Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/88

 the capitals of Europe. This arises from the variety of the materials of which it is composed, and from the different views, the different knowledge, and experience of men differently educated, whose lives have been passed in different scenes, in different professions, and in different parts of the globe. If you want to hear the particulars of some Chinese custom, probably your next neighbour can inform you; a second illustrates an argument on draught, by a description of the mode of harnessing dogs in Greenland; a third has personally inspected the isthmus of Panama, and can give you an opinion as to the practicability and expense of cutting it through; while from a fourth you may learn all the details of the Niger expedition. You see a pale and delicate, hut resolute-looking man—he was the first who made the dangerous experiment of taking cattle overland to Adelaide; he opposite you, with a quiet expression and mild blue eye, is one of the most determined and adventurous explorers and the nest bushman in the country; that other florid and rather effeminate-looking youth has gone through dangers and surmounted difficulties which would appal many a stout heart; and so on of the rest, for there are few who have not had occasions to try them when they had nothing else to depend on, for the preservation of their lives, hut their own courage and perseverance.

The labouring population may he divided into two classes, the old hands and emigrants. The old hands are men who, having been formerly convicts, (or lags as they are generally termed,) have become free by the expiration of their sentences. Some of these men came