This is all very bad; and if the governor had cherished the intention of destroying the colony, he could have done nothing more detrimental to its interests. The high price of labour is the very corner-stone on which the prosperity of a new colony depends. It enables the poor man to live with ease; and is the strongest incitement to population, by rendering children rather a source of riches than of poverty. If the same difficulty of subsistence existed in new countries as in old, it is plain that the progress of population would be equally slow in each. The very circumstances which cause the difference is, that in the latter, there is a competition among the labourers to be employed; and, in the former, a competition among the occupiers of land to obtain labourers. In the one, land is scarce, and men plenty in the other, men are scarce, and land is plenty. To disturb this natural order of things, a practice injurious at all times, must be particularly so, where the predominant disposition of the colonists is an aversion to labour, produced by a long course of dissolute habits. In such cases, the high prices of labour, which the governor was so desirous of abating, bid fair not only to increase the agricultural prosperity, but to effect the moral reformation of the colony. We observe the same unfortunate ignorance of the elementary principles of commerce, in the attempts of the governor to reduce the prices of the European commodities, by bulletins and authoritative interference, as if there were any other mode of lowering the price of an article (while the demand continues the same) but by increasing its quantity. The avaricious love of gain, which is so feelingly deplored, appears to us a principle which, in able hands, might be guided to the most salutary purposes. The object is to encourage the love of labour, which is best encouraged by the love of money. We have very great doubts on the policy of reserving the best timber on the estates as government timber. Such a reservation would probably operate as a check upon the clearing of lands, without attaining the object desired; for the timber, instead of being immediately cleared, would be slowly destroyed, by the neglect or malice of the settlers, whose lands it encumbered. Timber is such a drug in new countries, that it is at any time to be purchased for little more than the labour of cutting. To secure a supply of it by vexatious and invidious laws is surely a work of supererogation and danger. The greatest evil which the government has yet had to contend with is, the inordinate use of spirituous VOL. III.-6

liquors; a passion which puts the interests of agriculture at variance with those of morals: for a dram-drinker will consume as much corn, in the form of alcohol, in one day, as would supply him with bread for three; and thus, by his vices, opens a market to the industry of a new settlement. The only mode, we believe, of encountering this evil, is by deriving from it such a revenue as will not admit of smuggling. Beyond this, it is almost invincible by authority; and is probably to be cured only by the progressive refinement of manners.

To evince the increasing commerce of the settlement, a list is subjoined of one hundred and forty ships which have arrived there since its first foundation; forty only of which were from England. The colony at Norfolk Island is represented to be in a very deplorable situation, and will most probably be abandoned for one about to be formed on Van Diemen's Land,* though the capital defect of the former settlement has been partly obviated, by a discovery of the harbour for small craft.

The most important and curious information contained in this volume, is the discovery of straits which separate Van Diemen's Land (hitherto considered as its southern extremity) from New Holland. For this discovery we are indebted to Mr. Bass, a surgeon, after whom the straits have been named, and who was led to a suspicion of their existence by a prodigious swell which he observed to set in from the westward, at the mouth of the opening which he had reached on a voyage of discovery, prosecuted in a common whale boat. To verify this suspicion, he proceeded afterwards in a vessel of 25 tons, accompanied by Mr. Flinders, a naval gentleman; and entering the straits between the latitudes of 39° and 40° south, actually circumnavigated Van Diemen's land. Mr. Bass's ideas of the importance of this discovery we shall give from his narrative, as reported by Mr. Collins.

"The most prominent advantage which seemed likely to accrue to the settlement from this discovery was, the expediting of the passage from the Cape of Good Hope to Port Jackson; for although a line drawn from the Cape to 44° of south latitude, and to the longitude of the South Cape of Van Diemen's Land, would not sensibly differ from one drawn to the latitude of 40°, to the same longitude; yet it

*It is singular that government are not more desirous of pushing their settlements rather to the north, than the south of Port Jackson. The soil and climate would probably improve, in the latitude nearer the equator; and settlements in that position would be more contiguous to our Indian colonies.

must be allowed, that a ship will be four degrees nearer to Port Jackson in the latter situation than it would be in the former. But there is, perhaps, a greater advantage to be gained by making a passage through the strait than the mere saving of four degrees of latitude along the coast. The major part of the ships that have arrived at Port Jackson have met with N.E. winds, on opening the sea round the South Cape and Cape Pillar, and have been so much retarded by them, that a fourteen days' passage to the port is reckoned to be a fair one, although the difference of latitude is but ten degrees, and the most prevailing winds at the latter place are from S.E. to S. in summer, and from W.S.W. to S. in winter. If, by going through Bass Strait, these N.E. winds can be avoided, which in many cases would probably be the case, there is no doubt but a week or more would be gained by it; and the expense, with the wear and tear of a ship for one week, are objects to most owners, more especially when freighted with convicts by the run.

'This strait likewise presents another advantage. From the prevalence of the N.E. and easterly winds off the South Cape, many suppose that a passage may be made from thence to the westward, either to the Cape of Good Hope, or to India; but the fear of the great unknown bight between the South Cape and the S. W. Cape of Lewen's Land, lying in about 35° south and 113° east, has hitherto prevented the trial being made. Now, the strait removes a part of this danger, by presenting a certain place of retreat, should a gale oppose itself to the ship in the first part of the essay; and should the wind come at S.W. she need not fear making a good stretch to the W.N.W.; which course, if made good, is within a few degrees of going clear of all. There is, besides, King George the Third's Sound, discovered by Captain Vancouver, situate in the latitude of 35° 03′ south, and longitude 118° 12′ east; and it is to be hoped, that a few years will disclose many others upon the coast, as well as the confirmation or futility of the conjecture, that a still larger than Bass Strait dismembers New Holland.'-(pp. 192, 193.)

We learn from a note subjoined to this passage, that, in order to verify or refute this conjecture, of the existence of other important inlets on the west coast of New Holland, Captain Flinders has sailed with two ships under his command, and is said to be accompanied by several professional men of considerable ability.

Such are the most important contents of Mr. Collins's book, the style of which we very much approve, because it appears to be written by himself; and we must repeat again, that nothing can be more injurious to the opinion the public will form of the authenticity of a book of this kind, than the suspicion that it has been tricked out and embellished by other hands. Such men, to be sure, have existed as Julius Cæsar: but, in general, a correct and elegant style is hardly attainable by those who

have passed their lives in action; and no one has such a pedantic love of good writing, as to prefer mendacious finery to rough and ungrammatical truth. The events which Mr. Collins's book records, we have read with great interest. There is a charm in thus seeing villages, and churches, and farms, rising from a wilderness, where civilized man has never set his foot since the creation of the world. The contrast between fertility and barrenness, population and solitude, activity and indolence, fill the mind with the pleasing images of happiness and increase. Man seems to move in his proper sphere, while he is thus dedicating the powers of his mind and body to reap those rewards which the bountiful author of all things has assigned to his industry. Neither is it any common enjoyment to turn for a while from the memory of those distractions which have so recently agitated the Old World, and to reflect, that its very horrors and crimes may have thus prepared a long era of opulence and peace for a people yet involved in the womb of time.

WITTMAN'S TRAVELS. (EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1803.)

Travels in Turkey, Asia Minor, and Syria, &c. and into Egypt. By William Wittman, M. D. 1803. London. Phillips.

DR. WITTMAN was sent abroad with the military mission to Turkey, towards the spring of 1799, and remained attached to it during its residence in the neighbourhood of Constantinople, its march through the desert, and its short operations in Egypt. The military mission, consisting of General Koehler, and some officers and privates of the artillery and engineers, amounting on the whole to seventy, were assembled at Constantinople, June 1799, which they left in the same month of the following year, joined the grand vizier at Jaffa in July, and entered Egypt with the Turks in April, 1801. After the military operations were concluded there, Dr. Wittman returned home by Constantinople, Vienna, &c.

The travels are written in the shape of a journal, which begins and concludes with the events which we have just mentioned. It is obvious that the route described by Dr. Wittman is not new: he could make no cursory and superficial observations upon the people whom he saw, or the countries through which he passed, with which the public are not already familiar. If his travels were to possess any merit at all, they were to derive that merit from accurate physical researches, from copious information on the state of medicine, surgery, and disease in Turkey; and above all, perhaps, from gratifying the rational curiosity which all inquiring minds must feel upon the nature of the plague, and the indications of cure. Dr. Wittman, too, was passing over the same ground trodden by Bonaparte in his Syrian expedition, and had an ample opportunity of inquiring its probable object, and the probable success which (but for the heroic defence of Acre), might have attended it; he was on the theatre of Bonaparte's imputed crimes, as well as his notorious defeat; and might have brought us back, not anile conjecture, but sound evidence of events which must determine his character, who may determine our fate. We should have