212 WILSON’S JOURNEY IN NORTH-WEST AUSTRALIA. [May 10, 1858. 
the world has the author seen grass grow so luxuriantly. Timber 
for rough purposes is abundant : it consists chiefly of inferior kinds 
of eucalypti. The edible fruit-products are numerous ; three sorts 
of figs, two fruits resembling grapes, the Adansonia, wild rice, wild 
yams, and a production like potatoes. The quadrupeds are the same 
as those in the south ; the birds are different. An immense 
gathering of migratory bats, nearly as large as flying foxes, were 
once observed ; they were millions in number, and extended to a 
mile, darkening the air, bending down the branches of the trees by 
their weight, and diffusing a musky smell. Some curious kinds of 
fish were met with ; one that caught flies by squirting a little jet 
of water upon them as they settled upon leaves 2 or 3 feet off, 
and washing them into the river; and another that appeared 
amphibious, elbowing itself across sand or rock with its fore fins, 
and now and then making a bound. The natives are not numerous, 
and are clearly of the same race as those in the South. Some break 
out their two upper front teeth, and some circumcise. They have 
ho huts, but live under screens of boughs. Circular stone structures 
are occasionally found on hill tops ; they appear to be lookout 
stations. The natives carry no other arms than spears ; one kind is 
short, like an arrow, for killing birds, another is long and pointed 
with stone, a third is barbed for catching fish. Few, if any, boats 
or canoes are used by them ; they sit astride on logs of wood when 
they cross rivers, and, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, they employ large 
raft-like bundles of the dead stems of mangrove trees. 
The Chairman. — We are, I think, greatly indebted to Mr. Wilson for the 
interesting paper which has just been read, and I very much regret that our 
estimable President is not in his place to render full justice to the valuable 
geological details which it contains. For my own part I am free to avow, 
that though, from the description given, I can form a general idea of the 
nature of the tract described, yet I feel by no means sufficiently master of the 
subject to offer any remarks worthy of the notice of this Meeting. It is 
evident from Mr. Wilson’s description, and we have also learned from the 
statements of Mr. Gregory and other sources, that in Northern Australia 
there are vast tracts of valuable land at present lying waste which are admi- 
rably suited for pastoral purposes, and, perhaps, for those of agriculture ; but 
the serious question which we have to solve is how those tracts are to be 
made available to humanity. The fact stares us in the face, that they seem 
to be limited by the 18th parallel of latitude ; and we may, I think, lay it 
down as an universal rule, that within the tropics the English race cannot 
colonize, unless the climate be moderated by elevated lands, such as in the 
case before us do not exist ; that is to say, that they cannot cultivate the 
land and labour in the fields. True, they may superintend with efficiency 
the labours of others, just as we know the indigo planters in India, the sugar 
planters in the West India Islands, the growers of cotton in the southern 
parts of the United States are used to do, but that is not, strictly speaking, 
colonizing ; for the outdoor work, and all toil needing protracted exertion in 
the open field, are mail these instances performed by natives of another region, 
