e of an old country had transferred the seat of empire,
and were collecting all that art could devise and wealth could bring.
Should the visitor extend his enquiries, he will find vessels trading to
many neighbouring and kindred cities. They all owe their existence to
that first fleet. Sometimes they repudiate their origin; but they bear
evidence that their giant youth has learned from the experience, and
risen in part under the auspices of the great convict country. Should
the traveller extend his travels to Van Diemen's Land, he will hear the
same tale of penal transportation, and its wondrous effects in former
times. He will pass over a road made after scientific plans, and bridges
of costly structure. He will see orchards, in which mingle the blossom
of the cherry, the apple, the pear, and the peach; and gardens green
with British vegetation. This successful spread of the English name,
language, commerce, and power, has required less than the life of man.
Many survive, who were born when the first sod of Australia was turned
by the hoe of a banished Briton. The man even now seen sauntering
along, chained and moving sullenly to labor, is but a continuation of
that army who first broke in on the solitude of a new world; laid the
first foundation, and planted the first field.

Should the traveller still extend his enquiry, his astonishment and
delight will not be diminished. The swarms of children rushing from a
village school participate the blood of men, some of whom were once a
terror to society, or of women who were its reproach. In the lists of
religious societies, commercial companies, jurors, magistrates, will be
found traces of their lineage. What could hope have anticipated beyond
these realities!

But the connection between these successes and transportation, is rather
co-incidental than of cause and effect. Were it supposed that seventy
years would have elapsed prior to the occupation of these countries, but
for transportation, the advantage must be calculated not by actual
achievements but the value of that advanced starting point, which
colonisation now possesses. It is not improbable that colonisation would
have commenced at a much earlier date: the first ships of free settlers
would have been more intelligent; their attention to the resources of
the country more earnest. The second quarter of a century had half
expired, when the Blue Mountains ceased to be a barrier to the colonists
of New South Wales.