and the number of diggers being also steadily increasing. Many thousands at present leave New South Wales annually to try their fortune in other fields than those of agriculture. In 1857 upwards of 26,000 persons left this colony for Victoria. Consequently, the price of labour has risen throughout Australia, and while it has thus increased in expense it has become more uncertain and unreliable. A large number of buildings, especially in the country, have been left unfinished, and the clearing and cultivation of numerous tracts of land have been abandoned. These temporary evils, however, cannot be permitted to outweigh the enormous advantages derivable from the discovery of the gold-fields of Australia. It has attracted the attention of universal mankind to a distant British colony, hitherto almost unnoticed, it has peopled the country with magic celerity, centupled the value of the land, made its results appreciable in the remotest districts of the globe, and raised the colony of Victoria within a few years, in national prosperity, increased trade, and extended cultivation, to a degree of importance usually the slow growth of centuries of industry.
The discovery of the gold-fields had at the same time important scientific consequences, chiefly in the way of geological researches, which resulted in proving that the widespread popular opinion, that the Australian continent belongs to the latest geological era, and had comparatively recently emerged from the sea, is entirely erroneous. Rich palæontological collections confirm the opinion that Australia is not the latest, but rather the earliest, continent. In several parts
of the colony the fossil remains of various colossal animals have been discovered, which, as since measured, must have stood from 10 to 16 feet in height, and correspond to our diluvial Pachydermata in Europe. In like manner, with the exception of some quite insignificant tertiary strata of small extent, only crystalline rocks and primary formations (from the Silurian upwards) form the chief bulk of the continent. The entire series of secondary strata seems to be absent. From this fact it necessarily results that Australia has been a continent since the end of the primary epoch, that it never has been covered by the sea, but remained ever since the beginning of the secondary formations, through all those countless ages during which Europe was being convulsed by the most tremendous geological revolutions, a habitable soil, on which plants and beasts, undisturbed by change in the inorganic world, might have continued to flourish down to our own times. Viewed in this light the fauna and flora of Australia would be the most ancient and primitive in the world.
Another Austrian naturalist, the well-known botanist Professor Unger of Vienna, has come to the same conclusions from the fossil remains of some Australian plants, accompanied by the further singular deduction, that Europe must have been at one period in much closer accordance with this remote region. Many forms of plants, especially Proteaceæ, which at present form such a peculiar feature of its vegetation, seem to have been similarly prevalent in Europe at
that remote age of the globe. But if even it be accepted that during the Eocene or earliest tertiary period there existed in Europe under similar climatic conditions flora of Coniferæ, Proteaceæ, Myrtaceæ, and Casurinæ, such as Australia now possesses, the question still arises as to how the vegetation of a locality so remote should have been transferred to antipodean Europe? Making all due allowance for the astonishing influence exercised by winds, waves, and the migration of animals over the diffusion of vegetable species, yet the means of transport by the ocean or by currents of water is confined within narrow limits, and under the most favourable conditions is limited to the very few plants which can maintain their powers of reproduction uninjured by immersion in water, and those on the other hand which, on being transported to a strange shore, find there the means of existence and increase. As, moreover, the observations which Professor Unger has made upon the diffusion of species of plants at that remote period, and their very accurately circumscribed limits, run directly counter to the opinion of those naturalists who hold to a variety of centres of development, (instancing a case where one species of plants is found in two widely separated regions,) have never been satisfactorily refuted, the learned botanist thereupon proceeds to the conclusion, that during the Eocene period Australia was united to the mainland through the Moluccas. This land route has been followed at one period by Araucarias, Proteaceæ, sandal wood, and a hundred other varieties of tree
and shrub, which till that connection was made could not diffuse themselves, so as thus to reach the European continent, where they are even now found, despite the lapse of myriads of years, in the shape of well-preserved fossils. Thus too, for similar reasons, the geologist to our Expedition, like Professor Unger, regarded Australia as not a youthful, lately-born continent, but a country decaying with antiquity, which had played its part in the physical history of the globe, and had spread its scions far and wide. Some alteration of level is not merely indicated by the numerous coral reefs encircling Australia and its island groups, pointing to a similar sinking among them as that already noticed among the smaller Polynesian islands:—The whole characteristics of the soil, the wastes of the interior, the innumerable salt lakes, the rivers which lose themselves in these, &c. &c., tell of a coming geological transformation, which however—we mention this for the consolation of the settlers—may yet be postponed for myriads of years.
The system of transportation, concerning which so loud an outcry has recently been made, has so materially assisted in developing the resources of the country, that it would hardly be right to quit Botany Bay without a few remarks on the penal colony which was in existence there till 1840. For there is no spot on the globe better adapted than New South Wales to serve as a stand-point, whence any one might accurately study the advantages and drawbacks of the English transportation system, as also its influence upon a strongly
recalcitrant society. In brief, we purpose to subject the system as it subsisted for half a century in Australia to a thorough analysis, inasmuch as it seems to us that, in our present unnatural social conditions, transportation, i. e. the sudden transference of the criminal to totally new conditions of external life, seems to furnish the much-desired turning point whence we may expect a lasting moral improvement of the individual. Our Austrian prisons, especially those in which the cell system has not been introduced, are simply houses of detention, not penitentiaries, still less reformatories. The incarcerated criminal is a burden to himself and to society, to which he is only in the most exceptional cases restored improved by confinement. The charge of maintaining him increases year by year, without any return being made by utilizing the labour of the prisoner. In penal colonies, on the other hand, the convict works as much for his own benefit as for that of society. He throws open new immeasurable tracts of land to civilization, trade, and industry. The evil effects of certain climates upon the health of the convict can be corrected by proper ordinances, till it is reduced to a barely appreciable minimum. The free settler is also exposed in unsettled countries to dangerous illnesses, but as his circumstances improve these disappear before the cleared forest, the cultivated patch, the drained swamp.
We do not believe that were the option left them there is one solitary individual in our Austrian prisons, condemned to periods of imprisonment of ten years and upwards, who would
not willingly exchange his sojourn at home for one in even the insalubrious islands of the Indian Ocean, if the prospect were held out to him after a series of years of steady labour and honest activity, that he might make his new-found activity available to secure his liberty. What may be made, however, of a valueless wilderness by means of compulsory labour, we have at this day an example of in the case of the first penal colony of New South Wales. Even the objectionable manner in which the system was administered during more than fifty years in Australia and Van Diemen's land could not entirely destroy its beneficial effects upon the criminal, or blind an unprejudiced observer to the advantages and general utility of transportation as a means of punishment. In 1787 the eastern coast of Australia, chiefly in consequence of the too glowing accounts of the suitability of the harbours, and the fertility of the soil of Botany Bay, was selected by the British Government as the site of a penal colony, and on the 26th January, 1788, the first batch of convicts was landed there. These consisted of 600 males and 250 women, and were accompanied by an escort of 200 men. Forty of the latter were married men, who were accompanied by their wives and children. The whole expedition was under the command of Captain Phillip, the first Governor of the new settlement.[25]