so scarce, as to ensure
considerable profit from the sale of the wood on the estate. Windsor is
twenty miles from Paramatta, and thirty-six from Sydney, and the country
around it is very rich and beautiful. In some places the cliffs that
overhang the Hawkesbury are not less than 600 feet in height; and the
picturesque scenery, the numerous vessels and boats upon the stream,
which is here navigable for ships of more than 100 tons, the views of
the fertile country in the neighbourhood, with its abundant crops of
wheat and Indian corn, the boundary of the western horizon, formed by
the Blue Mountains, the base of which is about twenty miles distant: all
these natural beauties combine to render Windsor a very agreeable spot.
Its population is about 2000, and it has the usual public buildings, a
gaol, barracks, hospital, &c.; there is also a church dedicated to St.
Matthew, which until lately was served together with the chapel at
Richmond, a little town about five miles distant, by the same
clergyman. There are also Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, and Wesleyan
places of worship.

The town of Liverpool, situated, like those already mentioned, in the
county of Cumberland, still remains to be noticed. It is about twenty
miles from Sydney, and is built upon the banks of George's River, a
small navigable stream which empties itself into Botany Bay, the bleak
and unsheltered inlet upon which the proposed colony under Captain
Phillip was to have been settled. Liverpool is centrally situated, but
the soil around it is poor, and the population not very large; but since
it is the intended seat of the proposed college, founded by Mr. Moore,
it will probably hereafter become a place of some consequence. There
is nothing particularly to be remarked respecting the buildings of
Liverpool at present, with the exception of the Male Orphan Asylum,
which is a very good institution, the boys being not only educated
there, but likewise brought up to different trades, and general habits
of industry. The number of the orphan children in this school in 1839,
was 153.[143]

[143] See Burton on Education and Religion in New South Wales, p. 174.

Beyond the limits of the county of Cumberland there are very few towns
which are large enough to merit particular attention, and of these the
situations of the two most important and conspicuous, namely Bathurst
and Newcastle, have already been mentioned. Instead, therefore, of
wearying the reader with a