from the moral and physical character of the first generation of
Australians, has not yet proved a successful experiment. The eastern
Tartars think that there is nothing west beyond Thibet. "The world ends
there," say they; "beyond there is nothing but a shoreless sea." It is
unmitigated East where they live.

We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and
literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the
future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The Atlantic is a
Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to
forget the Old World and its institutions. If we do not succeed this
time, there is perhaps one more chance for the race left before it
arrives on the banks of the Styx; and that is in the Lethe of the
Pacific, which is three times as wide.

I know not how significant it is, or how far it is an evidence of
singularity, that an individual should thus consent in his pettiest walk
with the general movement of the race; but I know that something akin
to the migratory instinct in birds and quadrupeds,--which, in some
instances, is known to have affected the squirrel tribe, impelling them
to a general and mysterious movement, in which they were seen, say some,
crossing the broadest rivers, each on its particular chip, with its tail
raised for a sail, and bridging narrower streams with their dead,--that
something like the _furor_ which affects the domestic cattle in the
spring, and which is referred to a worm in their tails,--affects both
nations and individuals, either perennially or from time to time. Not
a flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but it to some extent
unsettles the value of real estate here, and, if I were a broker, I
should probably take that disturbance into account.