ority. He is always appointed to
the magistracy previously to his obtaining this command, and is
entrusted with the entire controul of the prisoners, whom he
punishes or rewards as their conduct may appear to him to
merit.

The harbour at the mouth of this river is tolerably secure and
spacious, and contains sufficient depth of water for vessels of
three hundred tons burden. The river itself, however, is only
navigable for small craft of thirty or forty tons burden, and
this only for about fifty miles above the town. Just beyond this
distance there are numerous flats and shallows, which only admit
of the passage of boats over them. This river has three branches;
they are called the upper, the lower, and the middle branch: the
two former are navigable for boats for about a hundred and twenty
miles, the latter for upwards of two hundred miles. The banks of
all these branches are liable to inundations equally terrific
with those at the Hawkesbury, and from the same causes; because
they are receptacles for the rain that is collected by the Blue
Mountains, which form the western boundary of this district, and
divide it as well as the districts of Port Jackson, from the
great western wilderness. The low lands within the reach of these
inundations is if possible of still greater exuberancy than the
banks of the Hawkesbury and Nepean, and of four times the extent.
The high-land, or to give it the colonial appellation, the forest
land, is very thinly studded with timber, and equal for all the
purposes of agriculture and grazing to the best districts of Port
Jackson. The climate too is equally salubrious, and on the upper
banks of the middle branch, it is generally believed, that the
summer heats are sufficient for the production of cotton; the
cultivation of which would become an inexhaustible source of
wealth to the growers, and would afford a valuable article of
export to the colony.

In fact, under every point of view this district contains the
strongest inducements to colonization. It possesses a navigable
river, by which its produce may be conveyed to market at a
trifling expence, and the inhabitants of its most remote parts
may receive such articles of foreign or domestic growth and
manufacture as they may need, at a moderate advance: it surpasses
Port Jackson in the general fertility of its soil, and at least
rivals it in the salubrity of its climate: it contains in the
greatest abundance coal, lime, and many varieti