There are no infantile diseases whatever.  The measles, hooping cough, and small pox, are entirely unknown.  Some few years, indeed, before the foundation of this colony, the small pox committed the most dreadful ravages among the aborigines.  This exterminating scourge is said to have been introduced by Captain Cook, and many of the contemporaries of those who fell victims to it, are still living; and the deep furrows which remain in some of their countenances, shew how narrowly they escaped the same premature destiny.  The recollection of this dreadful malady will long survive in the traditionary songs of this simple people.  The consternation which it excited is still as fresh in their minds as if it had been but an occurrence of yesterday, although the generation which witnessed its horrors, has almost past away.  The moment one of them was seized with it, it was the signal for abandoning him to his fate.  Brothers deserted their brothers, children their parents, and parents their children; and in some of the caves on the coast, heaps of decayed bones still indicate the spots where the helpless sufferers were left to expire, not so much perhaps from the violence of the disease as from the want of sustenance.

This fatal instance of the inveteracy of this disorder, when once introduced into the colony, has not been without its counterpoising benefit.  It has induced the local government to adopt proper measures for avoiding the propagation of a similar contagion among the colonists.  The vaccine matter was introduced with this view many years back; but as all the children in the colony were immediately inoculated, it was again lost from the want of a sufficient number of subjects to afford a supply of fresh virus; and for many years afterwards, every effort that was made for its re-introduction proved abortive.  Through the indefatigable exertions, however, of Doctor Burke, of the Mauritius, the colonists are again in possession of this inestimable blessing; and there can be no doubt that proper precautions will be taken to prevent them from being again deprived of it.

The colony of New South Wales possesses every variety of soil, from the sandy heath, and the cold hungry clay, to the fertile loam and the deep vegetable mould.  For the distance of five or six miles from the coast, the land is in general extremely barren, being a poor hungry sand, thickly studded with rocks.  A few miserable stunted gums, and a dwarf underwood, are the richest productions of the best part of it; while the rest never gives birth to a tree at all, and is only covered with low flowering shrubs, whose infinite diversity, however, and extraordinary beauty, render this wild heath the most interesting part of the country for the botanist, and make even the less scientific beholder forget the nakedness and sterility of the scene.