exceptions, the land for a hundred miles round Sydney is a sandy desert. But roads, railroads, and steamers will afford Sydney the advantages of the produce of districts which have no such harbour as Port Jackson.
Cumberland and Camden were the two counties first settled. Cumberland is the most densely-populated district in Australia, and has the poorest soil; a belt of land parallel to the sea, from twenty to forty miles in breadth, is either light sand dotted with picturesque, unprofitable scrub, or a stiff clay or ironstone, thickly covered with hard-wood timber and underwood. After passing this belt, to which the colonists confined themselves for more than ten years, with a few spirited exceptions, the soil improves a little; that is to say, narrow tracks of a rich alluvial character are found on the banks of the rivers, but the greater proportion consists of forest on a poor impenetrable soil, which defies the perseverance of the most skilled agriculturist. The deeper you go the worse it is.
Camden has a moderate extent of cultivable land, including the singular district of Illawarra, which is at once one of the most beautiful and fertile spots in the world, in regard both to the luxuriance and variety of its vegetable productions. The pastures of Camden are extensive, and were considered important until the discovery of the western and southern plains.
The dryness of the counties of Camden and Cumberland, in which, in the course of the year, nearly as much rain falls as in the counties of Essex and Sussex, is greatly owing to the stiff clay of which the soil is chiefly composed, through which the rain cannot easily filter, or from which springs can with difficulty burst forth. Boring, on the artesian plan, has been recently adopted with success.
To describe in detail the character of each county and each dis- trict would be a difficult and wearisome task. Many, after being charmed with the exquisitely picturesque appearance of Port Jackson and Sydney, on a very cursory inspection of the surrounding country, come to the conclusion that the whole province of New South Wales is a barren desert only fit for feeding sheep a conclusion which is not more correct than to judge of the agricultural capabilities of England by Dartmoor, or of France by the "Landes."
Within the Sydney district are the towns of Paramatta, Windsor, and Liverpool; but, in consequence of the dispersion incident to the pastoral pursuits which have hitherto formed the chief employment of Australia, there are really no towns in the European sense of the word, with the exception of the three capitals, Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, and Greelong in Victoria, which, being the port to a rich
