Alexander Sutherland

Captain Cook.—But in the year 1770 a series of important discoveries was indirectly brought about. The Royal Society of London, calculating that the planet Venus would cross the disc of the sun in 1769, persuaded the English Government to send out an expedition to the Pacific Ocean for the purpose of making observations which would enable astronomers to calculate the distance of the earth from the sun.

Each man had as many wives as he could obtain. He did not support them, but they supported him, and when children became too numerous he lessened his family by killing off a few. More than half the children were thus destroyed. Their enjoyments consisted of games with a kind of ball, and mock-fights, but especially in a wild dance they called the corrobboree. They were in general good-humoured when things went pleasantly; but a man would spear his wife through the leg or dash his child’s brains out readily enough when things were not to his taste, and nobody would think any the worse of him for

7. Gold.—In 1858 it was reported that gold had been discovered far to the north, on the banks of the Fitzroy River, and in a short time many vessels arrived in Keppel Bay, their holds and decks crowded with men, who eagerly landed and hastened to Canoona, a place about sixty or seventy miles up the river. Ere long there were about fifteen thousand diggers on the scene; but it was soon discovered that the gold was confined to a very small area, and by no means plentiful; and those who had spent all their money in getting to the place were in a wretched plight. A large population had been hurriedly gathered in an isolated region, without provisions, or the possibility of obtaining them; their expectations of the goldfield had been disappointed, and for some time the Fitzroy River was one great scene of misery and starvation till the Governments of New South Wales and Victoria sent vessels to convey the unfortunate diggers away from the place.