The vast tract of country which it is the object of the present volume to describe in its leading features, both moral and natural, may be said to consist of two islands, besides many small islets and coral reefs, which lie scattered around the coasts of these principal divisions. The larger island of the two, which from its size may well deserve the appellation of a continent, is called New Holland, or Australia; and is supposed to be not less than three-fourths of the extent of the whole of Europe. The smaller island, so well known by the names of Van Diemen's Land, or Tasmania, (from those of the discoverer, Tasman, and the Dutch governor of Batavia, Van Diemen) is not to be compared in size to the other, being about equal in magnitude to Ireland, and, like that island, abounding in fine and excellent harbours. Although, strictly speaking, the name of Australia is confined to the former of these two islands, yet it may be understood to include the smaller island also; and under this name it is proposed to make the reader familiar with the chief objects of curiosity in the natural world, and likewise with the state of human society, whether savage or civilised, in the two islands of New Holland and Van Diemen's Land, so far as both of these have been hitherto known and explored. It is by no means certain what nation may justly lay claim to the honour of the discovery of New Holland, the coasts of which were probably seen by the Spaniards, Quiros or Torres, in 1606, and are by some supposed to have been known to the Spanish and Portuguese yet earlier than this date, but were not regularly discovered until the Dutch, between the years 1616 and 1627, explored a considerable portion of the northern and western shores of that vast island, to which they gave the name of their own country, Holland. To the Spaniards this land was known by the names of Terra Australis Incognita, (The Unknown Southern Land,) or Australia del Espiritu Santo, (The Southern Land of the Holy Spirit,) the meaning of which last name does not exactly appear, unless it arose from the discovery of Quiros having been made a little before Whitsuntide. Since that time the coasts of this immense island, extending, it is said, to no less than 8000 miles, have been gradually explored, although they still remain in some parts very imperfectly known. Indeed, it was only in the year 1798 that Van Diemen's Land was discovered to be an island separated from New Holland, of which before that time it had been thought to form a large projection or promontory.