edifice, less elegant, but not less comfortable, than its neater and sprucer neighbour. Here and there a sub stantial building of brick or stone, combining neatness with durability, betokened that its owner, heedless of expense, was resolved to possess that essential of English comfort, a good house, whatsoever might be the fate of the colony. The gum trees being left standing, except where they grew in the line of a thoroughfare, afforded to many of the dwellings a pleasant shade from the noontide heats; and the back-ground of evergreen foliage, which extended on all sides, gave a fine pictorial effect to many of the buildings, especially to the church, on whose tapering spire few people could look for the first time without experiencing some retrospective emotion. The town itself is pleasing and picturesque. It is divided into two portions, by an open valley, in which runs the chain of ponds called, rather incorrectly, the river Torrens. The intervening ground is reserved as a park or common, and during the nine months of the year in which South Australia is exempt from hot winds, the aspect of this undulating piece of land is susceptible of being rendered beautiful and ornamental. It demands no great effort of the imagination to picture in the mind’s eye the North Terrace, overlooking a public garden in all its pride of hue and perfume. A few years of prosperity would enable the colonists to effect far greater changes than this. By its proximity to a copious supply of water, it seems well adapted for trying the effect of irrigation, a procedure by which it is to be presumed much land in Australia might be reclaimed from barrenness, as easily as in the ill-watered countries of Europe and Asia. A distance of eight miles from the nearest point at