four and
twenty hours, with the aid of arrow root, port wine, and laudanum. A free
use of vegetables is always dangerous to strangers, and they are obtained
here in perfection. The weather is too hot for apples, pears, and
gooseberries in the summer. Grapes and other English hot-house fruits come
to delicious maturity in the open air. The melons are inconceivably
exquisite, and grow, as they were wont in Paradise before the fall,
without care or trouble spent upon them. The seed is put into the earth; a
little water is given to it at that time, and the thing is done--"_c'est
un fait accompli_." Potatoes grow at any season of the year, and
cauliflowers and turnips spring up almost in a night like mushrooms. There
are some five farms in cultivation around Melbourne, and the crops of
wheat are very fair in quality but fall off in quantity. Thirty bushels
per acre is considered a good crop. Oats grow too much to straw, and are
generally cut in the slot blade, winnowed, and carted to Melbourne and
sold for hay. Rye-grass hay does not answer, and clover is not more
successful; but vetches have just been introduced on a small scale, and
nothing yet grown has succeeded so well as green food for horses and cows.
Hay of fine quality is brought from Van Diemen's Land, but it is very dear.
A cart load of good oaten hay sells here for about forty-five shillings.
Van Diemen's Land hay is at present eleven guineas per ton.

The aboriginal natives of this colony are a very savage race, and all the
efforts hitherto made by missionaries, protectors, and others, have never
given promise or warrant of effectual civilization. The males are tall,
and of fierce aspect; the skin and hair are exceedingly black--the latter
very smooth. In many instances, the features are striking and good. The
women are slender, and during the summer, naked; in winter, the females in
the immediate neighbourhood procure clothes from the inhabitants of
Melbourne, and cut, as you may suppose, a very original figure. Nothing
will induce the natives to work. They live in the Bush, and the bark of a
large tree forms their habitation. There are three distinct tribes around
us in a circuit of about a hundred miles, and the difference of features
amongst these tribes is easily observed. The three tribes speak three
different languages unintelligible to one another. They meet at different
periods of the year, and hold what they term a "_corroborice_,"--that
is--a dance. T