"By the firelight," answered Herbert, coming
close again.

"Look at me."

"I do look at you, my dear boy."

"Touch me."

"I do touch you, my dear boy."

"You are not afraid that I am in any fever, or
that my head is much disordered by the accident
of last night?"

"N-no, my dear boy," said Herbert, after
taking time to examine me. "You are rather
excited, but you are quite yourself."

"I know I am quite myself. And the man
we have in hiding down the river, is Estella's
Father."

A TWO-YEAR OLD COLONY.

FAITH in the youngest child, is a family failing.
Mother Britannia has a large family of colonies,
some of them old enough to be established in the
world as independent heads of households; but
at present she is more than a little proud of her
youngest daughter, whose birthday is in this
present month. She was born in the London
Gazette on the third of June, two years ago.

By official proclamation, bearing that date,
Moreton Bay was taken as a new colony, named
Queensland, out of the northern territory of
New South Wales, just as Port Phillip had been
taken, as a new colony named Victoria, from
its southern territory eight years before. On
the tenth of December, Sir George Bowen, the
governor, arrived at Brisbane, the new colonial
capital, and proclaimed Moreton Bay a colony
under the new name, which was, he said,
"entirely the happy thought and inspiration of her
Majesty herself." On the tenth of December,
then, only a year and a half ago, this last-born of
the colonies began to run alone.

Among all disputants as to the direction
in which we may look for new supplies of
cotton, the claim of Queensland almost alone
passes unquestioned. The colony lies partly
within the tropics, but the average climate is
about that of Madeira; the whole territory, when
its boundaries are finally determined (as they are
not yet), will probably be about three times as
large as France. The settled districts are already
as large as the mother country, meaning thereby
not Great Britain only, but Great Britain and
Ireland. Our last quarter of the year is Queensland
spring, our spring is Queensland autumn,
and the winter there begins on our Midsummerday.
There is magnificent timber and much
coal; the vine and olive grow there; so do maize,
cotton, and sugar-cane; wheat, oranges, and
nutmegs. On the coast are pearls. There is
also a fishery for the dugong, which yields a
valuable oil, good meat like veal or pork, and
very marketable bones for the turner, solid as
ivory. But of all this great land of plenty, the
population is at present only about thirty thousand,
which is less by seven thousand than that
of the English Ipswich, after which one of the
Queensland settlements is named.

There is, perhaps, no part of the Australian
continent so well watered and supplied with
navigable rivers as this Queensland. There is
Clarence River, navigable for vessels of two
hundred and fifty tons, fifty miles up. The Richmond,
though only a hundred miles from source
to mouth, has three hundred miles of navigable
water on the main river and its various branches
or arms. There are the rivers watering a
strip of boundary that Queensland claims but
New South Wales at present holds. There
is the Tweed, up which small vessels penetrate
twenty or thirty miles, on behalf of the colonial
cedar trade. There are the Arrowsmith and
the Logan; there is the Brisbane River
navigated by large steam-boats for sixty-five miles;
the Pine, the Black Swan, and the Mary Rivers,
the Boyne, the Fitzroy, and so forth; and all
these rivers are fed by a network of little streams
that fertilise the land.

Then there is Moreton Bay, which, until lately,
gave its name to the whole region. That was
discovered ninety-one years ago by Captain
Cook, and nine years afterwards was examined
by Captain Flinders, who overlooked the mouth of
Brisbane River, hidden by two flat islands. He
had previously anchored four-and-twenty hours
in Shoal Bay, into which the Clarence River flows,
and supposed that he saw only a shoal bay, with
gloomy mangrove trees upon its shores. The
Clarence River was accidentally discovered by
some sawyers, in search of cedar, only twenty
three years ago. Brisbane and the Boyne Rivers
had been also fallen upon by accident, fifteen years
earlier. The Australian rivers, in fact, bring down
much earth, and form their mouths in such a
way that from the deck of a vessel on the coast
they are often not to be detected. Moreton
Bay is made not by a reach of land, but by
three islands, so disposed as to form a sort of
inland sea, sixty miles long, and about twenty
wide, studded with islands, especially towards
the south, where it narrows into a mere river.

A suggestive hint of the fertility of the soil
in the southern or least tropical parts of the
Queensland, is given by the Rev. Dr. Lang, of
Sydney, a member of the parliament of New
South Wales, who has been an active and effectual
promoter of the secession both of Victoria
and Queensland, and who is the author of a new
book on Queensland, from which we derive the
best part of our information. In a garden near
Grafton, on Clarence River, his attention was
attracted by a young peach tree, about eight
feet high, covered with blossom. The tree had
grown from a stone planted on the preceding
January, only eight months before. Dr. Lang
does not like to find in such a region settlements
called Deptford or Casino. He has a rhyme as
well as a reason against it. "I like," he says:

"I like the native names, as Paramatta,
And Illawarra, and Woolloomoolloo.
Toongabbee, Mittagong, and Coolingatta,
And Yurumbon, and Coodgiegang, Meroo.
Euranarina, Jackwa, Bulkomatta,
Nandowra, Tumbarumba, Woogaroo;
The Wollondilly and the Wingycarribbee.
The Warragumby, Daby, and Bungarribbee."