cribed, varying from
grandeur to tameness, from fertility to barrenness, from extreme beauty
to extreme ugliness, but always possessing, at least, the recommendation
of being _new_, the wanderers in the Bush are delighted to range. There
is a charm to enterprising spirits in the freedom, the stillness, and
even in the dangers and privations, of these vast wilds, which, to such
spirits, scenes of a more civilised character can never possess. If it
be true,--and who has never felt it to be so?--that

"God made the country and man made the town,"

much more distinctly is God's power visible in the lonely wastes of
Australia, much more deeply do men feel, while passing through those
regions, that it is His hand that has planted the wilderness with trees,
and peopled the desert with living things. Under these impressions men
learn to delight in exploring the bush, and when they meet, as they
often do, with sweet spots, on which Nature has secretly lavished her
choicest gifts, most thoroughly do they enjoy, most devotedly do they
admire, their beauty. In travelling some miles to the northward of
Perth, a town on the Swan River, Captain Grey fell in with a charming
scene, which he thus describes: "Our" station, "this night, had a beauty
about it, which would have made any one, possessed with the least
enthusiasm, fall in love with a bush life. We were sitting on a
gently-rising ground, which sloped away gradually to a picturesque lake,
surrounded by wooded hills,--while the moon shone so brightly on the
lake, that the distance was perfectly clear, and we could distinctly see
the large flocks of wild fowl, as they passed over our heads, and then
splashed into the water, darkening and agitating its silvery surface; in
front of us blazed a cheerful fire, round which were the dark forms of
the natives, busily engaged in roasting ducks for us; the foreground was
covered with graceful grass-trees, and, at the moment we commenced
supper, I made the natives set fire to the dried tops of two of these,
and by the light of these splendid chandeliers, which threw a red glare
over the whole forest in our vicinity, we ate our evening meal; then,
closing round the fire, rolled ourselves up in our blankets, and laid
down to sleep."

The very same feeling of religion, which heightens the pleasures and
gives a keener relish to the enjoyments of life in these lonely places,
can also afford comfort, and hope, and encouragement under those p