iron, which with a little ingenuity can be formed into agricultural implements, the absence of the more precious metals is a matter of very little importance. Copper ore is now an article of export from South Australia, and as a proof that iron ore might be exported from North Australia, I give the following extract from Sir Thomas Mitchell's interesting work. It is indeed a land "whose stones are iron." "The rain had abated to my great disappointment, for we should have amply compensated for wet jackets, by the sight of well filled ponds of water, the want of which was the great impediment to this journey. The sky was still overcast, and the wet bushes were unavoidable. On I travelled north-west until we approached some fine open forest hills, the bare tops of which, just visible from the foot of Mount Owen, had first drawn me in that direction. One tempting peak induced me to approach it, and to think of an ascent. In a rugged little water-course in its bosom, we found water enough for our horses, the product of last night's rain. The view from the summit, made up for the deviation from my route. A group of the most picturesque hills imaginable lay to the northward, and were connected with this, the whole being branches from the Table Land of Hope. Some appeared of a deep blue colour, where their clothing was evergreen bush. Others were partly of a golden hue, from the rich ripe grass upon them. The sun broke through the heavy clouds and poured rays over thein; which perfected the beauty of the landscape. I recognized, from this apex, my station on Mount Owen, and several hills I had intersected from it. Amongst others, the three remarkable comes to the Westward of Mount Faraday, apparently a continuation of the line of summits I have already mentioned. This hill consisted of amygdaloidal trap in nodules, the crevices being filled with crystals of sulphate of lime, and there were many round balls of iron stone, like marbles or round shot strewed about. A red ferruginous crust projected from the highest part, and, on this summit, the magnetic needle was greatly affected by local attraction, and quite useless. Fortunately I had also my pocket sextant, and with it, took some valuable angles. On descending, I heartily enjoyed a breakfast, and named the hill which gave us the water, Mount Aquarius." The following description of the Fitzroy Iron Mines has just been sent to me by a gentleman who has lately visited them. "The Mines are distant about 70 miles from Sydney, and midway between this city and the town of Goulburn. The ore is found on the surface, covering a space of several acres, and the miners having sunk a shaft to the depth of thirty feet, find no alteration or diminution in quantity. There is no doubt of its being one solid mass of immense size. "The ore being calcined is easily crushed, in fact it can be rubbed to powder between the fingers. It requires no fluxes in the smelting. With the first trial in the reverberatory furnace, 9 cwt. of calcined ore was run in eleven minutes and a half, yielding about seventy per cent. of metal, which surpassed in quality the very best samples of English iron. "By smelting in the blast furnace with charcoal, it gives at once a malleable steel, which, without any other process, has been manufactured in Sydney into all the finer articles of cutlery, and has been found to answer admirably. "The ores are evidently the red and black oxides of iron, attracted by the magnet, and some of the black is magnetic in itself. ” It is a remarkable fulfilment of Isaiah's Prophecy, "And they shall beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning hooks," that several of the settlers of Australia are retired officers of the British army, and the British navy; that 300 soldiers of the 11th regiment, now quartered in Sydney, have got permission to ask for their discharges; and that the Surveyor-General, Lieut. Colonel Sir T. L. Mitchell, who has already been on four exploring expeditions into the interior of this interesting country, has written two valuable works, describing the fruit of his researches, and delineated maps of ninety counties; should, during a tour through Andalusia, and the southern parts of Spain, in the year 1847, have taken notes on the cultivation of the vine, and olive, and other branches of husbandry in that country; and presented the manuscript to the Committee of the Botanical and Horticultural Society of New South Wales, for publication. In this pamphlet, which is now in circulation in Australia, he describes sixteen different kinds of vines, which are cultivated in Spain; some of them are best suited for making wine, others for making raisins. He also describes different methods of making wine and oil, and preparing dried figs and raisins; gives plates of the tools used in pruning the vine, and the ploughs which the Spaniards use in preparing the ground for it. And this valuable little book is from the pen of a member of that profession, which trains youths in Great Britain to the use of destructive weapons. The climate in some parts of Australia appears particularly calculated for cultivating the vine, as it is cul tivated in Tuscany. * "How beautiful are the vines when married, as here, and trained round the field from tree to tree, in double and interesting festoons! How greatly they exceed as a picture, the common vineyard, which looks at a distance like a field of turnips! Tuscany is one huge vineyard and olive-ground. In France the vines are trained upon poles, seldom more than three or four feet in height; and the pole-clipped vineyard of poetry is not the most inviting of real objects. In Switzerland and the German provinces the vineyards are as formal as those of France; but in Italy is found the true vine of poetry, surrounding the stone cottage with its girdle, flinging its pliant and luxurious branches over the rustic verandah, or twining its long garland from tree to tree." I received a letter at the time I was reading this description, from a friend residing near the Manning River, who gave me the following account of its beauties. "The river and its banks combine both grandeur and beauty, the former being a finer sheet of water than any I have yet seen in the colony, and the latter fringed with beautiful flowering shrubs, and enormous trees, whose branches overhang the river, and are clothed with every variety of green, russet, and copper colour. It must be similar to the American rivers in volume, and the beauty of its forest scenery." When I read this passage in my friend's letter, and looked at the picture in the newspaper, representing the grape-gatherers in Tuscany, I could not help thinking, how, in a few short years, a New Tuscany might be formed on the banks of such a river as the Manning, with a judicious 'combination of British capital, British talent, and British industry, if the following suggestions * See Illustrated London News for October, 1849. of Miss Martineau were acted upon by British legislators. "Emigration is conspicuous in its merits, since it not only immediately reaches the seat of the evil in the Mother Country, but affords the greatest of blessings to the colonised regions. Where it has failed, it is because one link in the chain of operating causes has been wanting. Land and labourers cannot mutually prosper without the capital, which has too often been deficient. We have not yet made the experiment of sending out small societies completely organized, and amply provided to settle down at once in a state of sufficient civilization, to spare the mother country all further anxiety about the expedition. It can be no objection to this, that it abstracts capital, and the most useful species of labour, from the mother country; since the capital so sent out will yield a more rapid and ample increase to us in a few years, in a new market for commerce, than it would have done at home; and the labour is that which we least want in Great Britain, however good its quality may be, and that which we most want in our possessions on the other side of the world. Such an organized society, however, would be able to support a much larger proportion of children than a similar society could take charge of at home; the labour of children being of as much more value than their maintenance abroad, as it is less at home. All details, however, from the greatest to the least, will be arranged with infinitely less trouble than our parochial mismanagements have cost us, when we have once, as a nation, surveyed the dreary haunts of our pauperized classes, and then taken a flight, in spirit, to the fair regions abroad, which invite their labour with a sure promise of rich recompense. The time must come when it will be a matter of wonder how we could be so long oppressed with a |