oloured.

Among the natives the old men have alone the privilege of eating the
Emu, and married people only are permitted to eat ducks.

The natives suffer no animal, however small, to escape them.

One of the blacks being anxious to get an Opossum out of a dead tree,
every branch of which was hollow, asked for a tomahawk, with which he
cut a hole in the trunk above where he thought the animal lay concealed.
He found, however, that he had cut too low, and that it had run higher
up. This made it necessary to smoke it out; he accordingly got some dry
grass, and having set fire to it, stuffed it into the hole he had cut.

[Illustration]

A raging fire soon kindled in the tree, where the current of air was
great, and dense columns of smoke issued from the end of each branch as
thick as that from the chimney of a steam-engine.

The shell of the tree was so thin, that I thought it would soon be
burnt through, and that the tree would fall; but the black had no such
fears, and, ascending to the highest branch, he waited anxiously for the
poor little wretch he had thus surrounded with dangers, and devoted to
destruction; and no sooner did it appear half singed and half roasted,
than he seized upon it and threw it down to us with an air of triumph.
The effect of the scene, in so lonely a forest, was very fine. The
roaring of the fire in the tree, the fearless attitude of the savage,
and the associations which his colour and appearance called up,
enveloped as he was in smoke, were singular, and still dwell in my
recollection. He had not long left the tree, when it fell with a
tremendous crash, and was, when we next passed that way, a mere heap of
ashes.

The territory of the colony has been divided into ten counties, named as
follows:--Cumberland, Camden, Argyll, Westmoreland, Londonderry,
Boxburgh, Northumberland, Durham, Ayr, and Cambridge.

I will now give you a short account of Van Diemen's Land.

This fair and fertile island lies, as I have told you, at the southern
extremity of New Holland, from which it is separated by Bass' Straits.

Its medial length from north to south is about 185 miles, and its
breadth from east to west is 166 miles.

Its surface possesses every variety of mountain, hill, and dale; of
forests and open meadows; of inland lakes, rivers and inlets of the sea,
forming safe and commodious harbours; and every natural requisite that
can render a country valuable or agreeable.

It enjoys a temper