s, AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



efforts to secure admission to the jury lists met with some success during his Adminis- 

 tration. Convicts who had served their term of transportation were declared eligible as 

 jurors, but on a second conviction in the colony they were to be disqualified. A further 

 advance towards constitutional government was made in the new Constitution Act, passed 

 by the Imperial Parliament in 1828, by which the Legislative Council was enlarged to 

 fifteen members. The Bushranging Act, one of the most remarkable measures known in 

 the colony, was passed by this Council, in 1830, at a single sitting. That species of 

 highway robbery known as " bushranging," which had become prevalent many years 

 before, had reached such a height at this time as to cause a general feeling of alarm. 

 Sometimes the escaped convicts who took to the bush formed large gangs, and attacked 

 the police as well as the settlers. On one occasion a pitched battle was fought at 

 Campbell's River, in the Bathurst District, between a party of bushrangers, over fifty in 

 number, and a large gathering of settlers ; but neither side was victorious. The police 

 were next attacked, and some of them killed. Re-inforcements were then sent from Goul- 

 burn, and having come upon the bushrangers at the Lachlan River, another engagement 

 took place, but without much result. The whole gang, however, soon after surrendered 

 to a detachment of the Thirty-ninth Regiment sent from Sydney, and ten of them were 

 hanged at Bathurst. To suppress such outrages as these, the Act provided that all 

 suspected persons might be apprehended without a warrant ; that any one carrying arms 

 might be arrested, and any one suspected of having them might be searched ; that 

 general warrants to search houses might be granted, armed with which the police should 

 be empowered to break and enter any house by day or by night, seize fire-arms found 

 therein, and arrest the inmates. Robbers and house-breakers were to suffer death on the 

 third day after conviction. The effect of this Act in suppressing crime and restoring 

 order was described as magical. But the alarm caused by the bushrangers must have 

 been great indeed to justify such an extension of the powers entrusted to the police. 



Considerable progress in the noble work of discovery was made during Darling's 

 Administration. Allan Cunningham, a celebrated botanist, was dispatched in 1827 on an 

 inland expedition to the north. Starting from the head of the Hunter River, he traversed 

 the affluents of the Namoi and the Gwydir, and discovered the Darling Downs. Two 

 years later he set out on a second 'expedition from Moreton Bay, whither he had 

 gone by sea; explored the sources of the Brisbane River, took up the tracks of his 

 former journey, and gave the name of Cunningham's Gap to an opening by which the 

 Darling Downs could be reached through the Liverpool Ranges. Cunningham will ever 

 be gratefully remembered by the people of Sydney as one of the many learned and 

 tasteful men who have from time to time watched over the arrangement and cultiva- 

 tion of the beautiful reserve known as the Botanical Gardens. Indeed one of the loveliest 

 vistas in this singularly lovely domain is to be obtained from the margin of the small 

 lagoon from the centre of which, embowered in the drooping fronds of some species of 

 palm, rises the obelisk which commemorates the name and fame of the intrepid scientist. 



Another distinguished explorer was commissioned by Darling, in 1828, to make 

 researches in the interior. This was Captain Charles Sturt, of the Thirty-ninth Regiment, 

 Hamilton Hume being associated with him. They struck out towards the region which 

 had baffled Oxley, discovered the Darling River, thence turned north, and after some 



