nature and gathered with unexampled facility.
The merchant laments the paucity of navigable streams. Yet there are
rivers of many hundred miles extent, which will ultimately be available
to commerce. The engineer of Europe would laugh at difficulties opposed
by stones, and trees, and marshes. Population will one day justify the
improvement by art of what nature has only partially accomplished. But
in the level plains of the Australias there is a compensation for this
deficiency. Hundreds of miles are almost prepared for the rail road; and
as the cheap methods adopted in America become known, the inland
communication will be rapidly enlarged.

The late date of the discovery of gold in Australasia has created much
astonishment. It seems to have been concealed by Providence, or rather
the signs of its existence were not permitted to arrest attention, until
the colonies could endure the shock. A shepherd publicly sold at Sydney
several ounces of gold in 1844. Years after a still larger quantity was
exposed in Victoria (1849). These facts were recorded in the journals of
the time; in the first instance scarcely awakening the slightest
interest, and the last producing little but distrust and derision. The
delay has probably upon the whole benefited both the colonies and the
human race. Had gold been discovered before the era of free immigration
it must have led to frightful disorders. California has added another
to those warnings presented in the history of gold mining, that the
absorbing pursuit, for a time, suspends the voice of reason and
morality. The multitudes who have precipitated themselves on the gold
fields of Victoria indicate the uniform direction of similar passions;
yet how superior are our present resources to those of former times or
of other countries. The governments organised and intelligent, and
sustained by the strong moral support of four hundred Christian
congregations. The social interests of perhaps not less than fifty
thousand families will be able to check, and probably to master, the
spirit of anarchy and violence. That any lives should be sacrificed is
of course a matter of regret; but the politician and the philanthropist
may pronounce in favor of a dispensation which though permitting the
sacrifice of a few, will rapidly cover the regions around us with
villages, towns, and homesteads.

Though rich beyond example, the mines will be abandoned by the many for
whom the pleasures and the rest of