bears his share. Nothing less than the
departure of one, and the death of another, can elicit a passing hint
of their character and qualities. Mr Hodgson shot a kangaroo; Mr Roper
brought in eight cockatoos; Mr Phillips found a flesh-coloured
drupaceous fruit; Mr Calvert shot a native companion--not one of the
aborigines, but a bird so called; and thus the book goes on, every
thing put down with the dry brevity of a seaman's log. Hence Dr
Leichhardt's volume, though highly valuable and interesting to
naturalists and emigrants, will scarcely be appreciated by the general
reader. Learned and well written, the amusing element, which readers
of the present day are apt to make a condition for their favour, is
but scantily scattered through its pages. But it is a work of
unquestionable merit and utility, and its author's name will justly
stand high upon the honourable list of able and enterprising men,
whose courage, perseverance, and literary abilities, have contributed
so largely to our knowledge of the geography and productions of our
distant southern colonies.

The first start of the expedition could hardly be called a good one;
at least, it was not such as to encourage the faint-hearted, or
falsify anticipations of extreme hardships and difficulties. A light
spring-cart, which the doctor had fondly hoped to take with him
through the wilderness, was broken the very first day. He was
fortunate enough to exchange it for three bullocks, and proceeded to
break in five of those animals for the pack-saddle, finding he could
not depend upon his horses for carrying baggage. But the bullocks gave
a deal of trouble, and were most unsatisfactory beasts of burthen. The
weight they could carry without injury and exhaustion, was very small
in comparison with their known strength,--not more than a hundred and
fifty pounds, Dr Leichhardt found, for a constancy--without the
advantage of roads. Mules would have been the proper carriers; and
troublesome, kicking, contrary demons as they often are, under a hot
sun and with the aggravation of flies, they could hardly have been
more refractory than their bovine substitutes. Persons whose whole
experience of bullocks, as beasts of draught and burthen, consists in
having seen a pair of them tugging, with painful docility and
resignation, at a heavy continental cart--a ponderous yoke across
their necks, or their heads attached with multitudinous thongs to the
extremity of a massive pole--can fo