Transcriber’s Note
The cover image was created from elements of the original publicationand is placed in the public domain.
See endof this document for details of corrections and other changes.
AUSTRALIA.
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
LETTERS
FROM
AUSTRALIA.
BY
JOHN MARTINEAU.
LONDON:
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1869.
PREFACE.
—♢—
The following Letters were most of them written inAustralia in 1867, and were published in the Spectatorin the course of that and the following year. Someare reprinted without alteration, others have beenadded to and altered, and others are new.
No attempt has been made to mould them into acontinuous or complete account either of the pasthistory or present condition of the three colonieswhich they endeavour to describe. Those of thecolonies which are old enough to possess a historyhave had it already written. And as for their presentstate, it would be presumptuous to suppose that fifteenmonths divided between them could have sufficed toenable me, circumstanced as I was, to give anythinglike a complete account of countries so large, or toobtain an accurate understanding of all the variouspolitical questions and phenomena presented by them.The organisation of school education, for instance, forwhich I am told some of the Australian legislatures[vi]deserve credit, was a matter that did not come undermy notice, and important as this question is nowbecoming, I am unable to import any evidence bearingupon it.
In the absence of any exciting personal adventuresthere was no excuse for writing a diary or personalnarrative. I was not even stopped by bushrangers;though had I wished it, and made my wishes known,‘Thunderbolt’ would doubtless have been delightedto ‘stick up’ the Scone and Singleton Mail the dayI was in it, instead of two or three days later, andagain about a fortnight afterwards.
But a single day, a single hour spent in a new-worldcolony dissipates many delusions, and conveys manyfacts and ideas and impressions of it, which no amountof reading or of second-hand information can altogethersupply, and which ought to confer the powerof presenting a more vivid and real picture than amere compiler at a distance can give.
These letters are therefore published, fragmentaryas they are, for