of a kind of wild fig-tree, which bites upon wood almost as keenly as the shave-grass of Europe, which is used by our joiners:  With such tools, the making even such a canoe as I have described, must be a most difficult and tedious labour:  To those who have been accustomed to the use of metal, it appears altogether impracticable; but there are few difficulties that will not yield to patient perseverance, and he who does all he can, will certainly produce effects that greatly exceed his apparent power.[94]

[Footnote 94:  This very just observation cannot be too forcibly urged, or too frequently recollected.  The deficiency of which most men have reason to complain, is not that of ability, but of industry and application.  Genius is pursued and coveted, because it is imagined to be a sort of creating energy which produces at will, and without labour.—­It is therefore desirable to indolent minds.  But this is a mistake of no small detriment, though of very common occurrence.  Few people perhaps discover it to be so, till they have to condemn themselves for the loss of much of their best time, spent in idly wishing for the inspiration which is to do such wonders, for them without exertion on their part.  Reader, in place of this, fix on some useful or laudable work, and set about doing it.—­E.]

The utmost freight of these canoes is four people, and if more at any time wanted to come over the river, one of those who came first was obliged to go back for the rest:  From this circumstance we conjectured that the boat we saw, when we were lying in Endeavour River, was the only one in the neighbourhood:  We have however some reason to believe that the bark canoes are also used where the wooden ones are constructed, for upon one of the small islands where the natives had been fishing for turtle, we found one of the little paddles which had belonged to such a boat, and would have been useless on board any other.

By what means the inhabitants of this country are reduced to such a number as it can subsist, is not perhaps very easy to guess; whether, like the inhabitants of New Zealand, they are destroyed by the hands of each other in contests for food; whether they are swept off by accidental famine, or whether there is any cause which prevents the increase of the species, must be left for future adventurers to determine.[95] That they have wars, appears by their weapons; for supposing the lances to serve merely for the striking of fish, the shield could be intended for nothing but a defence against men; the only mark of hostility, however, which we saw among them, was the perforation of the shield by a spear, which has been just mentioned, for none of them appeared to have been wounded by an enemy.  Neither can we determine whether they are pusillanimous or brave; the resolution with which two of them attempted to prevent our landing, when we had two boats full of men, in Botany Bay, even after one of them was wounded with small shot, gave