the various duties that fell to my lot in the
ordinary routine of the service to which I belonged, when unemployed by
the Colonial Government in the prosecution of inland discoveries. My
observations had been in a great measure confined to those points which
curiosity, or a desire of personal information, had prompted me to
investigate. I did not, therefore, venture to flatter myself that I had
collected materials of sufficient importance on general topics to
enable me to write for the information of others. Since my return to
England, however, I have been strenuously urged to give a short
description of the colony before entering upon my personal narrative;
and I have conversed with so many individuals whose ideas of Australia
are totally at variance with its actual state, that I am encouraged to
indulge the hope that my observations, desultory as they are, may be of
some interest to the public. I am strengthened in this hope by the
consideration that some kind friends have enabled me to add much
valuable matter to that which I had myself collected. It is not my
intention, however, to enter at any length on the commercial or
agricultural interests of New South Wales. It may be necessary for me
to touch lightly on those important subjects, but it is my wish to
connect this preliminary chapter, as much as possible with the subjects
treated of in the body of the work, and chiefly to notice the physical
structure, the soil, climate, and productions of the colony, in order
to convey to the reader general information on these points, before I
lead him into the remote interior.

NAME OF AUSTRALIA.

It may be worthy of remark that the name "Australia," has of late years
been affixed to that extensive tract of land which Great Britain
possesses in the Southern Seas, and which, having been a discovery of
the early Dutch navigators, was previously termed "New Holland." The
change of name was, I believe, introduced by the celebrated French
geographer, Malte Brun, who, in his division of the globe, gave the
appellation of Austral Asia and Polynesia to the new discovered lands
in the southern ocean; in which division he meant to include the
numerous insular groups scattered over the Pacific.

IMPRESSIONS OF ITS EARLY VISITORS.

Australia is properly speaking an island, but it is so much larger than
every other island on the face of the globe, that it is classed as a
continent in order to convey to the mind a just idea of its mag