Situated on the Cudgegong - about midway between the source of that river and the confluence with the Macquarie at Wellington - surrounded by some of the best agricultural and pastoral lands in the colony, and the centre of many of our earliest and most productive gold fields.

Mudgee may be said to possess within itself every element of material and permanent prosperity, while its more material site, nesting in the bosom of a wide extended amphitheatre of surrounding heights, afford at one a rich treat to the lovers of nature and a wide field for the talents of the artist.

But a few years back and still within the memory of many of its hardy pioneers, this interesting spot, now the smiling home of a happy community, was an untenanted wilderness, or at the most afforded shelter to a few wandering Aborigines.

The rich and highly cultivated estates where the summer now spreads her golden glories to the sun with solitudes sacred to the emu and the kangaroo.

Now all is vocal with the busy hum of human industry; the woodman's axe - the clang of the forge and smithy - and the lively rattle of the mail coach, having effectually scared its former harmless occupants, while the more solemn church-going bell seems to tells the requiem of the swarthy children of the soil.

The town and city in embryo, already boasts a considerable number of handsome and imposing edifices, in a style or architecture which would do credit to a place of far greater pretensions.

Foremost among these we may enumerate the churches.

Each of our leading religious denominations is pretty fairly represented in Mudgee, and has its place of worship fair and decorous as becomes the House of God, with the neat and commodious parsonage attached.

The Presbyterians though the last in the field and as yet without a manse, will not long labour under that disadvantage, funds being already in hand for the erection of a suitable building.

The Bank of New South Wales has already provided a very handsome accommodation for the branch at Mudgee and the Joint Stock Bank is about to follow its example.

The School of Arts (Mechanic's Institute) is certainly one of, if not the largest and finest out of Sydney and occupies a commanding site.

Mudgee boasts a Municipal Corporation, consisting of a mayor and eight alderman, besides the surrounding suburbs having like advantages in the Cudgegong Council, the largest in extent and consequently in, income in the colony, except Sydney, whose offices are in town.

Among the manufactures of Mudgee, we might mention its tanneries -four in number, and its soap boiling, coach building, tobacco manufacturing establishments.

Four steam mills (one of which sawmills are attached) have been called into existence by the agricultural requirements of the district, which the difference shades of political opinion are represented bye two well conducted newspapers.

From a pastoral point of view the district is particular fortunate, a combination of advantages contributing to the production of a growth of wool of peculiar excellence, in proof of which we need only site the well known names of Messrs. Bayly, Cox, Lawson and Rouse, and all those sheep establishments are within a few miles of the town.

The town and district, which together possess a popular of over 4,000 souls, returns one member to parliament.

The honour has hereto, been warmly contested and if report speaks right, the election now on the tap is will prove to exception to the general rule in this respect.