184 NEW SOUT.H WALES. 



the extensive cultivation of any plants that require much labour in 

 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 aborigi- 

 nal population has been estimated as high as two hundred thousand ; 

 this estimate is founded on the supposition that the unexplored re- 

 gions 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 sixpence 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 acquired 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 other end rests upon the ground. 

 A fire is built on the open side, which not only warms them, but 

 keeps off the myriads of musquitoes and other insects. As many as 



