yet he seldom forgets these earliest associations of his youth, the time-hallowed customs of his country.

It was only in leaving this agreeable cottage, that the lady of the house reminded me that we were old acquaintances, having met together in Almeida, a fortress of Portugal, thirteen years ago. Such an unexpected renewal of acquaintance in a country so remote, I consider one of the most pleasing incidents of the journey. Mrs. was now surrounded by a large and blooming family in the heart of New South Wales, which, while it afforded me an excuse for my want of recollection on the instant, gave me at the same time a gentle jog how fast the tide of life was ebbing unperceived! But I shall never get you up the river at this rate; so good-bye, pretty Branch, and I hope when I see you next you will have a church and a gaol, a court-house, a ferry, and a blacksmith's shop, with lots of village maids; and by all means let your church-steeple have a bell or bells; for that which is a nuisance in a crowded city and a sickly season, becomes in the country, softened by distance, a most agreeable rural sound, and a great improvement to the sylvan scene. I was surprised to find the road so good from Molly Morgan's to Patrick's Plains. Excepting a few blind creeks, which though very narrow are very steep, a coach and four might run the whole distance. It is a good open forest country, but the line of road runs at the back of the farms on the right bank of the river. It is therefore the most uninteresting imaginable, and not five shillings worth of improvement either in houses, cultivation, or fences, is to be found the whole distance of thirty miles. There never was a better road for a night coach, with a guard and lamps, in which the traveller might go to sleep all the way, without losing any thing of scenery. It was a tiresome, hot, weary, monotonous ride; and if it had not been for a sip of brandy and water, which we were enabled to mix at the first stream, called Anvil Creek, and a feed of corn afterwards for the tired horses, at a place yclept by courtesy "a farm," a few miles farther on, we must have bushed it for the night. This farm belongs, I am informed, to a repectable individual connected with one of the public departments in Sydney. His entire stock of wheat, I am sorry to say, would not load a dray; and for want of a fence, the five or six acres of maize had been greatly injured by cattle and horses eating it off green. It was evident the owner was an absentee, in Sydney or somewhere else; and I wondered for the twen<< tieth time how people can be reconciled to leave their cattle, crops, and improvements-interests involving hundreds, and sometimes thousands of pounds to two or three Convict servants, generally wild Irish, the best of whom at home would hardly be trusted to take a letter to the two-penny post! But, by way of " a dram of sweet to this pound of sour," this farm is the most eligible, if not the only, place for an inn on the whole road; and from the constantly increasing traffic between the upper and lower country, cannot fail immediately to be of considerable value to the proprietor for that purpose; it is now high time that such large drafts on the hospitality of the resident settlers should be discontinued, or at least abated.

When we mounted our horses again it was nearly sunset, and long before arriving at the Plains, completely dark. The forest is not the best of all possible places for riding in at night; and, as we could no longer distinguish the marks of the wheels on the road, it was necessary to keep closer together. I thought of the glee—

"Who is it that rides through the forest so dark?"

but was not in the vein for singing; the heat of the day, and the jog, jog, of my jaded horse, made me think of nothing but the long road and the end, of the journey. It soon, however, got lighter, and presently afterwards "up rose the yellow moon ;" and it was consolatory to find the trees at length getting thinner, and, all of a sudden, we burst upon St. Patrick's Plains, the first sight of which, and the sensations it awakened, I shall not forget the longest day I live. I was completely enamoured with the splendid scene;' -and

"The high Moon sailing on her beauteous way,”

while it showed an almost boundless level without a tree, threw an uncertain light over the distant horizon, that made it difficult to say how far the Plains extended. Coming out of the murky forest, a strong breeze swept along the plain, alike refreshing by its chilliness to man and beast. This spot, indeed, deserves the name of Plains; it was only discovered on St. Patrick's day, 1819. We still had a long ride through the wheat stubble, and large fields of maize, belonging to the owner of Castle Forbes, though we could not see the castle. If ever I had been inclined to smile at the apparent bad taste and vanity of giving such high-sounding names to our bits of bush in New South Wales-our colonial castles, courts, halls, mounts, and parks, it was not at that moment; for I thought the owner of an estate comprising four or five thousand acres of such land, need not hesitate to call it after the most favoured spot in Britain. If there is not a castle on it yet, there is a very neat and commodious cottage, which, for the present, is much more convenient than any castle could be. Although not at all acquainted with the proprietor, I should not have hesitated in storming his castle for a night's lodging, but we had previously heard that he was gone to Sydney.

This and the adjoining property are two of the finest grants in the colony, and inferior to none in any part of the world. Thirty-six to forty bushels to the acre is the usual produce of their wheat crops; and I saw what few people have seen in this country, if any, two stack-yards within a mile of each other, containing together ten thousand bushels of wheat! And yet, when the proprietor of Castle Forbes chose his land in this distant, out-ofthe-way country, as it was then called, not four years ago, he was laughed at, and considered mad. Let them laugh who win. But what is to be done with all this wheat is not so easy to decide. Up to the present year the demands of the new settlers have been sufficient to carry off the superabundant produce of this district; but now that there are no new settlers, it is to be hoped some liberal and judicious system of distillation laws may be adopted to keep the plough going.

To send wheat from Patrick's Plains to Sydney, to obtain the present market-price of four shillings per bushel, is out of the question; whereas, if a distillery were established there, the proprietor would make a fortune; a population already seven hundred souls, would soon be trebled; the ploughshare would never rust, and a labouring man, from the low price of spirits, might obtain his glass of grog without robbing his neighbour to obtain the means. Is it to be supposed that men can gather in the golden harvest of four hundred acres of wheat in one spot, under an almost vertical sun, without having a glass of grog? Impossible! Beer, no doubt, would be better; and there will soon be room at Patrick's Plains for both a brewery and distillery.

We arrived at the country inn, Patrick's Plains, very late and very tired; but our man not having come up with the luggage, no beds had been prepared as we expected, and mine host of the Plough was taken a little unawares. Late as it was, supper and tea were soon on the table; and we found a grilled chicken, and some slices of home-made bacon, very acceptable after a day's fasting. There's nothing like an inn after all.

"Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,

Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found

The warmest welcome at an inn."

We had very good beds, and our horses were as well off as their masters: it required little, indeed, to make us satisfied.

I was soon up in the morning, like a man on board ship, to see whereabouts we were, and read over the door "Plough Inn, by Joseph Singleton, dealer in wines and spirits." It is the most northern inn in the colony, being situate in 32. 30. South latitude. We were on the edge of the river without knowing it, not having seen it for nearly forty miles. It was reduced con

siderably in size, and when we went down the deep kloof to bathe, it was with difficulty we could find a place over our heads, although marks of the flood were visible twenty and thirty feet above the present bed; but, in the memory of the oldest settler, the water was never known so low. It must be an extraordinary flood, say seventy feet, that can overflow the banks of Hunter's River, at this part of Patrick's Plains; but such an event, we were told, may be looked for every six or seven years. There is plenty of building-ground in the rear.

I give my bill for a night's lodging at the Plough Inn, Patrick's Plains; nothing can be more moderate; yet look at the brandy.

Supper with tea, 1s. 3d.; Bed, 1s. 3d.; Horse, as much corn as he could eat, 18. 3d.; Breakfast, eggs and pork, 1s. 3d.; Servant's eating, 18.; Halfpint of brandy, 3s. 9d. In all, 98. 9d.”

This is the price of sixteen bushels of wheat for one gallon of spirits!!! It is not quite so bad as Falstaff's bill of three shillings for sack and a penny for bread; but it is an invaluable commentary upon the masterly legislation of Sir T. Brisbane's early council, and that precious enactment, the preamble of which talks about "the revenue being sunk by the weight of said imposition" which literally came out "like a thief in the night;" and, as the Chronicle writer says, at one stroke of the pen made men beggars at breakfast-time, who, the night before, were in the flood-tide of prosperity, enriching themselves and their country by their enterprise and skill.

Patrick's Plains, by reason of the extent and fertility of the land, is capable of supporting a very thick population, and some day or other must be a place of great consequence. At present there is neither magistrate, school, nor medical man ;-the nearest doctor being forty miles off. This is a serious want, and naturally tends to prevent the settlement of families; it is as bad as the large county of Sutherland at home, which, with a population of twenty-three thousand inhabitants, can only boast of one doctor, whose house was shown me at the extremity of the county, near the little ferry between Dornoch and Golspie.

This is the usual place for fording the river; but I must cut short this letter, for the present, and defer crossing till my next.

LETTER IV.

X. Y. Z.

PATRICK'S Plains, one would think, would spoil the settler, and make him difficult to be pleased with any thing afterwards. But the contrary is the case; for while you go on wondering where the fine country is to end, you perceive it increasing in value and importance the farther you proceed up the river. After halting on the excellent and well-watered farm of Captain P, of three thousand acres, we had a fine ride of about ten miles, to the neighbourhood of Jerry's Plains. We passed over a rich and fertile country, but without inhabitants, save a solitary shepherd or two tending their flocks, who showed us the nearest way through the grass. Jerry's Plains is a particularly rich and beautiful strip of narrow land, formed by the alluvium of the river, and the débris of the mountains, which here shut in the carse, like the land between Stirling and Alloa in Scotland. This little tract extends westward about ten miles along the river, and, astonishing to say, is comparatively unknown by the settlers, either new or old. The consequence is, that a place which a romantic people like the Spaniards would very likely have called Valparaiso, is without a single inhabitant, although there are not more trees standing than in the Government domain at Sydney, or in Wanstead Park, near London. It really was a pity to see Nature here in such solitary magnificence, in the sole and quiet possession of the tall emu. Land ready for the plough, without cutting down a single tree, seems here to have been overlooked or neglected, while thousands and tens of thousands of acres of impervious forest and scrub nearer the coast, have been caught up with an emulation and a haste that will some day or other, I am afraid, end in a too late repentance, the sera pœnitentia of an irrevocable choice. As I rode through the thick emu grass, the wild indigo touching my stir

rups, and plenty of wild currants, raspberries, and tobacco, and the country clear enough to see a dog a mile off, I brought every part of the colony I had seen in review before me, and they all suffered in comparison with the upper part of Hunter's River. I thought of my friend -, and his thousand dark acres near the coast, and the thousand miseries which his gigantic and almost indestructible trees must have occasioned him-trees which, if not so large as the monument on Fish-street-hill, are hardly smaller than the column in the Place Vendome. To think of him was to pity him.-Such everlasting trees cannot but throw a gloom on the spirits and exertions of the coast settler as long as he lives; they operate on him as a constant memento mori, for ever reminding him of the shortness of human life, showing him how little he can sustain, and how little he can perform! Let the new settler, therefore, march on with his bullock and provisions until he find a country, if possible, without a tree. Never mind the distance; if he have a fine soil and plenty of grass he will soon be in the high road, and see other settlers pass by him in search of land. After all, this is only the commencement of the fine country; Patrick's Plains, Jerry's Plains and neighbourhood, with all their advantages, are but a speck, in comparison of the land higher up. Where the river turns off suddenly to the north, you arrive at the splendid estates of Chief Justice Forbes, Colonel Dumaresq, and Potter Macqueen, Esq. M. P. for Bedfordshire; and I suppose, with the exception of the Milanese, which it very much resembles, the whole of Europe might be searched in vain to produce a territory by nature equally valuable and grand, and so well adapted to the purposes of civilized life.

Here would have been the country for the five thousand emigrants, who were sent out in 1819 to the Cape of Good Hope; and who, after so many years of suffering to themselves and expense to the Government, are thrown at last on the cold charity of the "Association for the relief of the distressed settlers at Algoa Bay." In a sour or a sandy soil, devoid of rivers, exposed to all the evils of long droughts, rust in wheat, storms of hail, deluges of rain, destructive hurricanes, diseases in cattle, marauding Caffres, Bushmen, and beasts of prey, the sober and industrious settler at the Cape is wearing out a fruitless, hopeless, joyless existence, while all men are prospering in New South Wales, and many possess a substance, deducting the camels and she-asses, superior to Job himself. In a late publication, called Pringle's Account of the English Settlers at the Cape," we read of " gentlemen, formerly officers in the British army, without shoes or stockings, ploughing with their milch cows, and their daughters washing clothes and digging potatoes!" Thank God! nothing resembling this was ever seen in the worst periods of New South Wales history. But to return to Hunter's River,

The source of the River Hunter has not yet been discovered; but most of the land on its banks is now located. The tributary streams of the Goulburn, the Wemyss, the Page, Kingdon Ponds, Dart Brook, Muscle Creek, "rivers unknown to song," flow through a country nothing inferior to the other main river; and all of them, though not yet two years discovered, can boast of some of the most respectable and wealthy settlers in New South Wales. There is, however, still a good deal of land which remains here to be given away. In the north and west, the traveller is stopped by a lofty range of mountains; on the other side of which is the immense country of Liverpool Plains, that by all accounts, for I did not see it, is one of the most magnificent sights in Nature. All the plains in the colony put together, are nothing to this place, which cannot fail, ere long, of becoming one of the principal emporiums of the interior. To the north, where the source of the Hunter will most likely be found, but where no Europeans have yet travelled, there is said, by the natives, to be a large lake, a murri corbon water. This is not laid down in any map, and is at present quite conjectural. At Houldsworthy Downs, which is a very superior district of high clear land,

between Dart Brook and Hunter's River, it is thought the lofty hills seen in the distance due east, are the Three Brothers, near Farquhar's Inlet, on the coast, between Cape Hawke and Port Macquarie. If this be the case, the settlers there are within seventy miles of the sea, and when the contemplated new road is opened from Putty to Jerry's Plains, avoiding the Bulga, the distance from Sydney will not be more than one hundred and forty miles. There is also a very good cattle road to Mudgee and Bathurst; to the former of which stations it is only sixty miles. We now bade adieu to this matchless country, and returned by what is called Macintyre's road to Muscle Creek. I rode up a smooth and grassy hill, whose sides were covered with ridges and furrows, as regular as if they had been thrown up by the hand of man, to take another look, and say " Farewell,

"Ye hills and dales, ye rivers, woods, and plains!"

We tethered our horses in the heat of the day; and, after lighting a fire and making tea for the last time, took a siesta for a couple of hours by the side of the creek, under the shade of a large apple-tree, which is the most common tree met with in these parts. It is not the apple-tree of Europe, but the Angophora of Linnæus, and is a certain indication of a fruitful soil. A brisk ride of twenty miles brought us back to our old starting-place, near Jerry's Plains; and while the cloth was preparing for supper, we took a swim in the main river. As we returned in the twilight, we could hardly hear ourselves speak, for the noise of the locusts in the trees; they sing in perfect concert, and, like the leader of the band who gives three taps with his bow, the leader of the locusts sings three notes, when they all start off in chorus till the crescendo and diminuendo is finished, when the leader commences again. Lord Byron takes notice of them, near Ravenna→→

"The shrill cicalas, people of the pine,

Making their summer life one ceaseless song."

Italy has no laughing jackass (dacelo gigantea). This faithful bird was our constant amusement; but he really is not so much a jackass as people take him to be, for he seldom laughs more than three times a day, though then it is certainly a good horse-laugh, at morning, noon, and sunset. He perches on low trees, looking for snakes, and is a great observer of the heavenly bodies. Some people say, that if you ask him civilly, he will tell you what is the clock; I tried him once or twice, but without success; we were not sufficiently acquainted, I suppose, and, like another jackass that I could name, he declined having any thing to say to me. I hope the settlers will forbear shooting this interesting bird; his taste for snakes ought to preserve him sacred, like the crane in Holland, and the alligator in Batavia.

X. Y. Z.

DUX RENATUS.

OH, Goderich, Goderich! Frederick, Frederick! say,
Why cut and run? why play the fool and yield?
See, see, my Lord, we have the devil to pay-

The Horse Guards are broke out upon the field!
Heard ye the-what is 't?—“ din of battle bray?"
Vainly Britannia lifts her civil shield;

For lo! the Treasury and the Mint are taken-
Lansdowne and Tierney scarce can save their bacon.
Well, if the Duke be Premier, let us hail

His Grace-God save egregious Wellington!
'Tis always best to bully those who fail-
Shame on the recreant Freddy Robinson!
But what if those incarnate Whigs assail

With questions curious the First Lord upon
The Treasury Bench?-Ah, any sum I'll bet, he
Will shirk cross-questioning from Fox and Petty.