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Departure from New South Wales; a particular Defcription of the Country, its Products, and People: A Specimen of the Language, and fome Observations upon the Currents and Tides.

F this country, its products, and its people, many particulars have already been related in the course of the narrative, being fo interwoven with the events, as not to admit of a feparation. I fhall now give a more full and circumftantial description of each, in which, if some things should happen to be repeated, the greater part will be found

new.

New Holland, or, as I have now called the eastern coaft, New South Wales, is of a larger extent than any other country in the known world that does not bear the name of a continent the length of coaft along which we failed, reduced to a strait line, is no lefs than twenty-feven degrees of latitude, amounting to near 2000 miles, fo that its square furface must be much more than equal to all Europe. To the fouthward of 33 or 34, the land in general is low and level; farther northward it is hilly, but in no part can be called mountainous, and the hills and mountains, taken together, make but a small part of the furface, in comparison with the vallies and plains. It is upon the whole rather barren than fertile, yet the rifing ground is chequered by woods and lawns, and the plains and vallies are in many places covered with herbage: the foil however is frequently fandy,

and

and many of the lawns, or favannahs, are rocky and barren, especially to the northward, where, in the best spots, vegetation was lefs vigorous than in the fouthern part of the country; the trees were not fo tall, nor was the herbage fo rich. The grass in general is high, but thin, and the trees, where they are largest, are seldom lefs than forty feet asunder; nor is the country inland, as far as we could examine it, better clothed than the fea coaft. The banks of the bays are covered with mangroves, to the distance of a mile within the beach, under which the foil is a rank mud, that is always overflowed by a spring tide; farther in the country we fometimes met with a bog, upon which the grass was very thick and luxuriant, and sometimes with a valley, that was clothed with underwood: the foil in fome parts feemed to be capable of improvement, but the far greater part is such as can admit of no cultivation. The coaft, at least that part of it which lies to the northward of 25° S. abounds with fine bays and harbours, where vessels may lie in perfect security from all winds.

If we may judge by the appearance of the country while we were there, which was in the very height of the dry seafon, it is well watered: we found innumerable small brooks and fprings, but no great rivers; these brooks, however, probably become large in the rainy season. Thirsty Sound was the only place where fresh water was not to be procured for the ship, and even there one or two fmall pools were found in the woods, though the face of the country was every where interfected by falt-creeks, and mangrove land.

Of trees there is no great variety. Of those that could be called timber, there are but two forts; the largest is the gum tree, which grows all over the country, and has been men

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tioned already: it has narrow leaves, not much unlike a willow; and the gum, or rather refin, which it yields, is of a deep red, and resembles the fanguis draconis; poffibly it may be the fame, for this fubftance is known to be the produce of more than one plant. It is mentioned by Dampier, and is perhaps the fame that Tasman found upon Diemen's Land, where he fays he faw "Gum of the trees, and gum "lac of the ground." The other timber tree is that which grows fomewhat like our pines, and has been particularly mentioned in the account of Botany Bay. The wood of both thefe trees, as I have before remarked, is extremely hard and heavy. Befides thefe, here are trees covered with a soft bark that is eafily peeled off, and is the fame that in the Eaft Indies is used for the caulking of ships.

We found here the palm of three different forts. The firft, which grows in great plenty to the fouthward, has leaves that are plaited like a fan: the cabbage of these is fmall, but exquifitely fweet; and the nuts, which it bears in great abundance, are very good food for hogs. The fecond fort bore a much greater refemblance to the true cabbage tree of the West Indies; its leaves were large and pinnated, like thofe of the cocoa-nut; and these alfo produced a cabbage, which though not fo fweet as the other, was much larger. The third fort, which, like the fecond, was found only in the northern parts, was feldom more than ten feet high, with fmall pinnated leaves, refembling those of some kind of fern: it bore no cabbage, but a plentiful crop of nuts, about the fize of a large chefnut, but rounder: as we found the hulls of thefe fcattered round the places where the Indians had made their fires, we took for granted that they were fit to eat; thofe however who made the experiment paid dear for their knowlege of the contrary, for

they operated both as an emetic and cathartic with great violence. Still, however, we made no doubt but that they were eaten by the Indians; and judging that the conflitution of the hogs might be as ftrong as theirs, though our own had proved to be so much inferior, we carried them to the ftye; the hogs eat them, indeed, and for fome time we thought without fuffering any inconvenience; but in about a week they were so much disordered that two of them died, and the reft were recovered with great difficulty. It is probable, however, that the poifonous quality of these nuts may lie in the juice, like that of the caffada of the West Indies; and that the pulp, when dried, may be not only wholesome, but nutricious. Befides thefe fpecies of the palm, and mangroves, there were feveral fmall trees and fhrubs altogether unknown in Europe; particularly one which produced a very poor kind of fig; another that bore what we called a plum, which it refembled in colour, but not in shape, being flat on the fides like a little cheese; and a third that bore a kind of purple apple; which, after it had been kept a few days, became eatable, and tafted fomewhat like a damascene.

Here is a great variety of plants to enrich the collection of a botanist, but very few of them are of the efculent kind.. A small plant, with long, narrow, graffy leaves, resembling that kind of bulrush which in England is called the Cat'stail, yields a refin of a bright yellow colour, exactly refembling gambouge, except that it does not ftain; it has a fweet fmell, but its properties we had no opportunity to discover, any more than thofe of many others with which the nativesappear to be acquainted, as they have diftinguished them by

names.

I have already mentioned the root and leaves of a plant refembling the coccos of the Weft Indies, and a kind of

bean;,

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bean; to which may be added, a fort of parsley and purselain, and two kinds of yams; one shaped like a rhadish, and the other round, and covered with ftringy fibres: both forts are very small, but fweet; and we never could find the plants that produced them, though we often faw the places where they had been newly dug up; it is probable that the drought had deftroyed the leaves, and we could not, like the Indians, difcover them by the ftalks.

Most of the fruits of this country, fuch as they are, have been mentioned already. We found one in the fouthern part of the country resembling a cherry, except that the flone was foft; and another not unlike a pine-apple in appearance, but of a very difagreeable taste, which is well known in the East Indies, and is called by the Dutch Pyn Appel

Boomen.

Of the quadrupeds, I have already mentioned the dog, and particularly defcribed the kanguroo, and the animal of the opoffum kind, resembling the phalanger of Buffon; to which I can add only one more, resembling a polecat, which the natives call Quoll; the back is brown, spotted with white, and the belly white unmixed. Several of our people faid they had seen wolves; but perhaps, if we had not seen tracks that favoured the account, we might have thought them little more worthy of credit than he who reported that he had feen the devil.

Of batts, which hold a middle place between the beafts and the birds, we faw many kinds, particularly one which, as I have obferved already, was larger than a partridge; we were not fortunate enough to take one either alive or dead, but it was fuppofed to be the fame as Buffon has defcribed by the name of Roufet or Rouget.

The