Melbourne, September 28. 1852.

Having effected a landing in this country bristling with hostile steel pens, and where they come down upon you with tremendous charges,—not of cavalry, but of city train-bands, all furnished with an awful artillery of prices,—let us endeavour to get some idea of the features of the place.

We landed at Liardet's Beach, a low sandy shore, where there was a shabby sort of inn, looking English but slovenly, before which stood a shabby sort of long waggon meant for an omnibus, the driver of which generously offered to convey us the three miles to Melbourne for half-a-crown; but, having been locked up in a floating prison for 13,000 miles at sea, we preferred stretching our legs on terra firma. We marched on amid a wildish scene of sand, fern, odd sorts of shrubs, dusky evergreen trees with broken heads, and other lower trees the leaves of which seemed cut out of dingy green paper, and the stiff scrubby boughs stuck over with bottle-brushes. These, we found, were Banksias; the trees like battered, windtorn willows, were gum-trees; and besides these were others like great trees of broom,—Casuarinas, or Shiacks. All around us stood plenty of stumps of other trees cut off about a yard high, American fashion; and amongst them, here and there, was erecting a new wooden hut. The scene was not especially paradisiacal, for a first glimpse of this far-famed Austral Eden.