geography we have received an accurate and full survey of it.  Its extent was ascertained to be 5 1/2 degrees of longitude, and 7 degrees of latitude; and its circuit nearly 400 leagues.  On the coast of this gulf he found a singular trade carried on.  Sixty proas, each about the burden of 25 tons, and carrying as many men, were fitted out by the Rajah of Boni, and sent to catch a small animal which lives at the bottom of the sea, called the sea slug, or biche de mer.  When caught, they are split, boiled, and dried in the sun, and then carried to Timorlaot, when the Chinese purchase them:  100,000 of these animals is the usual cargo of each proa, and they bring from 2000 to 4000 Spanish dollars.

Notwithstanding the English had had settlements in New Holland for upwards of 26 years, little progress had been made in exploring the interior of the country even in the immediate vicinity of Botany Bay.  It was supposed that a passage across the Blue Mountains, which are within sight of that settlement, opposed insurmountable obstacles.  At length, about the end of the year 1813, the Blue Mountains were crossed for the first time, by Mr. Evans, the deputy surveyor of the colony.  He found a fertile and pleasant district, and the streams which took their rise in the Blue Mountains, running to the westward; to one of the most considerable of these he gave the name of Macquarrie river; the course of this river he pursued for ten days.  On his return to the colony, the governor, Mr. Macquarrie ordered that a road should be made across the mountains; this extended 100 miles, and was completed in 1815.  Mr. Evans soon afterwards discovered another river, which he called the Lachlan.

As it was of great consequence to trace these rivers, and likewise to examine the country to the west of the Blue Mountains more accurately, and to a greater distance than it had been done, the governor ordered two expeditions to be undertaken.  Lieutenant Oxley, the surveyor-general of the colony had the command of both.  It does not fall within our plan or limits to follow him in these journeys; we shall therefore confine ourselves to an outline of the result of his discoveries.  He ascertained that the country in general is very unfertile:  the Lachlan he traced, till it seemed to loose itself in a multitude of branches among marshy flats.  “Perhaps,” observes Lieutenant Oxley, “there is no river, the history of which is known, that presents so remarkable a termination as the present:  its course, in a strait line from its source to its termination, exceeds 500 miles, and including its windings, it may fairly be calculated to run at least 1200 miles; during all which passage, through such a vast extent of country, it does not receive a single stream in addition to what it derives from its sources in the Eastern mountains.”—­“One tree, one soil, one water, and one description of bird, fish, or animal, prevails alike for ten miles, and for 100.”  There were, however, tracks, especially where the limestone formation prevailed, of great beauty and fertility; but these were comparatively rare and of small extent.  Level, bare, sandy wastes, destitute of water, or morasses and swamps, which would not support them, formed by far the greatest part of the country through which they travelled.