to become a place of considerable importance, as it is situated in the centre of the great coal-field of the colony, and as the Bay forms a good harbour for small vessels.

Coal abounds along the east coast of New South Wales to a vast and unknown extent. It is frequently discernible from a black streak along the face of the perpendicular cliffs that form the coast-line, a mile or two off at sea; and it is worked at Newcastle with comparative facility. The Australian Agricultural Company enjoy the exclusive privilege of working the coalmines of the colony for a certain number of years, and they have erected works for the purpose in the immediate vicinity of Newcastle of considerable extent. The main-shaft is on the declivity of a hill or bank running parallel to the course of the river, about a furlong from the water's edge, and the coal is raised to the surface by steam-machinery. It is then placed in large trucks, which are made to descend along an inclined plane by their own weight; the angle of inclination being about thirty degrees, and the weight of each descending truck being employed to raise an empty one, by means of a connecting chain passing around a system of wheels or rollers at the upper extremity of the plane. The truck is then pushed, by one or two men stationed for the purpose, along an elevated horizontal railway, which • terminates in a jetty; the moveable extremity of which is so constructed as to place the truck right over the deck or open hold of a vessel loading coals in the river. The slip-bottom of the truck, which is moveable by a spring, is then thrown open, and its whole

contents descend into the vessel's hold without further trouble.

Coals are sold at the jetty on behalf of the Company at eight shillings a ton. The quantity sold last year, I was told by a gentleman residing in the neighbourhood, realized about £2500; but the salaries of persons connected with the works, the price of labour, and the tear and wear of machinery, amounted to about an equal sum. There is reason to believe, however, that the consumption, and of course the sale, of coal will ere long be increased tenfold in the colony; for besides the quantity sold for exportation, and the daily increasing consumption of steam-engines and factories, families in Sydney already begin to find it a less expensive and more convenient sort of fuel than wood.

When Newcastle was a penal settlement, a jetty or breakwater was commenced, to extend from the mainland to Nobby's Island, with a view to improve the navigation at the entrance of the harbour, by shutting up the shallow, rocky channel to the southward of the island, and thereby widening and deepening (which it was expected would be the result of the operation) the channel to the northward. The work, however, was discontinued during the governments of Sir Thomas Brisbane and General Darling; but it has just been resumed under the vigorous administration of the present Governor, and will, in all likelihood, afford suitable employment for two or three hundred convicts under colonial sentences for two or three years. Some colonial Goth, whose antipathy to interesting natural scenery seems to be a sort of inherent or original sin, has even

proposed to level Nobby's Island altogether, on the plea of its having been repeatedly found guilty of taking the wind out of the sails of vessels entering the harbour. I trust, however, the colonial government will adopt the wiser expedient of erecting a light-house on its elevated summit; for the island has surely been long enough at a penal settlement, to entitle it to indulge the reasonable hope of escaping decapitation-the last punishment of the law.

Hunter's River, or the Coquun, as it is called by the Aborigines, runs in an easterly direction for upwards of a hundred miles, from the high ranges of mountains in the interior to the Pacific Ocean. It is formed from the junction of various smaller rivers, that traverse these ranges in various directions to the right and left. It is navigable, however, only for about twenty-five miles in a direct line, or about thirty-five by water, from the coast. At the distance of twenty miles by water from Newcastle, it receives another river of considerable magnitude from the northward, called William's River, or the Doorribang; and at the head of the navigation, or about thirty-five miles from Newcastle by water, it receives a second river, called Patterson's River, or the Yimmang, each of which is navigable for a considerably greater distance than the principal stream or main river.

For the first fifteen or twenty miles by water from the mouth of the river, the land on either side is generally low, swampy, and sterile, though for the most part thickly covered with timber; but higher up and along the banks of the two tributary rivers, the soil for

a considerable distance from the banks is entirely alluvial and of the highest fertility, and the scenery from the water exceedingly beautiful. Let the reader figure to himself a noble river, as wide as the Thames in the lower part of its course, winding slowly towards the ocean, among forests that have never felt the stroke of the axe, or seen any human face till lately but that of the wandering barbarian. On either bank, the lofty gum-tree or eucalyptus shoots up its white naked stem to the height of 150 feet from the rich alluvial soil, while underwood of most luxuriant growth completely covers the ground; and numerous wild vines, as the flowering shrubs and parasitical plants of the alluvial land are indiscriminately called by the settlers, dip their long branches covered with white flowers into the very water. The voice of the lark, or the linnet, or the night. ingale, is, doubtless, never heard along the banks of the Hunter; for New South Wales is strangely deficient in the music of the groves. But the eye is gratified instead of the ear; for flocks of white or black cockatoos, with their yellow or red crests, occasionally flit across from bank to bank; and innumerable chirping parroquets, of most superb and inconceivably variegated plumage, are ever and anon hopping about from branch to branch. I have been told indeed that there is nothing like interesting natural scenery in New South Wales. My own experience and observation enable me flatly to contradict the assertion. There are doubtless numerous places throughout the territory uninteresting enough, as the reader may conceive must necessarily be the case in situations where the prospect of a settler's

cleared land is bounded on every side by lofty and branchless trees. But in many parts of the territory, both to the northward and the southward of Sydney, both beyond the Blue Mountains to the westward, and for many miles along the Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers that wash their eastern base, I have seen natural scenery combining every variety of the beautiful, the picturesque, the wild, and the sublime, and equalling any thing I had ever seen in Scotland, England, Ireland, or Wales.

The following pastoral by an Australian poet, whose name I am not at liberty to mention, will show that there is something to captivate the admirer of nature in the woods and wilds of Australia, and will also afford the reader some idea of the rural scenery on the banks of Hunter's River and its tributary streams:

ODE TO YIMMANG WATER.

On Yimmang's banks I love to stray
And charm the vacant hour away,

At early dawn or sultry noon,

Or latest evening when the moon

Looks downward, like a peasant's daughter,

To view her charms in the still water.
There would I walk at early morn
Along the ranks of Indian corn,
Whose dew-bespangled tossels shine
Like diamonds from Golconda's mine,
While numerous cobs outbursting yield
Fair promise of a harvest-field.

There would I muse on Nature's book,

By deep lagoon or shady brook,
When the bright sun ascends on high

Nor sees a cloud in all the sky,

And hot December's sultry breeze

Scarce moves the leaves of yonder trees.