194 NEW SOUTH WALES. 



their production. Our horticulturist remarks, that cherries do not 

 succeed well, being affected by the dry cutting winds which occur in 

 the blossoming season. 



The orange, citron, and lemon trees present a scraggy and yellow 

 appearance, and produce small and insipid fruit, in comparison with 

 that of the tropics. Peaches thrive, and grow in large quantities, 

 and of high flavour. Every farmer has his peach orchard ; and the 

 fruit is so plenty that they fatten their pigs on them. 



The natives of Australia are fast disappearing. The entire abo- 

 riginal population of Australia has been estimated as high as two 

 hundred thousand ; this estimate is founded on the supposition that 

 the unexplored regions of the country do not differ materially from 

 that part of it which is known, which cannot well be the case. Other 

 estimates, and probably much nearer the truth, are given at from 

 sixty to seventy-five thousand. 



The ravages of intoxication and disease, combined with their occa- 

 sional warfare, will readily account for the rapid disappearance of 

 the native population ; and but a few more years will suffice for the 

 now scanty population to become extinct. In 1835, the Surveyor- 

 General, Mitchell, estimated that in about one-seventh of the whole 

 colony, which he had examined, the natives did not exceed six 

 thousand in number ; they are in many parts most wretched-looking 

 beings, and incorrigible beggars; the moment they see a stranger, 

 he is fairly tormented to give something ; a shilling or a six-pence 

 contents many, and when laid out for rum, or bread, is shared by 

 all present. 



The introduction of European arts has caused but little improve- 

 ment, while the vices which accompany them have been the bane of 

 the native population, which has thus accmired a fondness for ardent 

 spirits and tobacco. The natives usually lead a wandering, vagabond 

 life, hanging about the houses of the settlers, where they are well 

 treated, and doing little jobs for a slight recompense in the above 

 articles. Their habitations are mere temporary shelters, formed of 

 boughs and bark piled up against the stump of a fallen tree, rather 

 to shield them from the wind than for a regular habitation ; the 

 reason for this may be, that owing to superstitious scruples they 

 never encamp in one spot three nights in succession. At Illawarra, 

 their huts were made by setting two forked sticks upright, on 

 which another was laid horizontally ; on the latter, one end of 

 pieces of bark, taken from the nearest gum tree, is laid, while the 



