COKAL REEFS. 355 



The romance of voyage and travel is therefore well-nigh at 

 an end, nor is it likely anything should hereafter occur to 

 revive it. Utility, in all public undertakings of this kind, is 

 now mainly sought after ; what can be gained to physical 

 science, to colonisation, or to commerce and the conveniences 

 of life. The construction of more accurate charts; the 

 correct fixing of latitudes and longitudes ; the discovery of 

 new harbours and rivers fitted for navigation ; the sounding 

 of seas, from depths which barely float a ship to the profound 

 abysses of ocean where fathom-line of five miles will hardly 

 touch the ground ; the determination of tides and currents ; 



observations on winds and storms; tables of magnetic 

 variation, now so important to the exact science of navigation ; 



these, and other matters more purely scientific, we find ap- 

 pended in one shape or other to all relations of modern 

 voyages, as the documents of highest interest and value. And 

 rightly indeed so esteemed, looking to the actual condition 

 and future prospects of the world ; in which certain eminent 

 and favoured races, foremost in civilisation, are rapidly 

 diffusing themselves with ever growing numbers over re- 

 gions tenanted before by savage or half-civilised tribes, the 

 fractional remnants of an earlier peopling of the glebe. 



The shores of the great southern continent of Australia 

 have recently given ample scope and object to these ex- 

 peditions of maritime survey. Our national interests are 

 now indeed so deeply concerned in this vast and most 

 singular country, and in the rapid progress our colonies 

 there are making in population, agriculture, mining, com- 

 merce, and all that constitutes the germ of great commu- 

 nities, that there could be no excuse for indifference or 

 inertness as to researches thus directed. Australia may well 

 be described as a land of problems and paradoxes in every 

 part of its physical history. In nothing, however, is it more 



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