grants at Port
Macquarie; but when this is allowed it will, from the superiority of its
climate and the great extent of fine country in the interior, become a
very important and valuable dependency of the colony of New South Wales.

The natural productions of this place are, in a great measure, similar to
those of the neighbourhood of Port Jackson; but many plants were found
which are not known in the colony; and as these grow in all parts within
the tropic, the climate of Port Macquarie may naturally be suspected to
be favourable to the cotton-plant and the sugar-cane, neither of which
have yet been cultivated to the southward: among these plants, we found
the Pandanus pedunculatus, which Mr. Brown found in the Gulf of
Carpentaria, and many other parts within the tropic, in Captain Flinders'
voyage. The face of the hill on the south side of the entrance possesses
some good soil; and at the time of our visit* was covered with a
profusion of herbage, and studded with groups of banksia, which the
colonists call the honeysuckle; the wood of which is useful in
ship-building on account of the crooked growth of its stem.

(*Footnote. It is on this hill that the penal settlement of Port
Macquarie is now built, the situation having been selected at the
recommendation of Lieutenant Oxley. It was settled by Captain Allman of
the 48th regiment in the early part of the year 1821.)

The banks of the river on both sides were thickly wooded; in most parts
the country is open and grassy and is profusely timbered with the
varieties of eucalyptus that are common at Port Jackson. There is however
a great extent of brushland in which the soil is exceedingly rich, and in
which the trees grow to a large size; these, being covered with
parasitical plants and creepers of gigantic size, render the forest
almost impervious: it is in these brushes that the rosewood and
cedar-trees grow, and also the fig-tree before alluded to; this last tree
is of immense size and is remarkable for having its roots protruding from
the base of the stem, like huge buttresses, to the distance of several
yards.

The natives are numerous, but they appear to depend more upon hunting
than the sea for their subsistence. This I judged from the very inferior
state of their canoes which are very much less ingeniously formed than
even the frail ones of the Port Jackson natives; being merely sheets of
bark with the ends slightly gathered up to form a shallow concavity, in