Captain Thompkins. But surely that fact was not the only one to be ascertained, in order to establish a charge of wilful and corrupt perjury against that unfortunate individual. Captain Thompkins swore only to what he professed to believe; and how could the Jury have ascertained that he did not believe that one of the blows that were aimed at the door, which was afterwards found to bear many and indelible marks of the Doctor's prowess, had been aimed at himself? Surely. a man who enters his own house, and finds a stranger breaking open the door of his wife's apartment with an axe, has good reason to swear the peace against the intruder and if in the excitement and fury of the moment, he should even mistake, or exaggerate, or misrepresent some of the minor circumstances of the case in his affidavit, is he to be allowed no latitude whatever in so trying a situation? Are his words to be weighed in the scales of an apothecary, and his future standing in society, either as a reputable man or a perjured villain, to depend on the minute correspondence

of

every syllable with the actual fact? If I am robbed of ten sovereigns on the Parramatta road, and make affidavit that they were taken out of my waistcoat pocket, is the bush-ranger who committed the outrage to be allowed to bring an action against me for wilful and corrupt perjury, because, forsooth, he can produce the evidence of two accomplices to prove that the sovereigns were abstracted from the inside pocket of my great-coat? The main point for consideration in Captain Thompkins' affidavit-the corpus delicti which it alleged, viz. that a violent breach of the peace had

been committed against his family by Dr. Smith-was fully substantiated; and I am confident that no intelligent jury of twelve honest men, either in England or in New South Wales, would have suffered the minuter details of that affidavit, though actually proved by unexceptionable evidence to have been inconsistent with the fact, to be made a peg on which to hang an action for wilful and corrupt perjury. In short, I have no hesitation in expressing my opinion, that the verdict in the case in question was not only contrary to the plainest dictates of common sense, but under all the circumstances of the case absolutely monstrous.

CHAPTER II.

JOURNEY OVER-LAND TO HUNTER'S RIVER, WITH A DESCRIPTION OF AN AUSTRALIAN FARM.

Sic ego desertis possim bene vivere sylvis,

Quo nulla humano sit via trita pede.

PROPERTIUS.

Thus could 1 live in desert wilds,

Where human foot had never trod.

that of Hunter's River, Hunter's River empties

THE principal agricultural and grazing district in the colony of New South Wales is to the northward of Sydney. itself into the Pacific Ocean at Newcastle-a small town beautifully situated at the head of a romantic bay, the entrance of which is about seventy miles distant from the heads of Port Jackson. At the entrance of the Bay of Newcastle there is a small but rather lofty island, called Nobby's Island, somewhat resembling the Craig of Ailsa or the Bass Rock on the coasts of Scotland, and consisting apparently of indurated clay supporting a stratum of sand-stone, over which there is a stratum of coal, the clay appearing to rest on a substratum of silicious substance. The indurated clay, of which I have seen various specimens, although I have not myself landed on the island, consists

of thin laminæ, into which it may be easily separated with a knife, and which present innumerable impressions of vegetables. I have seen such impressions in specimens of the clay obtained at a height of fifty to a hundred feet above the level of the sea. It appears indeed to consist of nothing else but masses of vegetable matter, which, at some former period in the history of the earth, must have floated in a solution of clay. Nobby's Island has evidently been originally joined to the main-land; the intervening channel to the southward being still narrow, shallow, and rocky, and the successive strata of which it is composed corresponding with those of the main. It is a very remarkable and interesting object on the coast.

A packet for goods and passengers used formerly to ply between Sydney and Newcastle once a week; goods and produce being conveyed to and fro, between New, castle and the head of the navigation of the river, distant about twenty or thirty miles from the coast, in a barge, Several other small vessels also plied on the main river and the other two navigable streams that fall into it, carrying direct to Sydney the produce of the farms along their banks; but the annual loss of life in these vessels, on the coast between Sydney and Newcastle, was very considerable. My father lost his life in this way, with about sixteen other persons, in the month of April, 1830. He had been residing for some time previous, at my brother's farm on Hunter's River; but, requiring to come to Sydney, he had been induced to venture on board one of the small tradingvessels, as the regular packet had been detained a week

longer than her usual time in Sydney by northerly winds. Shortly after the little vessel had got out into the open ocean, it began to blow freshly from the westward. Unable to proceed along the coast to the southward, she was seen returning to the port of Newcastle on the evening of the second day after she left it; but as both wind and tide were strongly against her, she was obliged to put about again and stand out to sea. A strong southerly gale succeeded almost immediately thereafter, in which it was supposed she had gone down with all on board, as she was never afterwards either seen or heard of.*

The arrival of a steam-boat in the colony in the year 1831, to ply between Sydney and Hunter's River, was therefore of incalculable benefit to the latter district, as well as to the colony in general. There are now two on the course, each of which makes a trip to Hunter's River once a week, and there will shortly be a third of much larger size. The steam-boat leaves Sydney at six o'clock in the evening, reaches Newcastle about the same hour next morning-the ocean part of the voyage being thus performed during the night-and arrives at the Green Hills, or the head of the navigation of the Hunter, at the distance of four miles from the town of Maitland, about eleven o'clock; the whole distance being about one hundred and twenty miles. The town of Newcastle, I have already observed, has somewhat the appearance of a deserted village. It is reviving, however, though rather slowly, and is likely eventually

* My grandfather also lost his life in a similar way, about fifty years before, on the coast of Jamaica, in the West Indies,