The Moreton Bay district is perhaps one of the most fertile on the continent, combining the advantages of great partial elevation and of proximity to the equator, so that, within a comparatively short distance, the productions of both the tropical and the temperate zones may be found.  Corn grows on the high plains; bananas, raisins, etc., on the lowlands; in short, as in Mexico, the traveller finds, in ascending from the sea-coast to the summit of the hills, almost the same successive gradations of climate as in passing from the tropics towards the poles.

FAREWELL TO SYDNEY.

Our final arrangements were soon made; and on the 18th of February, the Beagle was turning out between the heads.* I cannot for the last time bid adieu to a place, which had become to us as it were a second home, without once more alluding to the reception I had experienced from its inhabitants.  To enumerate any particular instances would be invidious; space forbids me to pay due acknowledgments to all.  In general, therefore, I must say, that every attention which kindness and hospitality could suggest, was paid to the officers of the Beagle, and a debt of gratitude accumulated which it will be difficult to repay.

(Footnote.  It is worthy of mention, that vessels working in against the ebb-tide, should get close under the inner south head before making a board across the entrance, as the stream sets round the north head a knot an hour to the northward, but has a southerly direction from one to two miles off.)

Fresh easterly winds in the first instance, and light northerly ones latterly, carried us rapidly to the southward, and towards midnight of the 21st, we crossed the parallel of 39 degrees 31 minutes South,* steering South by West 1/2 West.

(Footnote.  In this latitude a shoal was reported to have been seen by a vessel bound to Sydney, from Banks Strait, in 1838.  The master of her states, that he sounded on it in seven fathoms, and saw moored kelp occupying the space of about half a mile.  As this vessel’s latitude, by her run from Banks Strait, was twenty miles further south, we cannot place much confidence in this report, in which it is stated, that when Cape Barren bore West eight miles, they steered North-East for sixty miles, when finding themselves, near noon, close to broken water, they wore the vessel’s head round to the southward, and sounded in seven fathoms in kelp; the latitude by observation being 39 degrees 31 minutes South.  As it was blowing strong at the time from the North-West with a high sea, and as there was only one cast of the lead taken, in the confusion of wearing, it is possible they might have been deceived.  The kelp might have been adrift, and the sea, in that neighbourhood, often breaks irregularly as if on foul ground.  The position of this supposed shoal, by the run from Banks Strait would be, latitude 39 degrees 51 minutes South, longitude 149 degrees 40 minutes East; but as this gives a difference of twenty miles in the latitude by observation, and as the Beagle has crossed those parallels ten times between the meridians of 148 degrees 4 minutes and 150 degrees 13 minutes, and, moreover, as the position assigned this shoal lies so much in the track of vessels running between Hobart and Sydney, there is every reason to doubt its existence.)