wood
tree, or as it is generally termed, the forest oak, which is of
much humbler growth, are the usual timber. The forest is
extremely thick, but there is little or no underwood. A poor sour
grass, which is too effectually sheltered from the rays of the
sun, to be possessed of any nutritive and fattening properties,
shoots up in the intervals. This description of country, with a
few exceptions, however, which deserve not to be particularly
noticed, forms another girdle of about ten miles in breadth: so
that, generally speaking, the colony for about sixteen miles into
the interior, may be said to possess a soil, which has naturally
no claim to fertility, and will require all the skill and
industry of its owners to render it even tolerably
productive.

At this distance, however, the aspect of the country begins
rapidly to improve. The forest is less thick, and the trees in
general are of another description; the iron barks, yellow gums,
and forest oaks disappearing, and the stringy barks, blue gums,
and box trees, generally usurping their stead. When you have
advanced about four miles further into the interior, you are at
length gratified with the appearance of a country truly
beautiful. An endless variety of hill and dale, clothed in the
most luxuriant herbage, and covered with bleating flocks and
lowing herds, at length indicate that you are in regions fit to
be inhabited by civilized man. The soil has no longer the stamp
of barrenness. A rich loam resting on a substratum of fat red
clay, several feet in depth, is found even on the tops of the
highest hills, which in general do not yield in fertility to the
vallies. The timber, strange as it may appear, is of inferior
size, though still of the same nature, i. e. blue gum, box, and
stringy bark. There is no underwood, and the number of trees upon
an acre do not upon an average exceed thirty. They are, in fact,
so thin, that a person may gallop without difficulty in every
direction. Coursing the kangaroo is the favourite amusement of
the colonists, who generally pursue this animal at full speed on
horseback, and frequently manage, notwithstanding its
extraordinary swiftness, to be up at the death; so trifling are
the impediments occasioned by the forest.

The above general description may be applied with tolerable
accuracy, to the whole tract of country which lies between this
space and the Nepean River. The plains, however, on the banks of
this river, which are in