acle to the traveller's progress in
the shape of extensive and impassable marshes! To these difficulties
must be added the usual trials of adventurous explorers, the dangers and
perplexities of a journey through pathless forests, the want of game
of any kind in the barren sandstone districts, the perils sometimes
threatened by a visit from the native inhabitants, and, altogether, we
shall have reason rather to feel surprise at what has been done in the
way of inland discovery in New Holland, than to wonder that so much
remains yet undone.

In consequence of the interior portions of the country remaining still
unknown, fancy has been busy in forming notions respecting them, and
one favourite supposition has been that there exists somewhere in the
central part of New Holland an immense lake or inland sea; but of this
no proof whatever can be produced, so that it can only be said that _it
may be so_. Certainly, unless some such means of communication by water,
or some very large navigable river, should exist, it is hardly possible
to imagine how the extensive tracts of inland country can ever become
civilized or inhabited by Europeans. And of that portion which has been
visited a considerable extent of country appears to be shut out by the
natural barrenness of its soil and sandstone-rocks from any prospect of
ever supplying food to the colonies of civilized man. So that, while
the whole of New Holland is an interesting country from its natural
peculiarities, and even the desolate portion of it adds, by its very
desolation, a deep interest to the adventures of those persons who have
had the courage to attempt to explore it; yet the chief prospects of
Australia's future importance seem to be confined to its line of
coast,--no narrow limits in an island so extensive. Hence the colonies
now flourishing on the eastern, southern, and western shores of New
Holland, especially on the first, will form a chief object of attention
in the present work; although, as will be seen by its contents, the
"bush," or wild country, and its savage inhabitants, will be by no
means overlooked.

Respecting Van Diemen's Land much need not be here said, although,
however small in comparative extent, its population was in 1836 above
half of that of the whole colony of New South Wales. It is, therefore,
and always will be, an important island, though, from its mountainous
character and confined limits, it cannot, of course, be expected to keep
pace