LIFE OF JAMES DWIGHT DANA 



pilots. Here they remained for several weeks, while 

 Wilkes was preparing to explore the polar ice-fields. On 

 this forbidding excursion he did not plan to take with 

 him the members of the scientific corps, for " they were 

 regarded," says Dana, " as a worse than useless append- 

 age." The observations which were made in Australia 

 by Captain Wilkes, so far as can be discovered from his 

 narrative, related to the social problems suggested by the 

 rapidly increasing influence of British power. " New 

 South Wales," he says, " is known in the United States 

 almost by its name alone." He therefore gathers statis- 

 tical and historical data from authoritative sources, from 

 Sir George Gipps, Bishop Broughton, and Mr. John 

 Blaxland among others; he looks into the effects of 

 the penal colony, the condition of commerce, legislation, 

 education, and religion. Sydney then numbered some 

 24,000 persons, about one-fifth of the population of New 

 South Wales, and it was estimated that about one-fourth 

 of this number were convicts. A convict ship came in 

 while he was there, but this must have been among the 

 last of such arrivals. With the celebrated disciplinarian, 

 Captain Maconochie, he held many interviews, and the 

 prisons at Paramatta, as well as those at Sydney, were 

 examined. He also visited the astronomical observatory 

 established by Sir Thomas Brisbane, and at the time of 

 Wilkes's visit in a dilapidated state. 



While the commander was occupied in this way and 

 with preparations for his southern voyage (especially im- 

 portant because of the bad condition of the Peacock), the 

 members of the scientific corps made journeys to various 

 places distant from Sydney. For example, Hale and 

 Agate went eighty miles northward to Hunter River, 

 and thence to Lake Macquarie, a missionary station 

 among the aborigines, the scene of Threlkeld's labors. 

 Another party, Dana among them, went by steamboat to 

 Newcastle and then to Maitland, the head of tide-water 



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