468 SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON'S ADDRESS. [May 25, 1857- 



is abundance of good country in North Australia, and, with access 

 for vessels to the lower part of the Victoria, full scope for the 

 formation of a new colony. But as a new settlement can scarcely 

 be formed in such a remote and certainly hot part of the globe 

 without prison labour, against which the public mind is turned 

 with such decision, and as, without great inducements, the squatters 

 will find it for a long time unprofitable to migrate in this direction, 

 I fear that the pastures of North Australia will yet be left flockless 

 for a long time." * 



With such facts before them, it is possible that our Government 

 may see that this prolific and healthy region, so remote and so 

 entirely cut off hy the great interior saline desert from all our established 

 colonies, that no intercommunication can possibly take place, "j* is, notwith- 

 standing its summer heats, a perfectly fit and proper receptacle 

 for our convicts, whose labour there would completely repay 

 their cost of maintenance. When our prisons are crowded, and 

 crime is rapidly augmenting with our increasing population, it does 

 indeed seem desirable to seize upon such a zone of exile as is here 

 oifered, and, by removing worthless characters from our land, render 

 them really useful in occupying the only coast of that continent 

 on which the British flag does not now fly, though it has been 

 there twice unfurled. But I forbear to press this feature of a topic 

 which can be better handled by politicians ; and all I venture to 

 urge is, that, whether by forced | or free labour, North Australia 

 should be colonised. 



When presiding over you in 1844, and in then expressing an 

 opinion from the best authority § that, if our Government would 



* Mr. Elsey, the surgeon of the expedition, who has reached London -whilst 

 this Address is passing through the press, completely conj&rms this view of the 

 productiveness and healthiness of the region. 



t See Grounds of the Award of the Patron's Gold Medal to Mr. Gregory, and a 

 description of these tracts. 



X It has indeed been stated, that the inhabitants of the free colonies of Australia 

 protest agauist any further transportation to that continent. Now, a resident of 

 Victoria in S. Australia might with as much consistency declare, that there should 

 be no penal settlement in any part of the world, as that the Victoria of North 

 Australia should not be so first settled through convict labour; for the great 

 interior saline desert more completely separates the northern from the southern 

 region of Australia than any sea. That desert is utterly impassable by human 

 efibrts, and any convict who should escape from Victoria River or Cambridge 

 Gulf would have to find his way by upwards of 4000 miles of sea voyage before 

 he could reach Melbourne ! It is indeed extraordinary that in the debates upon 

 this subject, no allusion has been yet made to Cambridge Gulf and the rich basin of 

 the Victoria river. See Debates H. of Commons, May 15, 1857, when Mr. Baxter 

 quoted the Melbourne Correspondent of * The Times.' 



§ Journal Roy. Geogr. Soc, vol. xiv., President's Address, p. xcvii. 



