There is another character, which, if not peculiar to Australia, is called into being only in those colonies where a large extent of land in its natural state remains unappropriated to any individuals. The _squatters_, as they are called, are men who occupy with their cattle, or their habitations, those spots on the confines of a colony or estate, which have not as yet become any person's private property. By the natural increase of their flocks and herds, many of these squatters have enriched themselves; and having been allowed to enjoy the advantages of as much pasture as they wanted in the bush, without paying any rent for it to the government, they have removed elsewhere when the spot was sold, and have not unfrequently gained enough to purchase that or some other property. Thus the loneliness, the privations, and the perils of a pastoral life in the bush, have often gained at length their recompense, and the squatter has been converted into a respectable settler. But this is too bright a picture to form an average specimen of the class which we are describing. Unfortunately, many of these squatters have been persons originally of depraved and lawless habits, and they have made their residence at the very outskirts of civilization a means of carrying on all manner of mischief. Or sometimes they choose spots of waste land near a high road, where the drays halt to get water for the night, and there the squatters knock up what is called "a hut." In such places stolen goods are easily disposed of, spirits and tobacco are procured in return for these at "the sly grog shops," as they are called; and in short they combine the evils of a gypsy encampment and a lonely beer-shop in England, only from the scattered population, the absence of influential inhabitants, and the deplorably bad characters of the men keeping them, these spirit shops are worse places than would be tolerated in this country. It is stated that almost all the men by whom these resorts of iniquity are kept, are either ticket-of-leave men or emancipists. It is no easy thing to suppress these people, for the squatters, like the black natives, can find a home wherever they betake themselves. And it must be owned, that considerable good has resulted in many instances from these forerunners of civilization having penetrated into a district, and learned some of its peculiarities and capabilities before a settlement in it has been regularly formed. Indeed, it would have been unjust to have been severe with the poor squatter, and his two or three sheep and cattle, when it had long been the practice of the most wealthy landowners in the colony, to send their stock-man with their hundreds of heads of cattle into the bush, to find support exactly in the same way, and without paying anything to government. The rich proprietors have a great aversion to the class of squatters, and not unreasonably, yet they are thus, many of them, squatters themselves,