362 PORT ESSINGTON. 



that constantly prevail on the coast, and would 

 of course conduce to its healthiness.* 



* The following remarks from Mr. Bynoc, on the climate 

 of Northern Australia, corroborate the views put forward in the 

 text: — 



" I find on a reference to the Medical Journals, as well as to a 

 Meteorological table kept by me during a period of sixty years, 

 on the coasts of Australia, and under every variety of climate, 

 that we had no diseases peculiar to that continent, and I am led 

 to believe it a remarkably healthy country. On the North and 

 North-west coasts, where you find every bight and indentation 

 of land fringed with mangroves, bordering mud flats, and ledges 

 formed by corallines in every stage of decomposition, with a 

 high temperature, no fevers or dysenteries were engendered. 



" Our ship's company were constantly exposed, in boats, to all 

 the vicissitudes from wet to dry weather, sleeping in mangrove 

 creeks for many months in succession, pestered by mosquitos 

 during the hours of repose, yet they still remained very healthy ; 

 and the only instance where the climate was at all prejudicial (if 

 such a term can be applied) was in the Victoria River, on the north 

 coast, where the heat was, at one period, very great, and the 

 unavoidable exposure caused two of the crew to be attacked with 

 Coup de Soleil. 



*' Our casualties consisted of tw^o deaths during our stay on 

 the Australian coast, one from old age ; and the other, a case of 

 dysentery, contracted at Coepang. 



*• It may not be uninteresting to state, that from the time that 

 Port Essington was settled in 1838, up to the period of our last 

 visit to that military post, and for some time after, no endemial 

 form of disease had manifested itself, and the only complaints 

 that the men had been suffering from were diseases such as were 

 usually to be met with in a more temperate clime, and those 

 were few. But we must take into consideration their isolated 

 position, the constant sameness of their life, their small low 

 thatched cottages, mostly with earthen floors; their inferior diet, 



