MR. BARRAUD.  “I do not doubt but the New Zealanders are still cannibals in heart; for, so late as 1832, when Mr. Earle was there, he unfortunately had ocular proof of the fact.  He had been residing with them some months, when a chief claimed one of his (Mr. Earle’s) servants, stating she was a runaway slave.  He tied her to a tree and shot her through the heart, and his men prepared an oven and cooked her.  Mr. Earle heard of it, and hastened to the spot.  He caught them in the act of preparing some of the poor girl’s flesh, and endeavored, in vain, to prevent the horrible feast; but to no purpose; for they assembled at night and devoured every morsel except the head, which he saw a hungry dog run off with to the woods.  The poor girl was only sixteen years of age, pretty and well-behaved, and her murderer was one of the aristocracy of New Zealand, and, as Mr. Earle observes, a remarkably polite savage.”

CHARLES.  “We must bid adieu to these interesting savages, and pass on to the last, but certainly not the least, of the Pacific islands.—­viz.  Australia.”

MR. WILTON.  “As all land is surrounded by water, and continents differ from islands merely in point of size, and as Australia or New Holland is in extent as large as Europe, and ten times larger than either Borneo or New Guinea, it is certainly more proportionate with continents than with islands; and it seems reasonable to class Australia with the former rather than with the latter.”

MRS. WILTON.  “With Australia we close our investigations.  To use a nautical expression, it is, compared with Europe and Asia, almost an iron-bound coast.  It possesses only two large indentations,—­the Gulf of Carpentaria on the north, and Spencer’s Gulf on the south.  Shark’s Bay, on the west, and Hervey’s Bay, on the east, are the next in size.”

MR. WILTON.  “New Holland was discovered by Paulmyer de Gonville.  That navigator sailed from Honfleur for the East Indies about the middle of 1503, and experienced a violent storm off the Cape of Good Hope, during which he lost his reckoning, and was driven into an unknown sea.  After sailing for some time, he observed birds flying from the south, and, directing his course towards that quarter, he soon fell in with land.  This was thought to have been New Holland or Australia.”

MR. BARRAUD.  “It is remarkable how extremely ignorant the Australians are:  they are certainly the lowest in intellect of the human creation.  The tribes on the western shores of Spencer’s Bay are positively ignorant of any method of obtaining fire:  they say that it originally came down from the north.  Like the vestal virgins, the women keep it constantly lighted, and carry it about with them in firesticks when they travel:  should it happen to go out, they procure a fresh supply from a neighboring encampment.  Then their manners are so atrociously savage.  Their mode of courtship is one which I fancy would not become popular among English ladies.  If a chief, or any other individual, be in love, with a damsel of a different tribe, he endeavors to waylay her; and if she be surprised in any quiet place, the ambushed lover rushes upon her, beats her about the head with his ‘waddie’ till she becomes senseless, when he drags her in triumph to his hut, and thenceforth she is his lawful wife!”