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Show 532 NEW SOU'rH WALES. Jan. 1836. exists what may be called a legal reform, and comparatively little which the law can touch is committed, yet that any moral reform should take place appears to be quite out of the question. I was assured by well-informed people, that a man who should try to improve, could not while living with other assigned servants :-his life would be one of intolerable misery and persecution. Nor must the contamination of the convict ships and prisons both here and in England be forgotten. On the whole, as a place of punishment the object is scarcely gained; as a real system of reform it has failed, as perhaps would every other plan: but as a means of making men outwardly honest,-of converting vagabonds most useless in one hemisphere into active citizens of another, and thus giving birth to a new and ~;plendid country-a grand centre of civilization-it has succeeded to a degree perhaps unparalleled in history. VAN DIEMEN'S LAND. JANUARY 30TH.-The Beagle sailed for Hobart Town in Van Diemen's Land. On the 5th of February, after a six days' passage, of which the first part was fine, and the latter very cold and squally, we entered the mouth of Storm Bay: the weather justified this awful name. The bay should rather be called an estuary, for it receives at its head the waters of the Derwent. Near the mouth there are some extensive basaltic platforms; but higher up, the laud becomes mountainous and is covered by a light wood. The lower parts of the hills which skirt the bay are cleared ; and the bright yellow fields of corn, and dark green ones of potatoes appeared very luxuriant. Late in the evening we anchored in the snug cove, on the shores of which stands the capital of Tasmania, as Van Diem en's Land is now called. The first aspect of the place was very inferior to that of Sydney ; the latter might be called a city, this only a town. In the morning I walked on shore. The streets are fine Feb. 1836. A BORIGI~ES. 533 and broad; but the houses rather scattered: the shops appeared good. The town stands at the base of Mount Wellington, a mountain, 3100 f~et high, but of very little picturesque beauty: from this source, however, it receives a good supply of water. Round the cove there are some fine warehouses, and on one side a small fort. Coming from the Spanish settlements, where such magnificent care has generally been paid to the fortifications, the means of defence in these colonies appeared very contemptible. Comparing the town to Sydney, I was chiefly struck with the comparative fewness of the large houses, either built or building. This circumstance must indicate that fewer people are gaining large fortunes. The growth, however, of small houses has been most abundant; and the vast number of little red brick dwellings, scattered on the hill behind the town, sadly destroys its picturesque appearance. Hobart Town, from the census of this year, contained 13,826 inhabitants, and the whole of Tasmania 36,505. All the aborigines have been rerno·;ed to an island in Bass's Straits, so that Van Diemen's Land enjoys the great ad vantage of being free from a native population. This most cruel step seems to have been quite unavoidable, as the only means of stopping a fearful succession of robberies, burnings, and murders, committed by the blacks; but which sooner or later must have ended in their utter destruction. I fear there is no doubt that this train of evil and its consequences, originated in the infamous conduct of some of our countrymen. Thirty years is a short period, in which to have banished the last aboriginal from his native island,and that island nearly as large as Ireland. I do not know a more striking instance of the comparative rate of increase of a civilized over a savage people. The correspondence to show the necessity of this step, which took place between the government at horne and that of Van Diemen's Land, is v~ry interesting: it is published in an appendix to Bischoff's History of Van Diernen's Land. Although numbers of natives were shot and taken prisoners in the skirmishing which was going on at intervals |