afternoon, when, supposing we had passed that port,
we bore away to the South-West. At midnight the gale fell, and the wind
changed to the westward.

June 23.

At daylight land was seen to windward, which, from the distance we had
ran, was supposed to be about Port Stevens; but we found ourselves at
noon by a meridional observation, off Jervis Bay; so that the current
during the gale had set us one hundred and fifty miles to the southward,
and for the last twenty-four hours at the rate of nearly three knots per
hour.

June 24.

Owing to this we did not arrive at Port Jackson until the following day
at noon; and it was sunset before the cutter anchored in the cove.

It appeared on our arrival that the weather had been even worse on the
land than we had experienced it at sea. The Nepean and Hawkesbury Rivers
had been flooded, by which the growing crops had been considerably
injured, but happily the colony has long ceased to suffer from these once
much-dreaded inundations: a great portion of upland country out of the
reach of the waters is now cultivated, from which the government stores
are principally supplied with grain. Individuals who, from obstinacy,
persist in the cultivation of the low banks of the Hawkesbury, alone
suffer from these destructive floods, which have been known to rise in a
few hours to the height of eighty feet above the usual level of the
river's bed. The evil, however, deposits its own atonement; and the
succeeding crop, if it escapes a flood, repays the settlers for their
previous loss: this it is that emboldens them to persist in their
ill-advised temerity. At no very distant period a time will arrive when
these very lands, the cultivation of which has caused so much distress to
the colony and ruin to individuals, will, by being laid down in grass for
the purposes of depasturing cattle, become a considerable source of
wealth to their possessors.

There has been no general want of grain in the colony since the year
1817, although there have been several floods upon the Hawkesbury and the
other rivers that fall into it, which have greatly distressed the farmers
of that district. One of the arguments, therefore, with which the enemies
of colonizing in New South Wales have hitherto armed themselves, in order
to induce emigrants to give the preference to Van Diemen's Land, falls to
the ground.

We were fortunate in finding in the naval yard, a spar of the New Zealand
cowrie pine (dammara) la