6 



from the hand of industry and cultivation. The temporary huts of each 

 migratory tribe will be replaced by cities, resembling those of the old world. 

 Man and nature will be no more at war with one another, and Heaven, per- 

 chance, will look down smilingly on a new world, which has been re-created 

 from its worse than nothingness. And who is the precursor and primary 

 cause of these^anticipated blessings, if it be not tlie traveller — like him of 

 whose work we are about to speak?" — Torch, 22nd Sept, 1838. 



" No one can peruse Major Mitchell's Narrative of the three long and often 

 perilous journeys now before us, without acknowledging, that he possesses 

 all those requisites wiiich, in enterprises like the present, if they are not able 

 to command success, are at least certain to deserve it : and, in addition to 

 the usual and inseparable obstacles which beset the ordinary traveller's path 

 in regions as wild as these, we must admit, that his was attended by many 

 novel and unforeseen circumstances, which rendered it one of no ordinary 

 difficulty and trial. 



"In the first place, if we consider that the majority of his companions 

 were convicts, men who, although their offences might not have been of a 

 heinous nature, were, nevertheless, outcasts from society and exiles from 

 their native land ; and who must naturally, from contact with more hardened 

 ofl'enders, have imbibed something of their recklessness and impatience of 

 restraint — it will be sufficiently evident that it required no ordinary exertion 

 of patience and firmness, of judgment, and of temper, to make such heteroge- 

 neous materials unite together for the attainment of the one object in view, 

 and to quell within their bosoms the dormant spirit of insubordination, which 

 might once more have awakened, when they found themselves far from the 

 haunts of civilized men, remote from those scenes which had been the wit- 

 nesses of their degradation, and, knowing that it required only an exertion 

 of the will to cast away tlie chains which society had put upon them, and 

 pay back its scorn by abjuring the lessons which it taught, and mating them- 

 selves with the untutored savage of the wilderness. 



" But the possibility of such an occurrence was foreseen and wisely 

 provided for. The persons to accompany tlie expedition were selected from 

 the better classes of convicts. They were chiefly men whose oifences partook 

 more of misfortune than of guilt ; of those who had given way to the impulse 

 of some casual temptation, rather than those whose feelings had been indu- 

 rated by a long apprenticeship to crime. They were all actuated by one 

 prevailing wish to regain, in some measure, the station which they had lost, 

 and to earn a partial remission of former oifences by redoubled zeal and ac- 

 tivity in the employment which they were permitted to share. And it is gra- 

 tifying to know, that during the three different expeditions on Avhich tliey 

 were employed, altiiougli many circumstances of temptation and discourage- 

 ment intervened, not a single instance of misbehaviour occurred sufficient 

 to call down the serious displeasure of their leader, or to forbid the exercise 

 of that clemency on the part of the government, to merit which had been 

 the aim of all. 



" And is it not to be hoped that a system which has produced, in the in- 

 stances before us, such beneficial results, will be persevered in, and that man 

 will for the future grant to his erring fellow man the same pri\ilege which 

 God has extended to himself — the privilege of repentance and forgiveness. 

 How many a heart is hardened, and made the abode of darkest passions and 

 despairing guilt, simply because no path was left by which the spirit could 

 retrace its steps, and wander back from the darkness of this world's con- 

 demnation into the daylight of its forgiveness and love. How often has the 

 hasfy fiat of a mortal and fallil)le tribunal been the precursor and the type 

 of tiiat more terrible, but not more irrevocable, doom, which awaits the 

 guilty in an after slate, and which would not, perhaps, have been incurred, 

 had society tempered mercy witii her justice, and been ready to welcome 

 back to her bosom those erring children, of whom her severity has made 

 outcasts and aliens for ever ! Let us hope then for the future, even to the 

 unrighteous, there may arise a light in the darkness, remembering that He 

 is merciful, loving, anil righteous, and that man, however lost he may be, is 

 never so irretrievably and finally losl, as when the light of hope, which 

 should have guided hin) back 1o the paths of rectitude is extinguished, and 

 he feels that he is abandoned l)y his kind. 



