The labyrinth of islands that is scattered over the Pacific Ocean for more than 30 degrees on each side of the equator, and from the 130th eastern meridian to Sumatra, which all but unites this enormous archipelago to the continent of Asia, has the group of New Zealand or Tasmania, and the continent of Australia, with its appendage, Yan Diemen's Land, on the south ; and altogether forms a region which, from the unstable nature of the surface of the earth, is partly the wreck of a continent that has been engulfed by the ocean, and partly the highest summits of a new one rising above the waves. This extensive portion of the globe is, in many parts, terra incognita; the Indian Archipelago has never been explored, and, with the exception of our colonies in New Holland and New Zealand, is little known.

The continent of New Holland, 2400 miles from east to west, and 1700 from north to south, is divided into two unequal parts by the tropic of Capricorn, and consequently has both a temperate and a tropical climate. New Guinea, separated from New Holland by Torres Straits, and traversed by the same chain of mountains with New Holland and Van Diemen's Land, is so perfectly similar in structure, that it forms but a detached member of the adjacent continent.