ned the door silently. The
woman, his attendant, then entered with an axe belonging to him in
her hand, and several men followed her. She approached the
unsuspecting youth, and, while his soul was devoutly engaged in
prayer, she raised the fatal axe, and, with one blow, severed his
skull, and the men with their clubs beat his body into a shapeless
mass."

EMMA. "Poor Mr. Meredith! What a frightful murder!"

MRS. WILTON. "The Australians thought nothing of it, for they glory
in the most atrocious deeds. I fear it will be long before they will
be civilized. But let us look at their country, of which, in some
respects, but little can be said; for it is not remarkable for its
fertility, and in many parts exceedingly barren. But few animals
range there, and in the south-west the natives subsist during the
winter chiefly on opossums, kangaroos, and bandicoots, in the summer
upon roots, with occasionally a few fish."

DORA. "Port Adelaide appears to be a neat town. Its harbor is a deep
creek or inlet of the sea, running out of Gulf St. Vincent: it
contains two spacious wharfs, alongside of which, vessels from Great
Britain, Singapore, Manilla, China, Mauritius, Sydney, Hobart Town,
and New Zealand, are continually discharging their cargoes."

MRS. WILTON. "There are many lakes in Australia, but none of them
very large. Lake Alexandria is the largest, but it is very shallow;
and Lake St. George, the second in size, which, in 1828, was a sheet
of water 17 miles long by 7 broad, was said by an old native female
to have been a forest within her memory, and in 1836 it was dried up
to a grassy plain."

EMMA. "Does not Van Diemen's Land belong to New Holland, mamma?"

MRS. WILTON. "Yes, my dear; and the part nearest to it is New South
Wales, from which it is separated by Bass's Straits, which are 100
miles broad, and contain a great many small islands. Van Diemen's
Land was discovered by Tasman, in 1644, and named by him in honor of
the Dutch Governor-General of the East Indies: but it is now more
appropriately called Tasmania. This island contains several
mountains of considerable elevation. The highest is ascertained to
be 3964 feet in height. Hobart Town is the capital. The population
of Tasmania has of late years much increased, for, owing to its
eligibility, the tide of emigration has been strong. For many years,
three or four vessels have annually sailed from Great Britain, laden
with emigrants possessed of more or less