gh calculation, at about twelve hundred souls.

There are two fairs held half yearly, one in March and the
other in September; they were instituted about five years since
by the present governor, and already begin to be very numerously
and respectably attended. They are chiefly intended for the sale
of stock, for which there are stalls, pens, and every other
convenience, erected at the expence of the government; for the
use of these pens, etc. and to keep them in repair, a moderate
scale of duties* is paid by the vender.

This town has for many years past made but a very
inconsiderable progress compared with Sydney. The value of land
has consequently not kept pace in the two places, and is at least
L200 per cent. less in the one than in the other. As the
former, however, is in a central situation between the rapidly
increasing settlements on the banks of the Hawkesbury and Nepean
rivers, and the latter the great mart for colonial produce,
landed property there and in the neighbourhood, will, without
doubt, experience a gradual rise.

The public institutions are an Hospital, a Female Orphan
House, into which it is intended to remove the orphans from
Sydney, and a factory, in which such of the female convicts as
misconduct themselves, and those also who upon their arrival in
the colony are not immediately assigned as servants to families,
are employed in manufacturing coarse cloth. There are upon an
average about one hundred and sixty women employed in this
institution, which is placed under the direction of a
superintendant, who receives wool from the settlers, and gives
them a certain portion of the manufactured article in exchange:
what is reserved is only a fair equivalent for the expence of
making it, and is used in clothing the gaol gang, the reconvicted
culprits who are sent to the coal river, and I believe the
inmates of the factory itself.

There is also another public institution in this town, well
worthy the notice of the philanthropist. It is a school for the
education and civilization of the aborigines of the country. It
was founded by the present governor three years since, and by the
last accounts from the colony, it contained eighteen native
children, who had been voluntarily placed there by their parents,
and were making equal progress in their studies with European
children of the same age. The following extract from the Sydney
Gazette, of January 4, 1817, may enable the reader to form some
opini