There are some valuable observations on the aborigines. It is said that they have good natural faculties, all one of them named Uranigh, an attendant on the expedition, obtains especial praise for sagacity, fidelity, and courage. But, from inevitable circumstances, it appears to be the fate of the natives to waste away before the European blood, and, even without any violence or oppression, gradually to vanish. To teach them to earn their bread, to adopt European habits of any kind, or even to live with any sense of comfort in the vicinity of European settlers, seems impossible, and thus they gradually retire into the interior. This process has so uniformly occurred in all colonised countries, where a new civilisation has been introduced, that it may be regarded as almost a law of nature. "Fire, grass, and kangaroos," are essential to native life; and when the pastures are no longer suffered to be burned, and when the kangaroos disappear, the savage _must_ retire. Sir T. Mitchell's favourite project would be, to send away a young married pair to the south of Europe, where they might learn the cultivation of the grape and olive, fig, &c.; then to bring them back with their children. But we are afraid they would make but few converts; that the benevolent experiment would be totally thrown away; and that the poor, idle, and useless being, whom Sir Thomas will persist in calling the noble savage, must be left to eat rats and mice, to live in misery and wretchedness, and to be inevitably pushed into the wilderness, to make way for a superior class of human capability. But, regarding the condition of the natives as utterly beyond European influence, except so far as it may and ought to be exerted to protect them from all injury,--there are other questions of high importance, relative to the condition of the convicts. The preamble of the Transport Act made the reformation of the culprit a primary object. There never was any use of forced labour so effective. The galley-slaves of France and Italy were in general made more wicked, if possible, by their imprisonment and work. We think it also next to an impossibility that any culprit, punished by temporary imprisonment, and then thrown out again among his associates, _can_ change his habits. Who will employ a known felon? A single act of robbery may give him more means of gross gratification, than he could obtain by the severest toil in a twelvemonth. The temptation is too strong. The only hope of his recovery, is in his being sent where his bad character will not utterly prevent his getting a good one; where he will have profitable work, (let the profit be more or less;) where he will have few temptations, and none of his old ones; and where he may have a prospect of bettering his condition among his fellows. All these he had, and has, in New South Wales.