Difficulties of Travel in Australia.

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but certainly the traders whom Dr. Livingston met in his recent explorations appear to have been ready to aid rather than to resist. There is surely a great opening to legitimate and civilising commerce in the quarters that have been mentioned above, and a man would deserve well of the opinion of the world if he succeeded in exploring them.

Australia affords another and a most legitimate field for a traveller, and perhaps a more encouraging one than Africa; because whatever discoveries are made in that continent are more sure of being followed up, and of leading to immediate results. The peculiar difficulties that travellers have to contend with there, are almost identical with those experienced in the best-known parts of South Africa. There is, in both countries, the same union of desert and equatorial verdure, the same alternate floods and droughts, the same fear of the country drying up behind the explorer. In both, the means of travel and sustenance are similar,-driving slaughter cattle, using wagons and carts; but whereas the desert, or rather the prairie part of South Africa is now thoroughly understood, and its borders ascertained, for which we are much indebted to Mr. Andersson's recent travels and inquiries, that of Australia is still unexplored; and it is precisely in the difficulty of ascertaining it that the problem of that island-continent appears to lie. Such an excellent map of Australia has recently been published by Mr. Arrowsmith, that it is superfluous to enter into any details of the present state of discovery in its interior, since a mere inspection of the map will tell more than pages of explanation. We know the rim of the continent, and that great slice of its south-eastern corner which is actually colonised; but of the rest, with the exception of Sturt's and Kennedy's famous expeditions right into the centre, we know nothing. There is every reason to guess that the central desert fills up two-thirds of the unknown parts,-the hot dry winds and other climateric effects all combine to indicate this; but what oases there may be within it, or where the northern boundary of the desert may lie, we are entirely ignorant. The natives in Australia can give us no information; they are split up into numberless tribes, that speak different dialects and hold no friendly communication with one another and rarely fraternize with travellers. An Australian explorer passes for hundreds of miles, gathering knowledge of nothing beyond what his eyes can actually see; the natives flee from him, he sees only their tracks and their distant fires, and hears their characteristic cries from time to time about him; but as to what lies on the other side of, it may be, the hills immediately to his right, or beyond the waste of sand which bounds his

view to his left, he can only guess. If, then, a large map of Australia be taken, and on it be painted just that narrow band of country of which alone Captain Sturt and others can speak with any certainty, it becomes plain to us at once how slight is our knowledge of the great interior. Now, in order to discover the limits of any central desert or prairie, when once it is known to be very large, it is of course a more natural plan to skirt it, travelling over fertile tracts, than to try and cut across it; for by doing so the difficulties and risks of the desert may be avoided, while in the latter case they are courted. It is upon this principle that the plans of the North Australian expedition, which has very lately left our shores, have been organized. Everything seems to indicate that the northern face of Australia is fertile: many rivers of a certain magnitude pour down into the Gulf of Carpentaria, and on either side of the promontories that form it; and as water in these latitudes is almost synonymous with fertility, there can be little doubt that the slope or watershed down which these rivers run is no longer desert. The expedition has started to sail up one of these rivers-the Victoria, which was discovered years since by Captain Stokes in the Beagle, and was ascended by him for some distance, then, having examined its source and the character of the country whence it takes its rise, it will endeavour to reach the sea by another route, so as to descend the Albert river into the Gulf of Carpentaria, and rejoin the vessel from which they landed, and which will be stationed near its mouth to bring them away again. The government of South Australia has also equipped an expedition to explore the side of the desert adjacent to its territory, but what will be the success of both these undertakings remains for us to learn. Expeditions in Central Australia involve so great an outlay as to preclude all chance of their being undertaken by the enterprise of a single private person; servants' wages are of course enormous, and a party of less than ten or a dozen men is not advisable; whatever these men eat must be bought from the colonists at Australian prices, and taken on by the caravan. The country affords nothing but firewood and water, for the natives have no cattle, and of course no corn, which they may be induced to exchange for articles of barter. A caravan, therefore, sets out provisioned for a definite time, like a ship at sea, but with a thousandfold greater risk with regard to its freight. If the animals of the caravan perish, the party must perish too, unless that hand of Providence which every traveller in wild countries learns to acknowledge, is pleased to sustain its struggling course towards home

by the aid of occurrences, themselves unusual, being combined in most fortunate and unlooked-for coincidences.

Fever is the special bane of travellers in distant lands,-not necessarily a fever that kills, but one that acclimatises the sufferer, and half ruins his constitution in the process. And the worst of it is, that a similar tempering has to be gone through when the traveller returns to the climate and the way of living that he had left behind him. Indeed, the wear and tear of body and mind is so great, that it is difficult to call to mind half-a-dozen explorers who have attempted as many as three great expeditions. We are as soon satiated with the novelty of exploring as with any other kind of novelty; and, though the charm of bush life is neverfading, yet a man who has travelled much is contented with nearer lands, and does not care to incur afresh the anxieties, the disappointments, and the certain risks of actual explorations. However it may be, rough travel in unknown countries has, at first, an indescribable charm to most minds, and the many moral lessons that it rudely teaches are of undoubted value. Still, in times of peace, when we are, perhaps, overcareful of life, there seems to be a degree of recklessness in commending a career whose risks are certain, and whose success is remote and contingent; but a state of war cancels these feelings; for when the professions of so many of our contemporaries are fraught with equal danger, there seems less harm in advocating that of an explorer, and of wishing God-speed' to those who undertake it. F. G.

THE LIMITATIONS TO SEVERITY IN WAR.

OW that England and France are engaged in a war of the first magnitude, and one which may still last for many years, the question naturally arises in thoughtful minds-By what principles our statesmen ought to be guided in directing the war, and our generals and admirals in carrying it on? We do not mean the military or naval principles upon which the scheme of the campaigns should be based-these are sure enough to be sifted. What we refer to are the moral principles involved in the conduct of war. We want to understand whether the rules of behaviour towards an enemy are merely chance matters of mutual convenience and precedent, or whether they are traceable to any first truths in morals, and can therefore be built up into a system. We want to understand the grounds for the restrictions upon the severity of war. Why is it that we may slaughter twenty thousand men on the field of battle, or in a siege, but may not bayonet a wounded man, or put a prisoner to death? Why may we ruin our adversary's trade but not ravage his lands? Why may we not shoot his sentinels? Why may we not poison his wells? Why may we lie in ambush in a forest, and massacre a regiment, or spring a mine under its feet, or shoot a general down from some safe hiding-place, and yet not employ an assassin to slay the head and cause of the war? Why may we destroy government property of all kinds, but not that of the private citizen? Is it lawful to inflict punishment on our adversary? Is it fair to exact compensation from him? What are the principles, the primary truths, upon which the usages of war should be based? In other words, How can the conduct of war be best reconciled with the laws of God?

Those who hold, as the Quakers do, that all war is unlawful, would no doubt deny that it can ever be carried on in the fear of God. We go, however, upon the assumption that such a war as the one we are now engaged in, is not only allowable, but a positive duty; and therefore that there is nothing absurd

in seeking to adapt the conduct of it to the spirit of the Christian faith. Unquestionably, war undertaken for the sake either of glory or of gain is one of the most awful crimes that man can commit, and it would be hypocrisy to pretend to conduct it with any reference to principle: but, taking for granted that the belligerent has right on his side, still the question arises-What are the boundaries which he ought to observe?

There are then two views, wide asunder as the poles, of the way in which war may be carried on. Of these, of course, one is right and the other wrong; and, as usual, the wrong one comes to hand most readily, and is the pleasantest to hold, and has therefore prevailed almost exclusively since the world began. Wherever human nature has been unrestrained by Christian principle, the old maxim has borne sway in war, that Whatever hurts your adversary does good to yourself,' and the aim of each party has been, simply, to do all possible harm to his enemy. Hatred is so soon fanned into a blaze by hostilities, that it requires no small struggle of the conscience and will to hold it down; and thus, in almost every war that ever took place, the feeling has ruled-That the more the foe can be damaged and vexed, the better.

This view is held, in its most bare and hideous form, by savages, who torture their captives to death. Their only feeling towards their enemies is that which one wild beast might have towards another; and so long as their enemy is miserable they are happy. We look upon such bloodthirstiness with loathing; but yet, in a somewhat mitigated form, civilized nations have been often actuated by the same idea. In fact, in those good old times of earnest faith which are so much glorified by some writers at the present day, there seems to have been scarcely any notion of the restrictions which humanity and religion should place upon war. There is no history which does not abound with such a multitude of examples, that it would be vain indeed to make a selection; but a single illustration, which happens to be at hand, may suffice to remind the reader of the incidents that were of constant occurrence in the days of unproductive superstition :

The town of Dinant, in Flanders, we are told, was besieged by Philip the Good, and he sent in a summons to it to surrender, to which the citizens replied by hanging the messenger. Upon the duke's approach, however, the courage of the townsmen oozed away, and they surrendered the keys. The duke immediately gave up the town to pillage for three days, then set fire to it, and afterwards deliberately ordered eight hundred of the inhabitants to be bound two-and-two and thrown into the Meuse. Though