334 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
Rio Janeiro, of only a few days more than six 
months. 
Five months elapsed before we could meet with 
a conveyance to the Society Islands. This deten¬ 
tion, however, favoured me with an opportunity of 
visiting the chief settlements of New South Wales, 
and beholding several of the rare and interesting 
animals and vegetable productions of that impor¬ 
tant colony. I was happy also to experience, 
during this period, the friendship and attentions 
of the Rev. S. Marsden, senior chaplain of the 
colony, the steady and indefatigable friend of 
Missions and Missionaries in the South Seas. He 
resided at Paramatta, where we passed the greater 
part of our stay in New South Wales, in the family 
of the late Mr. Hassel, formerly a Missionary in 
Tahiti. 
The settlements in New South Wales are im¬ 
portant and prosperous; the whole population is 
about 40,000, and the colony will, perhaps at no 
very remote period, be inferior to few attached to 
the parent country. Combining, in its ample range 
of territory, every variety of climate in the tem¬ 
perate and torrid zones, it is at once adapted to 
the growth of the corn of Europe, and the culture 
of cotton, coffee, sugar, tobacco, and other valu¬ 
able productions of those countries which lie within 
the tropics. The supply of labour furnished by the 
convict population, in agriculture or the mechanic 
arts, enables the settler to prosecute his plans of local 
improvement or distant commerce ; while the exile 
is here favoured with an opportunity of retrieving 
his character, and securing the enjoyment of liberty 
and comparative comfort. The number of indi¬ 
viduals, of intelligence and enterprise, who, as 
settlers, have transferred to this country their 
