ent one of them was seized with it, it was the signal for
abandoning him to his fate. Brothers deserted their brothers,
children their parents, and parents their children; and in some
of the caves on the coast, heaps of decayed bones still indicate
the spots where the helpless sufferers were left to expire, not
so much perhaps from the violence of the disease as from the want
of sustenance.

This fatal instance of the inveteracy of this disorder, when
once introduced into the colony, has not been without its
counterpoising benefit. It has induced the local government to
adopt proper measures for avoiding the propagation of a similar
contagion among the colonists. The vaccine matter was introduced
with this view many years back; but as all the children in the
colony were immediately inoculated, it was again lost from the
want of a sufficient number of subjects to afford a supply of
fresh virus; and for many years afterwards, every effort that was
made for its re-introduction proved abortive. Through the
indefatigable exertions, however, of Doctor Burke, of the
Mauritius, the colonists are again in possession of this
inestimable blessing; and there can be no doubt that proper
precautions will be taken to prevent them from being again
deprived of it.

The colony of New South Wales possesses every variety of soil,
from the sandy heath, and the cold hungry clay, to the fertile
loam and the deep vegetable mould. For the distance of five or
six miles from the coast, the land is in general extremely
barren, being a poor hungry sand, thickly studded with rocks. A
few miserable stunted gums, and a dwarf underwood, are the
richest productions of the best part of it; while the rest never
gives birth to a tree at all, and is only covered with low
flowering shrubs, whose infinite diversity, however, and
extraordinary beauty, render this wild heath the most interesting
part of the country for the botanist, and make even the less
scientific beholder forget the nakedness and sterility of the
scene.

Beyond this barren waste, which thus forms a girdle to the
coast, the country suddenly begins to improve. The soil changes
to a thin layer of vegetable mould, resting on a stratum of
yellow clay, which is again supported by a deep bed of schistus.
The trees of the forest are here of the most stately dimensions.
Full sized gums and iron barks, along side of which the loftiest
trees in this country would appear as pigmies, with the beef