Australian land, a distance of not less than two thousand miles; not appropriate, because a large portion of the neighbouring province of Port Phillip to the eastward is considerably farther south than any part of what is now called by authority South Australia. How such a name could have received the sanction of any number of mere metropolitan speculators in new Colonies and Colonial stock is easily conceivable; for the more irrational any scheme of the kind appears to be in the eye of common sense, the more favour it seems to meet with in certain quarters in the British Metropolis; but how it could also have passed muster with the Secretary of State, and the two Houses of Parliament, so as to be adopted in an Act of the Imperial Legislature, I cannot imagine. To give such a mere apology for a name to a British Colony, and it may be to another Infant Empire, under so high a sanction too, argues a poverty of conception and a want of discernment discreditable alike to the intellect and the taste of the nation, and must tend to give enlightened foreigners a very mean idea of both.

A single slip of this kind might indeed have been passed over and forgiven; but the name "South Australia," absurd as it is, seems to have been already exalted into a sort of national precedent in the estimation of the Colonial office; for one of the last Acts of the Colonial Autocracy of my Lord Stanley, was to take the requisite measures for the establishment of a new Penal Colony on the north-eastern coast of New Holland, of which Sir Charles Fitzroy, the present Governor of New South Wales, has actually been

iii

gazetted as Governor, under the style and title of Governor of North Australia! North Australia, forsooth! Why, I have no doubt that in a very few years hence, there will be three or four British Colonies along the northern coast of New Holland, all equally entitled to the same general designation.

Now as the portion of the Great South Land, to a description of the characteristics and capabilities of which the following pages are devoted, is on the east coast of Australia, and must necessarily, at no distant period, become a separate and independent Colony, and will in all likelihood prove one of the most important colonies that Great Britain has ever planted, I am strongly apprehensive that it may share a somewhat similar fate, and be condemned, as another instance of Downing Street and Parliamentary incapacity in the science of nomenclature, to put up with some such apology for a name as East Australia, especially as it is in reality the easternmost portion of the Australian Continent! In such circumstances, I appeal to you, my Fellow-countrymen, and entreat you to rescue the nomenclature of our Colonial Empire out of such incompetent hands, by assuming the task of giving names to new Colonies, at least in this particular instance, yourselves; and by demonstrating that it is not the fact, as it has been thus virtually alleged in these high and influential quarters, that Great Britain has too many Colonial children already to be able to find proper names for any more. With this view, I would beg most respectfully to suggest that that portion of the

alian territory to which this volume is dedicated,

should be named after its great discoverer, Captain Cook-to whose memory, it will doubtless be universally allowed, there has hitherto been no monument erected by his country at all worthy of his high deserts, of his imperishable fame. With your permission, therefore, I shall not hesitate to perform this tardy act of national justice to our illustrious circumnavigator, by designating what is now the northern division of the great Colony of New South Wales, COOKSLAND. I have the honour to be, Fellow-Countrymen,

Your most obedient Servant,

JOHN DUNMORE LANG.

P.S.-As the preceding Epistle Appellatory was written in the Great Southern Pacific Ocean, early in the month of July last, when the Colonial Department was under the management of Mr. Ex-Secretary Gladstone, the immediate successor of Lord Stanley, my first impression-on learning on my arrival at Pernambuco in the Brazils, that Earl Grey had succeeded Mr. Gladstone, on the late change of Ministry-was, that I ought to alter it, as it might otherwise give offence to his Lordship; from whom the Colonies generally-in common with myself-expect far greater and more important changes, than would be implied in the mere adoption of a more rational system of nomenclature. On second thoughts, however, I resolved to let it remain as it is, as the censure it may be supposed to imply was evidently meant for others, and cannot affect His Lordship, while it may supply a useful hint for the future, even yet.-J. D. L.

EDINBURGH, April 1847,

INTRODUCTION.

“The men are shepherds; for their trade hath been to feed cattle."-Genesis xlvi. 32.

THE vast territory of New South Wales has evidently been designed by the Great Architect of the universe to form three separate and independent Colonies or States; and it has accordingly been of late years regarded as comprising the three following Districts :1st, New South Wales Proper, or the Middle District; 2d, Port Phillip, or the Southern District; and 3d, Moreton Bay, or the Northern District-which we have taken the liberty, with the kind permission of the People of Great Britain and Ireland, to designate COOKSLAND.

The Southern or Port Phillip District is bounded on the west by the hundred-and-forty-first meridian of east longitude, which, by Act of Parliament, forms the boundary line between the Colonies of New South Wales and South Australia, from the Great Southern Ocean to the Tropic of Capricorn. From that meridian it extends eastward to Cape Howe-the

south-eastern extremity of the Australian land—presenting a coast-line of upwards of 500 miles to Bass' Straits and the Southern Ocean, without taking into account the sinuosities of the land. Its northern and north-eastern boundaries are not yet definitively fixed, but in all probability they will be a line drawn from Cape Howe to Mount Kosciuszko, in the Snowy Mountains or Great Warragong Chain, commonly called the Australian Alps; from thence to the nearest sources of the Tumut River and along that river to where it falls into the Murrumbidgee; from the junction of the Tumut along the Murrumbidgee to where the junction of the latter river with the Hume forms the Murray; and from the head of the Murray River along that stream to the 141st degree of east longitude, if not to the Lake Alexandrina and the Ocean at Encounter Bay. With this boundary, the Territory of Port Phillip would have a superficial extent of 130,000 square miles, and would thus be considerably larger than Great Britain and Ireland together. Its present population, to the southward of the Hume River, exceeds 32,000 souls.

The Middle District, or New South Wales Proper, extends from Cape Howe to the Solitary Isles, in the 30th parallel of south latitude, and presents a coastline to the Southern Pacific of about 500 miles. Its northern and western boundaries are the 30th parallel of south latitude and the 141st degree of east longitude, respectively, and its superficial extent must be somewhere about 250,000 square miles. The population of this District is at present upwards of 150,000 souls.