There is another division of the population of South Australia I have hitherto omitted to mention, I mean the German emigrants.  They now number more than 2000, and therefore form no inconsiderable portion of the population of the province.  These people have spread over various districts, but still live in communities, having built five or six villages.

The Germans of South Australia are quiet and inoffensive, frugal and industrious.  They mix very little with the settlers, and, regarded as a portion of the community, are perhaps too exclusive, as not taking a due share in the common labour, or rendering their assistance on occasions when the united strength of the working classes is required to secure a general good—­as the gathering in of the harvest, or such similar occasions.  Their religious observances are superintended by different pastors, all of them very respectable persons.  The oldest of these is Mr. Kavel, to whom the Germans look with great confidence, and hold in deserved esteem.  Many of the Germans have been naturalized, and have acquired considerable property in various parts of the province, but very few have taken to business, or reside in Adelaide as shopkeepers.  The women bring their market or farm produce into the city on their backs, generally at an early hour of the morning, and the loads some of them carry are no trifle.  Here, however, as in their native country, the women work hard, and certainly bear their fair proportion of labour.  The houses of the Germans are on the models of those of their native country, and are so different in appearance from the general style, as to form really picturesque objects.  There is nowhere about Adelaide a prettier ride than through the village of Klemzig, on the right bank of the Torrens, that having been the first of the German settlements.  The easy and unmolested circumstances of these people should make them happy, and lead them to rejoice that in flying from persecution at home they were guided to such a country as that in which they now dwell, and I have no doubt that as a moral and religious people, they are thankful for their good fortune, and duly appreciate the blessings of Providence.

My anxiety to raise the character of the natives of Australia, in the eyes of the civilized world, and to exhibit them in a more favourable light than that in which they are at present regarded, induces me, before I close these volumes, to adduce a few instances of just and correct feeling evinced by them towards myself, which ought, I think, to have this effect and to satisfy the unprejudiced mind that their general ideas of right and wrong are far from being erroneous, and that, whatever their customs may be, they should not, as a people, occupy so low a place in the scale of human society, as that which has been assigned to them.  I am quite aware that there have been individual instances of brutality amongst them, that can hardly be palliated even in savage life—­that they