colony of New South Wales will acquire additional interest among all classes of its inhabitants, as well as in Great Britain and America, in proportion to its increasing importance, not merely as a British colony, but as the destined seat of future and extensive empire, I could not consent to sacrifice one iota of what I consider the interests of truth, especially in a matter of such moment, to mere personal considerations. Neither have I found it necessary to adopt a different opinion from the one to which I had given expression in the first edition of this work, in regard to the colonial administration of the late Governor, General Darling. The general accordance of that opinion with the facts of the case will, perhaps, be inferred by the candid reader from the circumstance of my representation of His Excellency's character and government having been stigmatised as an unwarranted attack by his friends, and as an unmerited vindication by his enemies. In all such cases the truth generally lies between. If I had had sufficient leisure to superintend the publication of this work, as well as to prepare it for the press, there are various alterations which I should have made in it, in regard to the arrangement of the matter it comprises, which would have given it a more respectable character in a literary point of view but the time that has elapsed since my return to England, about seven months ago, has been so completely occupied in travelling to and fro—including five journeys to Scotland, three to Ireland, and a pretty long tour in France, Germany, and Holland-in furtherance of the general objects of my visit to the mother country, that it has been altogether out of my power to do justice either to the work or to its author; the cabins of steam-boats, and travellers' rooms in hotels, in which a considerable portion of the latter part of it has been written, being but indifferent situations for literary labour. In regard to these blemishes, however, the gentle reader is requested to exercise the candour and good feeling for which he was always accustomed to receive credit in the prefaces of the olden time. Liverpool, July 15, 1837. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. State of the colony during the administration of Governor PAGE Account of the state and progress of the colony under the Account of the state and progress of the colony during the AN HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF NEW SOUTH WALES. CHAPTER I. PROGRESSIVE DISCOVERY OF THE COASTS OF Denique et a nostro diversum gentibus orbem, FRACASTORIUS. "Under the guidance of Superior Powers, and in the course of our adventurous navigation, we have at length reached a world differing from our own in its nations, in its climate, and in its sky." THE vast continental island of New Holland, which was long supposed by European philosophers to constitute a part of an imaginary southern continent, equal in extent to Asia or America, was discovered by Don Pedro Fernando de Quiros, a Spaniard of noble family, in the year 1609. De Quiros appears to have made the land, VOL. I. Α |