20% cook's first voyage august, 



CHAP. VI. 



DEPARTURE FROM NEW SOUTH WALES; A PARTICULAR DE- 

 SCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY, ITS PRODUCTS, AND PEOPLE : 

 A SPECIMEN OF THE LANGUAGE, AND SOME OBSERVATIONS 

 UPON THE CURRENTS AND TIDES. 



Of this country, its products, and its people, many 

 particulars have already been related in the course of 

 the narrative, being so interwoven with the events 

 as not to admit of a separation. I shall now give a 

 more full and circumstantial description of each, in 

 which, if some things should happen to be repeated, 

 the greater part will be found new. 



New Holland, or, as I have now called the eastern 

 coast, New South Wales, is of a larger extent than 

 any other country in the known world that does not 

 bear the name of a continent : the length of coast 

 along which we sailed, reduced to a straight line, is 

 no less than twenty-seven degrees of latitude, amount- 

 ing to near 2000 miles, so that its square surface must 

 be much more than equal to all Europe. To the 

 southward of 33 or 34, the land in general is low and 

 level ; farther northward it is hilly, but in no part 

 can be called mountainous ; and the hills and moun- 

 tains, taken together, make but a small part of the 

 surface, in comparison with the valleys and plains. 

 It is, upon the whole, rather barren than fertile ; yet 

 the rising ground is chequered by woods and lawns, 

 and the plains and valleys are in many places covered 

 with herbage : the soil, however, is frequently sandy, 

 and many of the lawns, or savannahs, are rocky and 

 barren, especially to the northward, where, in the 

 best spots, vegetation was less vigorous than in the 

 southern part of the country ; the trees were not so 

 tall, nor was the herbage so rich. The grass in ge- 



