Letters from Australia

Transcriber’s Note
The cover image was created from elements of the original publication and is placed in the public domain.
AUSTRALIA.
LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET
JOHN MARTINEAU.
LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1869.
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The following Letters were most of them written in Australia in 1867, and were published in the Spectator in the course of that and the following year. Some are reprinted without alteration, others have been added to and altered, and others are new.
No attempt has been made to mould them into a continuous or complete account either of the past history or present condition of the three colonies which they endeavour to describe. Those of the colonies which are old enough to possess a history have had it already written. And as for their present state, it would be presumptuous to suppose that fifteen months divided between them could have sufficed to enable me, circumstanced as I was, to give anything like a complete account of countries so large, or to obtain an accurate understanding of all the various political questions and phenomena presented by them. The organisation of school education, for instance, for which I am told some of the Australian legislatures deserve credit, was a matter that did not come under my notice, and important as this question is now becoming, I am unable to import any evidence bearing upon it.
In the absence of any exciting personal adventures there was no excuse for writing a diary or personal narrative. I was not even stopped by bushrangers; though had I wished it, and made my wishes known, ‘Thunderbolt’ would doubtless have been delighted to ‘stick up’ the Scone and Singleton Mail the day I was in it, instead of two or three days later, and again about a fortnight afterwards.
But a single day, a single hour spent in a new-world colony dissipates many delusions, and conveys many facts and ideas and impressions of it, which no amount of reading or of second-hand information can altogether supply, and which ought to confer the power of presenting a more vivid and real picture than a mere compiler at a distance can give.