eir
present deprivation. Why the intelligent means of irrigation so well
known and so thoroughly tested elsewhere are not adopted here, it is
difficult to understand. We heartily agree with the position assumed in
regard to this matter by a certain English Bishop, of whom we were told.
He came to Australia to make it his home; and being applied to in a dry
season to issue a circular-prayer for rain, he answered that a fair
average quantity of water fell upon the land already, and that he
declined to petition the Almighty to work a miracle until the colonists
had themselves done what they could to preserve the rains by
constructing proper reservoirs and sinking artesian wells. These people
must not expect that Hercules will help them, unless they first put
their own shoulders to the wheel.

The river Darling shows well upon paper, and judged by its aspect on the
map it is a river which might rank with the Volga and the Amazon. But
the truth is that it forms a watercourse dependent at present upon
floods, admitting of navigation for hundreds of miles at certain
seasons, and at others being as dry as the Arno at Florence or the
Manzanares at Madrid. By a series of dams and canals this river might be
navigable all the year round. The same remark applies to several of its
tributaries, and to rivers generally running toward the inland centres
and flowing into the Murray. The governments of the several colonies
have long realized the importance and the necessity of a grand and
comprehensive system of irrigation. They seem to be never tired of
talking about the matter; but the time has now come for action. Some of
the most enterprising of the pioneers as they have advanced inland have
built dams on the small tributaries of the two rivers named, and have
found it to pay them tenfold. Some have sunk artesian wells, and have in
their turn reaped commensurate advantages. We were shown great reaches
of country where ten years ago cattle would have starved had they been
turned out to find a living there, but which now support large herds of
domestic animals.

Africa's interior is scarcely less mapped out and explored than Central
Australia. There are thousands of square miles upon which the foot of a
white man has never trod. Tartary has its steppes, America its prairies,
Egypt its deserts, and Australia its "scrub." The plains so called are
covered by a low-growing bush, compact and almost impenetrable in
places, composed of a dwa