changed horses at the Black Snake Inn, on the road; and on the 8th, accompanied by Robert Officer, the surgeon in charge of the Hospital, made calls on several of the inhabitants, and visited a Government School at the Back River. On the 9th, we accompanied George Dixon, an old school-fellow of mine, and three of his nieces, to his house at Green Valley, on the Lower Clyde, travelling twenty seven miles on foot, by the side of a little cart, drawn by four oxen and driven by a prisoner, and proceeding at the rate of about two miles and a half per hour, along a road, a large part of which was a mere cart track. Much of the country was settled: it consisted of hills, generally covered with open grassy forest, and interspersed with little patches of cultivated ground. In locations of land of two or three thousand acres, it is seldom that as many hundreds have been tilled. Large portions are of woody and rocky hills that cannot be ploughed, but on which sheep feed. In this country, these animals keep in good health in the woods, the climate being exceedingly dry. Where the ground is free from timber, the grass is in tufts, often not covering more than one-third of the surface.
On the way we looked into a school near Macquarie Plains, and called at the huts of a chain-gang, employed at a place called the Deep Gulley, in cutting a point of land, so as to admit the road to pass by the side of the Derwent. At this place coal is visible, in narrow strata alternating with sandstone and shale. On Macquarie Plains we called on John Terry, an emigrant from Yorkshire, who has a corn mill at New Norfolk, and who was here shearing his sheep. He is a scrupulously honest man, who left England at a time when farmers were suffering adversity, and notwithstanding many difficulties that he has had to contend with, he thinks his circumstances have been greatly improved by the change. A few miles beyond his cottage is the Woolpack Inn; the sitting-room of which would not disgrace a market town in England. We called also at the hut of a Scotchman, to get a drink of water, no more being to be had for nine miles. Here we met a person of our acquaintance, who, like many other young men, on first arriving in the colony, was too much excited with the notion of shooting Kangaroos and
