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During our stay in Van Diemen's Land, we had either light airs from the east or calms; we therefore lost little or no time by touching on this coast. This land was discovered in November 1642 by Tasman, who gave it the name of Van Diemen's Land, and was afterwards visited by Captain Furneaux, who touched at it in March 1773.

It

is diversified with hills and valleys, and is well wooded. There is a beautiful sandy beach, about two miles long, at the bottom of Adventure Bay, formed, to all appearance, by the particles which the sea washes from a fine white sandstone. This beach is very well adapted for hauling a seine. Behind it is a plain, with a brackish lake, out of which, by angling, we caught some bream and trout. The parts adjoining the bay are mostly hilly, and covered with an entire forest of tall trees, rendered almost impassable by brakes of fern, shrubs, &c. This country, upon the whole, bears many marks of being very dry, and the heat appears to be great. No minerals or stones of any other kind than the white sandstone, were observed by us; nor could we find any vegetables that could be used for his sustenance by man. The forest trees are all of one kind, and generally quite straight; they bear clusters of small white flowers. The principal plants we observed were wood-sorrel, milk-wort, cudweed, bell-flower, gladiolus, samphire, and several kinds of fern. The only quadruped we saw distinctly was a species of opossum, about twice the size of a large rat. The kangaroo found farther northward may also be supposed to be a native here, since some of the inhabitants, as we have seen, were decorated with the skin of that animal.

The principal sorts of birds in the woods are brown hawks or eagles, crows, large pigeons, yellowish parroquets, and a species which we called motacilla cyanea, from

the beautiful azure colour of its head and neck. On the shore were several gulls, black oyster-catchers, or sea-pies, and plovers of a stone colour.

We observed in the woods some blackish snakes that were pretty large; and we killed a lizard, which was fifteen inches long and six round, and beautifully coloured with yellow and black.

Of the fish, which are abundant, we caught some large rays, nurses, leather-jackets, bream, soles, flounders, gurnards, and elephant-fish, besides a sort which we did not recollect to have seen before, and which partakes of the nature both of a round fish and a flat. Upon the rocks are mussels and other shell-fish; and upon the beach we found some pretty medusa's heads. The most troublesome insects we met with were the mosquitoes, and a large black ant, whose bite inflicts extreme pain.

The inhabitants seemed mild and cheerful, with little of that wild appearance that savages in general have. They are almost totally devoid of personal activity or genius, and are nearly upon a par with the wretched natives of Terra del Fuego. They display, however, some contrivance in their method of cutting their arms and bodies in lines of different directions, raised above the surface of the skin. Their indifference to our presents, their general want of observation and curiosity, were very remarkable, and betrayed a singular obtuseness of understanding. Their complexion is a dull black, which they sometimes heighten by smutting their bodies—as we supposed, from the mark, which, when touched, they left on any clean substance. Their hair is perfectly woolly, and is clotted with grease and red ochre, like that of the Hottentots. Their noses are broad and full, and the lower part of the face projects considerably. Their eyes are of a moderate size, and

though they are not very quick or piercing, they give the countenance a frank, cheerful, and pleasing cast. Their teeth are not very white, nor well set; and their mouths are too wide. They wear their beards long, and clotted

with paint.

Near the shore, in the bay, we observed some wretched huts, constructed of sticks covered with bark; but these seemed to have been only temporary, and they had converted many of their largest trees into more comfortable and commodious habitations. The trunks of these were hollowed out, by means of fire, to the height of six or seven feet. That they sometimes dwelt in them was manifest from the hearths in the middle, made of clay, round which four or five persons might sit. These places of shelter are rendered durable by their leaving one side of the tree sound, so that it continues growing with great luxuriance.

On the 30th of January, in the morning, we weighed anchor; and favoured by a light westerly breeze, we left Adventure Bay, and steered for the coast of New Zealand.

CAPTAIN STURT'S EXPLORATIONS IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

SUFFERINGS FROM WANT OF WATER NEAR COOPER'S CREEK. A.D. 1830.

I HAD taken all the horses, with the exception of one, out with me on this journey; and as they will bear a prominent part in this narrative, I shall make some mention of them. My own horse was a grey, for which reason I called him

Duncan. I had ridden him during the whole period of my wanderings, and I think I never saw an animal that could endure more, or one that suffered less from want of water. Mr Stuart rode Mr Browne's horse, a little animal, but one also of great powers of endurance; Mack used a horse we called the Roan, a hunter that had been Mr Poole's. Morgan rode poor Punch, who had not yet recovered from the fatigues of his northern excursion. Besides these we had four pack-horses :-Bawley, a strong and compact little animal, high-spirited, with a blaze on the forehead, and a shining coat, and who, having been a pet, was up to all kinds of tricks, but was a general favourite, and a nice horse; another was Traveller, a light chestnut, what the hunters would call a washy brute, always eating and never fat; the Colt, so called from his being young;—and an aged horse dubbed Slommy.

From a small rising ground near where we stopped in. the valley, on the occasion of which I am speaking, and in the obscure light of departing day, we saw a line of dark looking hills, at a distance of about ten or twelve miles; but we could not discover tree or bush upon them; all we could make out was that they were dark objects, above the line of the horizon, and that the intervening country seemed to be as dark as they were. Before mounting, on the morning of the 21st, Mr Stuart and I went to see if we could make out, more than we had been able to do the night before, what kind of country was in front of us; but we were disappointed, and found that we should have to wait patiently, until we got nearer the hills, to judge of their character. As we afterwards neared them, we perceived that they were nothing more than high sand-hills, covered, like a desert, with stones to their very tops. There was a line of small box-trees, marking the course of

a creek between us and the hills, and a hope that we should find water cheered us for a moment; but that ray soon vanished when we saw the nature of its bed. We searched along it for about half an hour in vain, and then turned to the hills, and ascended to the top of one of the highest, about 150 feet above the level of the plain. From it the eye wandered hopelessly for some bright object on which to rest. Behind us, to the south-east, lay the sand-hills we had crossed, with a stony plain sweeping right round them, but a desert of dark brown extended before us in every other direction. The line of the horizon was broken to the north-west and north by hills similar to the one we had ascended; but in these directions not a blade of grass, not a glittering spot was to be seen.

We slowly retraced our steps to the valley in which we had slept, and I stopped there for half an hour, but none of the horses would eat, with the exception of Traveller, and he certainly made good use of his time. The others collected round me as I sat under a tree, with their heads over mine; and my own horse pulled my hat off my head in order to engage my attention. Poor brute! I would have given much, at that moment, to have relieved him, but I could not. We were all of us in the same distress, and if we had not ultimately found water, must all have perished together. Finding that they would not eat, we saddled and proceeded onwards. At the head of the valley Traveller fell dead, and I feared every moment that we should lose the Colt. At one o'clock, I stopped to rest the horses till dawn, and then remounted; but Morgan and Mack got slowly on, so that I thought it better to precede them, and if possible take some water back to moisten the mouths of their horses, and I accordingly went in advance with Mr Stuart. I thought we should never have got

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