ISO AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



As they stand now even they are not unprofitable. Without them many a 

 picturesque scene would be less interesting. 



Hobart is a lovely city. It has been made beautiful by nature, and it 

 will become famous by the act of man, for it is the spot where the first 

 Federal Council of Australasia met in January 1886. It is rather inverting 

 the order of things to first dwell upon the newest characteristic of the town, 

 but the departure is justified by the promise of the great good which must 

 follow the establishment of the Union. In due course the federal spirit 

 must expand, and when Australians, in years to come, revert to the starting- 

 point of their national life, they will think kindly of Hobart. 



The city of ' balmy summers and cheerful winters ' stands on the big- 

 volumed Derwent. The river rises far inland, up among high mountains, 

 where Lake St. Clair and Lake Sorell reflect the snowy peaks of their 

 basaltic guardians. It runs through rich country, where settlement has 

 become permanent, down to New Norfolk, where it bends and twists, and 

 skirts lofty cliffs, passes through hop-fields, whose golden crops in the autumn 

 make the landscape beautiful and the air fragrant, develops into a noble 

 course a little farther on, and at Hobart is in some places seven miles in 

 width, and in no place less than a mile. There are high mountains on both 

 sides, and the valleys are exceptionally productive. The city is seated on 

 seven hills ; behind it is Knocklofty, a respectable eminence ; and behind that 

 again Mount Wellington, 4166 feet in height, forms a grand background. 

 The population numbers about thirty thousand, and the citizens are tolerably 

 thrifty, although not so enterprising nor so wealthy as the colonists of the 

 mainland. The city was established early in the century, and for very many 

 years it was the entrepot for the thousands of wretched convicts expatriated 

 from Great Britain. It was an important military station, and its palmiest 

 days were thirty- five years ago, when the Imperial Government spent ^1000 

 a day in the maintenance of the gaols and the barracks. At that time the 

 city was an important place, but the curse of transportation was upon it. 

 In 1 85 1 the last convict ship discharged its cargo, and since then the system 

 has gradually run down, and is now very little more than a memory. The 

 traces must necessarily linger, but their ultimate effacement is only a question 

 of time. It is a pity that so fair a spot was ever used for so ill a purpose. 



Being the capital, Hobart possesses all the usual official institutions : a 

 Government House in a beautiful garden on the Derwent, in which resides 

 a well-paid representative of Her Majesty ; Parliament Houses, in which sit 

 two Chambers, who legislate upon the most approved constitutional plan ; a 

 Supreme Court, Civil Service Court, and other accessories suited to the 

 requirements of the colony. Its monetary and trading institutions are sound, 

 and its commercial relations with other ports expanding. The harbour is 

 lined with well-built wharves, and the depth of water is astonishing. Twelve 

 miles down the river are the Heads. The Southern Pacific is beyond ; and so 



