800 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION I. 



colonial man. Where did, where could literature " come in," 

 to use the dramatic idiom of the day. 



Strange as it may appear to the untra veiled Briton, literature 

 has " come in," gum trees, bushrangers, droughts, and dingoes 

 nothwithstanding, and fi-om a very early period in the history 

 of Australia. The brooding mind of the poet, the quick 

 insight of the romancer, the analytical brain of the essayist, 

 the keen memory of the historian, the wider perseverance of 

 the searcher for scientific wealth, have not been unrepresented 

 among the earth subduers whom the swarming hives of the 

 old world cast forth on the void, pale wastes of the new. 

 Slowly, gradually, but distinct in form and hue, they arose, 

 the sons of art and song, amid the din of march and camp, 

 though standing, perhaps, somewhat aloof from the multitude 

 of loftier stature and moi-e august mien. And who were 

 they, in the dark, dreary days of a lonely outpost, so far across 

 the restless main, when the fringe of arable land painfully 

 won from the primeval forest yielded but a meagre subsistence 

 to the deported labourei's and their taskmasters ? First, in a 

 sense foremost in every department of effort to which he 

 addressed a grand intellect and a vigorous organisation, looms 

 the majestic form of William Charles Wentworth, An 

 Australian of Australians he ! Proud of his colonial birth, 

 his colonial possessions, and that colonial greatness which hife 

 prophetic poet soul had foreshadowed, in this diminished son 

 of soil we may, perhaps, without undue tendency to gasconade, 

 discern that complete development of the individual which 

 the conflicts of a colonial arena tend to produce. Poet and 

 statesman, advocate and patriot, explorer and pastoralist, in 

 every various occupation he was, in his own land, an acknow- 

 ledged " anax andron." Born at Norfolk Island, a dependency 

 of New South Wales, where his father, Mr. Darcy Wentworth, 

 was Imperial surgeon, he was sent to England at the age of 

 seven for his education. He returned to the colony in 1813, 

 Scarcely arrived at manhood, his ardent soul found fitting 

 vent in the historic exploration of the transmontane region, 

 until then a terra incognita. With his heroic companions. 

 Lieutenant Lawson and Mr. Gregory Blaxland, he dared the 

 dangers of the unknown waste; with them returned, shoeless, 

 starving, but successful. Threading the " horrible, hopeless, 

 sultry dells " which lie between Katoomba and the boundless 

 levels of the interior, they had discovered a track over 

 barriers long regarded as impassable. Along this mountain 

 highway passed, in annual procession, the long imprisoned 



