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From these hills, Adelaide, in the valley of the Torrens, presents a scene, a green oasis in the midst of a bed of sand running like a riband along the sea by which it has been upheaved.

Capital farms occupy the foot of Mount Lofty, with a sure market in Adelaide. A steep road leads across the hills or mountains; on the other side rich but not extensive valleys are found; in one of these, twenty-four miles from Adelaide, is Hansdorf, one of three German settlements to which South Australia owes much in vine culture and sheep management. Beyond, parallel with Mount Lofty, is the Mount Barker range, the summit being 800 feet above the level of the surrounding country, which is about 1,600 feet above the level of the sea. The summit forms table land, on which there are some good cattle and sheep stations. This is the range which divides the waters that flow on the one side into the Murray and Lake Alexandrina, and on the other into Spencer's Gulf.

To the north of Adelaide a long tract of level, well-watered country extends, which, at about one hundred miles distance, opens into a series of high open downs.

The River Torrens, which formed so prominent a feature in early puffs and pictures of the colony, is not a river at all, but, like many of the misnamed rivers of Australia, simply a watercourse, which during the rainy season rushes along furiously, ending in a marsh; but when the rains cease the "river" becomes a mere chain of pools, unreplenished with mountain springs, which shrink daily with the heat, like a farmyard rain-filled pond, such as are common on the wolds of Lincolnshire. Colonel Light saw the Torrens when full of water, and that and the beauty of the valley decided his choice. Fortunately water is to be obtained in Adelaide by sinking wells, at a very moderate expense; and the same advantage is found on farms, and in the slopes of the neighbouring hills. But in this instance of the Torrens, as in many others, the injudicious puffs of speculators reacted and threw undeserved discredit on the solid advantages of a very fine colony.

The river of South Australia is the Murray, which, rising in the Australian Alps, where its sources were discovered by Count Strzelecki near Mount Kosciusko, in Victoria, receives the waters of the Murrumbidgee, the Lachlan, and the Darling, and presents, at certain times of the year, so full and flowing a stream that the early colonists expected to. draw down its waters the commerce of the squatting districts of Gass and Albury, in New South Wales; for they calculated that the cheapness of an unbroken water communication would draw away the dray traffic, which was then, and is now, carried to Sydney. But the

THE RIVERS MURRUMBIDGEE AND MURRAY.

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uncertain supply of water, and other obstacles in rocks and snags, have so far, indefinitely, adjourned this project.

The Murrumbidgee rises in the dividing range of mountains in the Maneroo district, two hundred and fifty miles S.W. of the city of Sydney, flows for five hundred miles, until it unites with the Lachlan at a point where the brave Sturt took a boat and descended to the sea in thirty-six days, when he discovered South Australia, returning in forty days thus earning the title of the father of South Australia.

The early course of the Murrumbidgee is between hills steeply sloping, covered with herbage and creeping vines, down to the water's edge. "As I sat in a boat," writes a lady to the author, "I could see above me small, very small, cattle, in single file, now lost in the foliage, now reappearing, as, by zigzag well-worn paths, they descended to the water to drink. So lofty and steep were the cliffs that I fancied they would fall down upon me. At length they made their appearance at the edge of the stream, drinking beneath bowers of overhanging creepers—a huge bull and a mob of portly cows."

The space encircled between this river and the Murray (the Murray was formerly named the Hume by its discoverers, Hovel and Hume) is one of the fine squatting-grounds of New South Wales. Higher up the stream the hills disappear, and long alluvial flats succeed. The Murrumbidgee spreads and loses some of its waters in the marshes of the Lachlan..

It is the peculiar character of the Murray and of the Darling and Murrumbidgee to flow hundreds of miles without receiving any tributaries.

The navigation of the River Murray has been the subject of a commission appointed by Sir Henry Young, the present Governor of South Australia; and, although the financial calculations of the commission have been questioned by a committee of the South Australian Legislative Council, it is presumed their facts may be relied on. They are quoted from the abstract of a gentleman (Mr. White) who was endeavouring to obtain steamers to open the navigation of this river :—

"In August, 1850, the Legislative Council of that province voted ' £4,000 to be equally divided between the two first iron steamers of not less than fortyhorse power, and not exceeding two feet draught of water when loaded, that shall successfully navigate the waters of the River Murray from the Goolwa to the junction of the Darling, computed to be about five hundred and fifty-one miles." "1st. The natural seamouth of the Murray cannot be entered, owing to the great surf that is constantly breaking on the Encounter Bay coast, and consequently any vessels intended to navigate the river would have to be constructed on the shores of the Lake Alexandrina.

"2nd. This lake, into which the river empties itself previous to its passage to the sea, is about thirty miles long by ten broad, and from six to eighteen fathoms deep, and fresh water is found about the middle.

"3rd. The river preserves an uniform width of about three hundred yards to the junction of the Darling, which latter river is about one hundred yards wide, and the width of the Murray is not materially altered onwards to the junction of the Murrumbidgee and the Lachlan. The soundings that have been made from the Lake to the Darling, in the months of September and October, give an average depth of two fathoms, or rather, this may be said to be the shallowest.

"The Murray is subject, like all the other streams in the country, to annual floods. It begins to rise towards the end of June, and continues rising until the end of January, generally from ten to twelve feet.

"The only impediments that occur are in the shape of snags or fallen trees, which in some places would have to be removed; but for this the assistance of the natives could be obtained, and up to the junction of the Darling they present no serious obstacle. This point being the limit of the province, the river beyond has not been surveyed; but from those who have descended it so far as the town of Albury (a distance of only three hundred and sixty miles from Sydney) it has been ascertained that, before steam-vessels of the smallest size could navigate it, the snags would have to be removed, though a canoe, drawing eleven inches of water, went the entire distance at a time when the river was lower than has been known within the memory of the 'white man.' From a point in the channel of the Goolwa, which is a stream issuing from the lake, and also one of the mouths of the Murray, it is proposed to lay down a railroad of seven miles in length to a point in Encounter Bay where a safe anchorage may be effected. In the event of any unforeseen difficulties occurring in the construction of Port Elliot, it would be necessary to make a road from Morundee to the city of Adelaide (a distance of about sixty miles), which road would pass through some of the richest districts of South Australia.

"With reference to the country of the Lower Murray, the estimate of the traffic is about 2,000 tons annually, made up of ores from the mines, green, dairy, and other produce.

"On either side of the river to the Darling there are extensive cattle-runs, all of which are taken up.

"Proceeding up the river from this point, we enter upon the province of Victoria, and the extensive sheep-runs of the Lachlan, the Lower Darling, and the Murrumbidgee, which in June, 1850, according to the New South Wales statistical and other authentic accounts, were stocked by 1,155,774 sheep, 306,861 horned cattle, 10,093 horses, and 1,872 pigs. There is in Australia an annual increase of 40 per cent. on sheep, and 25 per cent. on cattle. According to the commissioners' report, the increase by the close of 1852, allowing for sales, &c., will have amounted to, say, 2,500,000 sheep, 500,000 cattle, the former yielding about 3,384 tons wool, washed and unwashed; and if a quarter of the annual increase were boiled down, say 250,000 sheep, averaging 28 lbs. tallow, 3,125 tons; and 31,000 cattle, averaging 154 lbs. tallow, 2,130 tons. Total annual freights, 8,603 tons, independent of hides, skins, and other matters, at present thrown aside on account of the great cost of transport.

"For return cargo it is estimated that no less than 5,000 rations would offer, say 1,450 tons, with at least an equal quantity of slops, iron, paling, and other goods, say 2,900 tons. The produce from those remote districts is at

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present conveyed to Melbourne and Geelong in bullock-drays, travelling about ten miles a day, occupying many weeks in its transit to the port."

MORE PORK BIRD.

To this statement it is right to add, that, in our opinion, speculations involving so trifling an amount of capital as a couple of small iron steam-boats, should be undertaken and managed by colonists or the provincial government, and would be, if worth doing at all.

The navigation of the Murray is an enterprise, if feasible, within the means of a party of colonists, although the clearing of the river is a national and provincial work, to which this country might be called upon to contribute; but the less absentees have to do with small colonial speculations the better for their finances and the credit of the colony. In the Murray scrub,‚—a beautiful but barren belt of shrubs and plants from fifteen to twenty miles in breadth, which runs parallel to the river for many miles between Lake Alexandrina and the Great Bend in lat. 34 S., a great number of the rare birds and animals of Australia are to

be seen; amongst others, the leipoa, or mound-building bird, improperly named by the colonists the wild turkey, is found in great numbers; and the satin, or bower bird, which builds a bower for its mate so curiously arched and adorned with shells and shining stones that when Mr. Gould first discovered one he took it for the playground of some aboriginal child. The leipoa, which was first brought before the attention of the scientific world by Mr. Gould, realizes the ancient fable of the ostrich, and buries its eggs, to be hatched by the fermentation of a mound of decomposed leaves and earth.

Mr. Gould observes in his great work, from which all our objects of natural history have been, by permission, copied :

"This family of birds (Tallegalla, Leipoa, and Megapodius) form part of a great family of birds inhabiting Australia, New Guinea, the Celebes, and the Philippine Islands, whose habits and economy differ from those of every other group of birds which now exists upon the surface of our globe. In their structure they are most nearly allied to the Gallinaca, while in some of their actions and in their mode of flight they much resemble the Rallidae: the small size of their brain, coupled with the extraordinary means employed for the incubation of their eggs, indicates an extremely low degree of organization. Three species inhabiting Australia, viz., Leipoa ocellatta, Tallegalla, and Megapodius tumulus, although referable to distinct genera, have many habits in common, particularly in their mode of incubation, each and all depositing their eggs in mounds of earth and leaves, which, becoming heated either by fermentation of the vegetable matter or by the sun's rays, form a kind of natural hatch

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