and customs of the aborigines of those districts, as they appeared to the eye of this intelligent and observant traveller. Sometimes the description is so life-like that we are almost cheated into the belief of a visible reality, and it is impossible to be indifferent to the exhibition, although the whole race has now well-nigh passed away. The account is very generally the reverse of Captain Sturt's, notwithstanding that both of these eminent explorers must have had in view substantially the same tribes. The judicious reader will scarcely be disposed to agree unreservedly with the Captain when he depicts them as the "most miserable wretches" under the sun; neither will he care to subscribe to the unqualified language of the Major, who describes them as "happy" savages. Truth seldom lies in extremes, and it is to the utmost extreme that these authorities have gone, each in his own way, as determined largely, perhaps, by his idiosyncrasies. But the ethnologist, in particular, will be thankful for the literary photograph of these vanishing tribes which has been preserved in the pages of this journal. The general reader, too, will gladly observe some curious incidents of aboriginal life in the interior of Australia. Mitchell specially notices their adroitness in procuring the wild honey of the bush. With great tact they first attached a piece of light down to the bee, which, on being released, would be sure to make straight for its nest. To discover this secret, the blackfellow engaged in hot pursuit; and, as his eye must be constantly on
