Despite the tragic fate of Leichhardt's expedition and those of other explorers,[9] new expeditions are continually being set on foot for exploring the unknown regions of Australia in every direction, and although by far the larger part of the information collected consists rather of ghastly recitals of misery and privation endured than positive scientific results,[10] yet some of the more recent ones, especially those of Stuart and Burke, have made also important discoveries in the interior; and in view of the impulse which the lamentable state of American politics threatens to impart to cotton-growing everywhere, the highly fertile banks of the Murray, which with a very little labour might be made navigable far into the interior, may at no distant period be covered with numerous cotton plantations. While the younger and more adventurous spirits enter with all their heart and soul upon these dangerous experiences of rude hardship, there is in the capital of the colony a not less marked scientific vitality, and the valuable libraries and private collections of the Governor-general, Sir Wm. Denison, Mr. W. Macleay, the botanist, Dr. George Bennett, physician and geologist,[11] Dr. Roberts, microscopist, Messrs. W. B. Clarke and Selwyn, geologists, as well as their various and valuable contributions to science, exercise a doubly important and beneficial influence upon a number of contiguous states so peculiarly organized as those of Australia, which, first penal settlements, and then gold-fields, seemed to have been deprived of all those favourable conditions, which elsewhere are usually supposed to be requisite for the development of intellectual and scientific activity. Much has also been done already in Australia for the diffusion of the principles of social economy and the diffusion of political and linguistic knowledge; and the historical writings of Dr. J. D. Lang,[12] and the philological works of Dr. Threlkeld, both men of high attainments and of similar zeal in promoting the welfare of their fellow-men, furnished us with profound information as to the political history of the country, as well as the original language of the aborigines. Since the appearance of the first ethnographic works of Count Strzelecki there has appeared little that is new respecting the origin, migration, and history of the black races of Australia, and what we have to say on this momentous topic, whether in the result of personal intercourse or of information derived from other sources, we shall reserve for the narrative of our excursion into the interior of the colony, and our foregathering with the primitive inhabitants of the back settlements.[13]