,356
                     1852,                4,222,205
                     1853,              14,506,532.

There is certainly evidence here, either of a most wasteful consumption,
or of the existence of a population greater than it is generally
supposed to be. But this return does not convey the full extent of that
consumption. From what appears to be a carefully compiled statement in
the _Melbourne Argus_ of the 25th of March last, the imports into the
province of Victoria alone, in 1853, amounted to the enormous sum of
£15,842,637, received from the following countries:—

                 Great Britain,             £8,288,226
                 West Indies (British),         14,973
                 North America (British),       13,560
                 Other British colonies,     5,036,311
                 United States of America,   1,668,606
                 Foreign States,               820,961
                                           ———————————
                      Total Imports,       £15,842,637

If the same proportionate amount has been taken by the other provinces
from colonial and foreign markets, the total imports for the year would
reach the vast amount of _twenty-three millions sterling_!

It is certainly true that, with respect to many articles, these imports
have been in excess of the requirements of the colony. Its markets have
been drugged with Manchester goods, with hardware, and slops, or
“haberdashery,” as our parliamentary returns rather absurdly call hats,
shoes, boots, ready-made clothing, &c. Serious losses will have to be
encountered by those parties who are unable to hold over their
consignments, and in part from the want of storage-room. But this state
of things is merely temporary, and applies to articles which are not
strictly necessaries. The arrival of the overland mail, with dates to
the end of May, brings us the assurance that business is improving, as
indeed might have been expected in a country whose population increases
at the rate of a thousand persons a week, each of whom is, on landing
upon its shores, placed at once in possession of an income never
previously enjoyed. We have the material fact, too, before us,
establishing the capability of the Australian colonist to consume
largely the products of foreign industry, that during the past year the
province of Victoria exported to the amount of £11,061,543, of which
£8,644,529 was gold, and £1,651,543 was wool. The difference between the
amount of imports and exports may be accounted for without concluding
that the population has been running itself into debt beyond their means
of paying it with tolerable promptitude. We may reasonably hope, too,
that one of the causes of such excessive importations as those of last
year will shortly be removed. We have had thus far no efficient and
regular mail communication with the colony. Up to the 20th of July, our
latest advices from Melbourne were dated the 25th of March; and it was
to American enterprise that we were indebted for intelligence up to May
11, brought by the steamer “Golden Age” to Panama, and thence by the
West India Company’s boats to Southampton. Close upon four months had
thus elapsed, during which our merchants had been operating in the dark,
making shipments to a colony the consuming powers of which had not been
fairly tested, and which might, for anything we knew, have supplied its
wants from the nearer markets of India and China, or taken a portion of
the surplus shipments to California. It is clear that such has been the
case. We have shown above, that of the total imports into Victoria in
1853, £5,036,311 were derived from “other British colonies,” and
£1,668,606 from the United States of America. Our East Indian markets,
no doubt, supplied the former amount, and the bulk of the latter crossed
the Pacific from California. On the 27th July we had a regular mail by
the overland route, _via_ India and the Mediterranean, bringing advices
up to the 29th May, which confirmed those brought by the “Golden Age.”
It is clear that a country, which takes from the United Kingdom upwards
of fourteen millions sterling per annum, ought to have permanently
established for it a postal communication as rapid as possible. It is
unreasonable and suicidal to torture a great mercantile nation with a
system, or arrangements, which leave us for four months consecutively
without advices of the wants of one of our most valuable customers, and
exchange of sentiments with nearly half a million of our own
fellow-countrymen. Before concluding our remarks, we shall endeavour to
point out how such improved postal communication can be best
established.

Returning to the immediate question of the increase of population in
Australia, and its probable future rate, we may state, unhesitatingly,
that it must be vastly beyond what is generally anticipated. In fact,
the increase is self-creative—“_vires acquirit eundo_.” Every
newly-arrived immigrant, who purchases land from the colonial
government, and every digger who pays for a gold license, becomes, in so
doing, an importer of labour. Writing on the 25th of March last, _The
Melbourne Argus_ says:—

  “The following is a statement of the arrivals and departures of
  passengers by sea since our last summary:—

                       1854.               Arrived. Departed.
                Week ending       Jan. 28,    2,619       739
                     „            Feb.  4,    1,561       632
                     „             „   11,      970       512
                     „             „   18,    1,475       557
                     „             „   25,    1,438       607
                     „            Mar.  4,    1,576       434
                     „             „   11,    1,336       670
                     „             „   18,    1,494       332
                                             ——————     —————
                                             12,469     4,483
                                              4,483
                                             ——————
              Increase to population,         7,986

“In the same number of weeks previously, as stated in our last summary,
the increase was 6281. The immigration is, therefore, again on the
increase. It is now proceeding at the rate of about 1000 per week; but
we ought not to omit mentioning, that a very large increase over this
may be speedily expected. We lately stated, on the authority of public
documents, that our land-fund available for promoting emigration from
the United Kingdom amounted in the last quarter to upwards of £250,000,
and if that rate is maintained during the present year, at the cost of
£6000 per ship, as estimated by the Land and Emigration Commissioners,
and an average of little more than 400 persons to each ship, there will
be a fund sufficient to convey free to these shores no less than 70,000
souls in one year. This, of course, is altogether independent of the
emigration of persons paying their own passages, which, we have noticed,
always increases with an increased Government emigration. Within the
last few weeks we have been invaded by what seems likely to be the
advanced guard of a large army of Chinese. Several ships have arrived
crowded with Chinese passengers, and many more are reported to be on
their way. The same spirit of enterprise is doubtless gradually
extending itself amongst the people of other countries; and the natural
effects will be exhibited in the inflow of a vast wave of population, to
a colony which affords such a field to the labouring man as is presented
in no other country upon earth.”

It may appear singular that there should be so large a number of
departures as 4483 to set against 12,469 arrivals. We have already
remarked, however, that the gold-diggers are migratory in their habits.
Many of them, who have amassed a few thousand pounds, return to their
own countries to settle. The state of society in Australia is not such
at present as to attach parties to the colony. There is unfortunately
there a want of home comforts. The wealth in the colony, suddenly
acquired, is in the hands of people unprepared, by education or early
pursuits, for spending it in a sensible manner, or investing it
profitably. Many are coming thence only for a season, as visitors to
their native land, or to return with relatives and friends; and some are
going away in quest of gold, reported to exist, in more than Australian
abundance, elsewhere. For example, there has been recently a rumour of
the Peruvian mines reassuming their original fertility; and we observe,
in recent Australian papers, announcements of numerous ships about to
sail with passengers for Callao, on the west coast of South America, in
the neighbourhood of which port it is said that gold has been recently
discovered in large quantities. The real gold, however, will most
assuredly be Peruvian guano, with which such ships will load for this
country and the United States. Such re-emigration is natural amongst a
population like that of Australia, and will continue for a while. But
the arrivals in the colony are becoming more and more composed of the
class likely to be settlers. The Germans have been lately extensive
purchasers of land, and are _habitués_ in the colony. A report of a
Hamburg society gives the following as the German population in 1852:—

                     New South Wales,       13,500
                     South Australia,        8,000
                     Victoria,               1,320
                                      ____________
                                            24,820

The German emigration to Australia last year will have greatly swelled
these numbers; and the description of emigrants from that country may be
estimated from the fact that, of nearly 6000 persons who applied to the
Berlin Emigration Society in 1852 for advice and assistance, 4444
possessed property amounting in the whole to 977,635 dollars, or, upon
an average, 218 dollars (£32, 14s.) per head.[12] We have also yet to
experience the effect which will be produced by remittances home by
emigrants for the purpose of enabling their friends to join them in the
colony. The impetus given to the efflux of population from Ireland by
such remittances was strikingly shown by the Colonial Land and
Emigration Commissioners in their Report of last year. The remittances
from the United States, as ascertained through leading mercantile and
banking firms, were as follows in the years mentioned:—

                             1848  £460,000
                             1849   540,000
                             1850   957,000
                             1851   990,000
                             1852 1,404,000

We observe at present that several of the leading emigration firms in
London and Liverpool are making arrangements in Australia for the
purpose of enabling settlers to pay the passage of their friends out to
the colony.

Independently of the attractions offered by the gold-fields, of
remittances from friends in Australia, or of Government aid, there is
abundant certainty that emigration to that colony must increase very
rapidly. In fact, scarcity of shipping is the only bar to it which is
likely to be felt. There is a positive want of labour in Australia,
which mocks at the childish efforts of such parliamentary committees as
that of which Mr John O’Connell was recently the chairman, to prevent
its supply. Notwithstanding its vast agricultural resources, the demand
for their development created by a rapidly augmenting population, and
the ample, and, in fact, extravagant remuneration afforded in the colony
for every description of industry, the entire world, whose attention has
been for the last two years attracted by its display of wealth, and
which is assured of the genuine and permanent character of its claims to
notice, appears unable to supply labour in sufficient abundance. Whether
we turn to its imports or its exports, furnished us in the valuable
report moved for by Mr Hastie, the great want of labour forces itself
upon us. We shall take at random a few of the articles exported from
Great Britain to the colony during the past three years:—

                                          1851.    1852.      1853.
     Apparel, Slops, and Haberdashery, £591,516 £959,687 £3,633,908
     Beer and Ale,                      135,674  245,657    635,870
     Butter and Cheese,                   4,142   50,583    207,094
     Soap and Candles,                   14,812   45,924    121,774

The last two items certainly would not occupy a place in the list of our
exports to Australia if that fine agricultural country had even a
moderate supply of labour. The anomaly is monstrous that butter and
cheese, soap and candles, should be wanting in a country whose live
stock are so abundant that they have actually to be boiled down for
their tallow and hides! Our imports from Australia, however, exhibit
most strongly its deficient supply of labour. We select a few items:—

                                         1851.   1852.   1853.
         Regulus of Copper, tons,        1,115     660      41
         Unwrought Copper,    „            773     632     473
         Flax, undressed, cwt.           1,259     904     664
         Hides, tanned or dressed, lb. 931,600 642,198   9,842
         Oil, Spermaceti, tuns,          1,911   1,609     940
         Tallow, cwt.                  174,471 159,333 125,206

The above articles the colony can supply to almost any extent; yet it
will be observed that their export is falling off every year. Its mines
of copper, especially, are amongst the richest in the world; yet they
are comparatively unworked for the want of hands, whilst the world holds
so many human beings who would gladly toil for one-fourth of the
remuneration which Australia could so well afford them. To the people of
Great Britain it is a very material object that the agricultural and
mineral resources of the colony should be more largely developed than at
present; for if, almost exclusively by the produce of her gold-fields,
her population of little, if at all, over half a million souls can
afford to import our productions to the amount of above fourteen
millions sterling per annum, what may be expected when it becomes
enabled to export freely the raw material, the agricultural products,
and the valuable minerals—copper, tin, &c.—which its soil will yield to
an extent almost beyond the power of calculation?

We have already stated that the increase of the population of Australia
is self-creative; and we can very briefly show how that principle is
likely to operate. We have a large amount of tonnage at present employed
in the passenger trade from Great Britain to that colony; but we have
not as yet sufficient homeward freight to employ one-fourth of that
tonnage. Since the discovery of the gold-fields the ordinary
agricultural and other pursuits of the colonists have been neglected;
and, as we might have expected, the exports of bulky raw materials and
produce, which constitute freight, have diminished in quantity. Hence
our emigrant ships, except in the case of those of the established lines
from Liverpool and London, which now return direct from that colony,
have had to go in ballast to the Eastern Seas, or to the guano islands
of Peru, to seek cargoes. Where such a course has to be pursued, the
passage-money outwards must range high—far above the means of the most
valuable emigrants, who are agricultural labourers, practical miners,
and artisans. But this state of things cannot continue to exist long.
The gold-fields are sufficiently tempting, no doubt; yet there are
blanks there as well as prizes. The disappointed must resort to
agricultural and other walks of industry. The flocks and herds of the
squatters in the bush are increasing at a most rapid rate—far beyond the
consumptive demand of the colony—and the supplies for export of hides,
tallow, oil, and wool must very largely increase. Of the latter most
important raw material the following were the shipments to this country
during the past three years:—

               Wool—Sheep and Lambs’ 1851, 41,810,117 lb.
                                     1852,  43,197,301  „
                                     1853,  47,075,963  „

In bales the total exports of last year were 153,000, of an average of
about 300 lb. weight each. This article alone would afford return
cargoes for from thirty to forty thousand tons of shipping. The yield
both of wool and tallow must increase enormously in a few years; and
when an ample supply of homeward freight is afforded, our emigration
houses will be enabled to reduce considerably the outward passage-money
for emigrants to the colony, and thus add to the numbers of its
population.

But we cannot regard the discoveries which have been made in the
countries of the Pacific as merely tending to give an impulse to our
commerce, and to afford increased employment to our shipping and to
industry at home. We must regard them in a much more extended light. The
important change which is taking place may fairly be termed the opening
out of a new quarter of the globe, rich beyond measure in all the
products which are valuable and useful to man, and the establishment, in
its centre, of an Anglo-Saxon empire, whose future destiny and greatness
it is almost impossible to predict rightly. A glance at the position of
Australia will be sufficient to show its great commercial importance. To
the north-westward it has the fertile islands of Java, Sumatra, Borneo,
the Philippines, Ceylon, with the vast continent containing China and
Hindostan. The extreme portions of these are at less than half the
distance which lies between them and Great Britain. From Melbourne to
Madras is little more than 5700 miles, whilst the nearer islands in the
Indian Ocean are only distant from 3000 to 3500 miles. From Melbourne to
any portion of the west coast of North and South America the distance,
by the eastward Pacific route, is 8000 miles, or little over that from
Great Britain to Cape Horn. It is thus in closer proximity than the
mother country to San Francisco, New Granada, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia,
Chili, and La Plata. There can no want occur of any of the products of
the tropics, at all events, to a country occupying a central position as
regards such markets as we have named, rich in all that conduces to the
comfort and the luxuries of life; whilst of those products which are
raised in the temperate zone, Australia has soils of her own capable of
providing her with food in abundance, and raw materials amply sufficient
to pay for all that she will require to import, without drawing upon her
vast stores of the precious metals. These must rapidly become available
to create for her population a capital for the purposes of commerce, a
mercantile marine, railways, and other improved communications,
well-built towns, substantial public works, and the usual accompaniments
enjoyed by settled and prosperous communities. There can be no doubt
that the absence of these are amongst the main causes which retard
emigration to the colony of families belonging to the middle and
superior classes, and the absence there so generally regretted of what
may be called a “home circle.” Such a want keeps back the influx of a
female population, especially of the class required to make a home
comfortable; but it will be supplied in time, and, in fact, is being
rapidly supplied now. Not much more than six months ago, Melbourne, the
capital of Victoria, and the seat of the government of the colony, was
in a most deplorable state, and without anything like the accommodation
required for its population or its commerce. Stores and warehouses there
were almost none; and we heard, by every arrival, of merchandise being
sacrificed on this account. But more recent advices report that—

  “Melbourne is branching out upon every side. Townships spring up in
  localities where a short time ago there was not a single dwelling of
  any description; houses seem, in fact, to swarm like mushrooms from
  the ground in a single night. A little more than twelve months since,
  and North Melbourne was merely the site of a few scattered tents; it
  now contains a population of several thousands, with comfortable
  homes, shops, hotels, and schools to meet the wants of its
  inhabitants. The suburbs, that are being formed in the opposite
  direction, offer a still stronger proof of the growth of a taste that
  has always been peculiarly English, and one that will do more than
  anything else to place the prosperity of this colony upon a secure
  foundation—namely, a desire for home comfort. In former times the
  pursuit of money was the whole, the engrossing passion of the
  community; so long as this object was attained, the feverish seeker
  cast not a thought upon the manner in which he lived; he appeared to
  have an utter disregard of the comforts of home. If he happened to
  have a run of luck, and was successful, what benefit did he reap from
  his success! He would run riot for a time, and spend the hard earnings
  of a month in the dearly-bought pleasure of a few hours’ debauchery.
  The principal reason for this, next to our abominable land-system,
  was, that the colony could not offer the swarming mass of new-comers
  any domestic comforts. Now, however, the case is becoming far
  different: at Richmond, Prahran, St Kilda, and Brighton, the passer-by
  can gaze everywhere with pleasure upon pretty cottages enclosed in
  their own little gardens, cheerful, trim-built English-looking villas,
  and some dwelling-houses that may fairly lay claim to the
  high-sounding appellation of mansions. Each of these suburbs, hemming
  Melbourne in on every side, constitutes a town of some size; and we
  have no doubt that, in a very short space of time, they will form part
  of Melbourne itself, much in the same manner that Chelsea and Putney
  do of London; indeed, St Kilda, Windsor, and Prahran are already
  connected by a line of houses almost the whole of the way with the
  town.”

A similar state of progressive improvement exists at Sydney, Geelong,
Adelaide, and other towns. The population in them is becoming a more
settled one; business goes on in more regular channels, and domestic
comforts are more studied. Substantial stores for merchandise are also
rising up on every side; and importers are now enabled to hold back
their goods for a more profitable market than the previous system of
selling them on landing, whatever might be the state of the demand,
would admit of.

The colony, too, is assuming more and more the character, which it is
destined to possess, of an important mercantile community; and its
commercial firms are actively preparing for extensive transactions with
the rich countries with which they have communication in every
direction. The first step towards forwarding such object has naturally
been to connect with each other the various ports along the coast, and
the towns on the principal rivers; and accordingly we find established
lines of steamers running from Sydney to the leading ports in the other
provinces, and to the interior at every point where river navigation is
practicable, and a working community and trade exist. The same
accommodation is provided from Melbourne, Geelong, and Adelaide, to
other ports and towns. Several lines of sailing packets also offer
themselves to the public between the principal ports. In fact, a large
coasting-trade is carried on, both in passengers and merchandise, the
route by sea being preferred to travelling by land over badly-formed,
and frequently unsafe, roads. In the first instance, some difficulty
existed in procuring vessels, especially for the navigation of the
rivers, where a light draught of water was necessary, as such vessels
could not be trusted to make the voyage out from Europe or America. They
are now, however, being gradually supplied by builders in the colony. A
somewhat larger class of vessels is regularly employed in the trade
between New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, and New Zealand,
Van Diemen’s Land, and the government settlement in West Australia, with
a few for San Francisco, Callao, Manilla, and the near East Indian