the world. Van Diemen's Land, about
the size, with more than the fertility of Ireland, is said to resemble
Switzerland in picturesque beauty; and New Zealand, a territory of
fifteen hundred miles in length, and of every diversity of surface, is
already receiving the laws and the population of England.

The distance is the chief drawback. Sydney is, by ordinary ship's
course, sixteen thousand miles from London, and the voyage, under the
most prosperous circumstances, has hitherto occupied about four
months. But better hopes are at hand.

On the 20th of last May, a charter was obtained by a company for
establishing a steam communication with Sydney, which proposes to make
the whole course within about _two months_. The route is as
follows,--making twelve thousand seven hundred and thirty miles in
sixty-four days:--

From England to Singapore, by Egypt, eight thousand three hundred and
ninety miles. From Singapore to Fort Essington, by Batavia, two
thousand miles. From Port Essington to Sydney, two thousand three
hundred and forty miles; the rate being one hundred and ninety-nine
miles a-day. The first portion occupying forty-two days,--the second,
ten,--and the third, twelve.

The subject was, for a considerable time, before government, and
various plans of communication had been suggested.--A route by the
Isthmus of Darien, and a route by the Cape with a branch to the
Mauritius. The route by Egypt and India has at length been chosen, and
the most sanguine hopes are entertained of its success. The steam
establishment will have the farther advantage of shortening the
distance by one-half between Calcutta and Sydney; and reducing it to
thirty days, or perhaps less.

Bright prospects, too, are opening for India herself. The great
railway is decided on, the engineers are about to embark, and the
harvests of cotton and the thousand other tropical productions with
which that most magnificent of all countries is covered, will be
poured into the bosom of Australia and the world.

It is scarcely possible to look upon the results of establishing
railroads in India, without something of the enthusiasm which belongs
more to poetry than to statistics. But, "in the Golden Peninsula,"
there spreads before the Englishman a space of nearly a million and a
quarter of square miles, inhabited by about one hundred and
thirty-four millions of souls, with a sea-coast of immense extent,
washed by two oceans, and bordering on vast countri