ess, and it exhibits a
miserable specimen of his condition and powers in the uncultivated
state. If this country shall be more fully explored by future
navigators, the comparison of the manners of its inhabitants, with those
of the Americans, will prove an instructive article in the history of
the human species,"--Note 33, in the ninth volume of his works. What was
held as a desideratum by this historian, has been accomplished in so far
as additional materials are concerned: How far it has been so in a
philosophical point of view, may be afterwards considered.--E.]

Of this country, its products and its people, many particulars have
already been related in the course of the narrative, being so interwoven
with the events as not to admit of a separation. I shall now give a more
full and circumstantial 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 coast, 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 coast along which we
sailed, reduced to a straight line, is no less than twenty-seven degrees
of latitude, amounting to near 2000 miles, so that its square surface
must be much more than equal to all Europe. To the southward 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 surface, in comparison with
the vallies and plains. It is, upon the whole, rather barren than
fertile, yet the rising ground is chequered by woods and lawns, and the
plains and vallies are in many places covered with herbage: The soil,
however, is frequently sandy, and many of the lawns, or savannahs, are
rocky and barren, especially to the northward, where, in the best spots,
vegetation was less vigorous than in the southern part of the country;
the trees were not so tall, nor was the herbage so rich. The grass in
general is high, but thin, and the trees, where they are largest, are
seldom less than forty feet asunder; nor is the country inland, as far
as we could examine it, better clothed than the sea coast. The banks of
the bays are covered with mangroves to the distance of a mile within the
beach, under which the soil is a rank mud, that is always overflowed by
a spring tide; farther in the country we so