A COLONIAL INCUBUS.

The high rates of interest paid by the colonists of New South Wales, especially to British money-lenders, and to which the borrowers were pledged in prosperous times, and to which good faith binds them in the present, is a grievous and ruinous affair, now that, on good showing, no employment of capital, whatever good fortune may attend it, can realise in return 10 per cent. The sufferers have petitioned the Legislative Council to protect them by a usury law; asserting that not only are they paying the interest of the borrowed capital, but are in such payment returning as interest the capital; not only, in fact, furnishing a just portion of the commercial growth and increase, but are tearing up the roots of the golden tree. This, no doubt, is true: yet the Legislative Council disregarded the petition, and justly, it being none of their business to interfere between the parties, leaving the matter to be decided by the usurers, on whose tender mercies the borrowers must rely, and to the influence of public opinion. The usurers will be wisest if they are reasonable, if they are merciful, and are satisfied without exacting the pound of flesh. That this payment of enormous interest is one of the most grievous drawbacks on the prosperity of the colonies cannot be doubted; the middle and southern districts of New South Wales having, it has been computed, to make up as interest no less a sum to British capitalists than £250,000 annually. This is almost as great a colonial curse as drunkenness.

A PEEP AT THE NATIVES.

Every person visiting the native encampments must be delighted with some things, if disgusted with others. There is something very erect and dignified in the attitudes and motions of the wild people. You perceive that their limbs have always had free play-unencumbered and unrestrained by the shackles of civilised garments. Their bare feet, uncramped by shoes, are like other hands to them. If a spear or bomerang is dropped, they pick it up with their toes, and, only slightly stooping, toss it up into the hand. It is not uninteresting to watch them at the vocation of miam-making: stripping off from the trees large and thick sheets of bark, driving forked stakes into the ground to receive the cross-tree, against which they rear the bark, and complete the whole with a covering of green boughs. Then it is a great novelty to see them climb trees in the search for opos

sums; to see them cutting small holes with their tomahawks in the boles of trees, at regular intervals, into which they insert their toes and fingers alternately. In this manner they ascend trees of vast bulk to an amazing height. They first strike the tree with the head of the tomahawk to ascertain if it is hollow. Then they learn with the nicest skill whether there has been an opossum up into the tree recently; and know at once whether to climb or not. Good eyes they have, are keen of vision, and use them. How dim and uncertain to me seemed the marks of the opossum on the bole, yet to them how clear and palpable! Go wherever you will, you observe in the wilderness, on the trees, the native "his mark; "there it is, whilst the hand which fixed it there is dust. In Van Diemen's Land I first noticed them the last lingering records of a vanished people. They were to be seen everywhere, but the native nowhere. His fire had burnt out in the forest. The country had obtained a new name, and was occupied by a new people. New dwellings were erected on the graves of a departed race. There seemed

an accusing quietness in the woods. There seemed accusation, too, in the old native marks, and that it would be better if they were obliterated. Yet there they stand! appealing from the past to the present-from the dead to the living, to what there is of mercy in mankind—and to Christ.

Near the native encampments you are sure to find intimations of savage ingenuity-broken war implements, carved curiously; fragments of wicker-work, which surprise you with their beauty. Then you see groups of native children mimicking the employments of the elder natives: they have their juvenile battles, and are very noisy over their corrobories.

Besides these things, you meet at the native encampment, near Melbourne, a blind native boy, led by another native child-a sad spectacle. What will be his destiny? In civilised society the blind are a privileged people-how will it be with him? I felt, whilst looking upon him, that he might use Milton's words in a double sense, for he was peculiarly

"With darkness and with danger compass'd round,

And solitude."

When I look on the naked, unkempt, paint-smeared aborigines of Australia, I fancy myself for a moment living in ancient Britain; that I am a Roman; one fractional part of a vast, famous, and multitudinous race; and that the beings before me with wooden implements of warfare, resemble its aboriginal people only less warlike, less athletic, and of a darker com

plexion. The truth is, they are as much inferior to that primordial race, as we surpass the Romans in science, the arts, in literature, and in these momentous energies of the modern world -Christianity, and the Press.

The Romans would seem gods in the eyes of the Ancient Britons, as Europeans did in those of the aboriginal Australians. The American Indians have waned away, and are become, as a people, less and less. So it must be with this inartificial and almost jrreclaimable race. Rome is the dwelling of religious owls and bats—a race of dwarfs in arms, in civil and religious freedom. Britain is now something. We are all that the greatest nations of antiquity have been, and infinitely more.

This reflection naturally was awakened by the following anecdote :

An old History of England was given to a native, or found by him, in which was a picture of the Ancient Britons, a battlescene, thronged with fierce countenances and implements of savage warfare. He stared at it with astonishment; he had made a novel discovery; there were other white people than those he had hitherto seen. "Ha!" he exclaimed with dilated nostrils, and head erect-" those are the wild white fellows!"

Another discovery surprised the Port Phillip blacks; there were other black fellows! Major Davidson brought from India with him some Hill Coolies, who were at one time employed in repairing the Melbourne streets. The natives eyed them attentively, evidently considering the Hill Coolie a creature of doubtful formation, a bungling imitation of himself, and pronounced him accordingly to be "no good black fellow that.'

The natives are curious enough to thrust themselves into new buildings to see what is going on, and on some occasions they are surprised with novelties quite unexpected. At Manton's steam-mill occurred a ludicrous scene. The dark people just entered it when newly set in motion. There was the whirl and roar, the groan and clatter of wheels; the engine screamed, puffed and snorted; had the world been going to atoms they could not have been more horrified, off they ran like wild-fire! not pausing to look back until they thought themselves at a safe distance. Then pausing to describe what had terrified them to some persons they met, they imitated the noise of the engine; made motions to represent the whirling of wheels-then looked back and ran again.

Some years ago a portion of the Western Port natives meditated a murderous expedition against some distant tribe; but kept their design a secret from the protector; only declaring

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that they should be away many moons. A child, however, as children do, with grave simplicity reveals the secret: Plenty kidney-fat by, by," said the little imp to Mr. Thomas, as they stood by a native fire. They would have plenty of the fat of their enemies before long! This incursion was for Gippslandwhence the long absent natives returned, after hard marching, almost dead with fatigue. They had murdered nine naked disfigured human abominations like themselves. It was twelve moons before the visit was returned by the Gippsland tribe, and the bloody debt repaid; and it was on this occasion that they first saw a white man and a white man's dwelling. They observed it with evident surprise; and not having any idea of a door, or its use, they tried to make their way into the house at the sides and corners, and through the roof, cutting a passage with their stone tomahawks. When in, they offered no ill-usage to the owner, Mr. Jamieson; and when he fired off a gun to intimidate them, they only laughed and danced round him as if delighted with the novelty. One of the blacks before entering saw a window, and through it something on a table, which, unconscious of such a substance as glass, he put forth his hand to lay hold of; he was astonished at the crash of the pane, and did not seem to relish the bleeding hand he got in consequence. He would think it magic! Sugar and flour they emptied out of the bags without remorse; the bags only being wanted, being, as they thought, a kind of cloth. The guns would not go off in their hands as in Mr. Jamieson's, so they left them as useless; but clothing of every kind they seized eagerly. In one part of the room were piled up a quantity of newspapers and Chambers's Edinburgh Journals; these they dealt out to each other liberally, taking them also for a kind of cloth. These, afterwards, on finding out their mistake, were thrown here and there; and were found by Mr. Thomas, who had been sent after the depredators, scattered abundantly about the bush for twenty miles, by this rather novel "society for the diffusion of useful knowledge."

COLONIAL STATISTICS.

The returns as prepared by the colonial secretary (for New South Wales) and lately laid on the table of the legislative council, have just been published. They contain a mass of interesting and important information relative to the progress of colonial wealth, compiled and arranged with industry and care.

In 1842 there is a diminution of shipping, in number 86, and of tonnage, compared with the preceding year, of 39,875. It must be remarked that there was gradual progress up to 1841. Here is retrogradation; and there will be a still greater falling off for

Here again was falling off. Clouds are gathering, and the shadows of coming misery cast themselves far on before. In August, 1843, Mr. Wentworth, in the Legislative Council of New South Wales, said that "the country was in a state of unparalleled distress-that it had reached a crisis such as had never before been witnessed since the foundation of the colony. If any man felt a doubt on this point, let him look at the richest of the landed proprietors, and what was their condition? Was it not notorious that nine-tenths had their houses and lands and their