NEW SOUTH WALES,

FROM ITS FIRST SETTLEMENT IN JANUARY 1788, TO

AUGUST 1801:

WITH

REMARKS ON THE DISPOSITIONS, CUSTOMS, MANNERS, &c. OF

THE NATIVE INHABITANTS OF THAT COUNTRY.

TO WHICH ARE ADDED,

SOME PARTICULARS OF NEW ZEALAND;

COMPILED, BY PERMISSION,

FROM THE MSS. OF LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR KING:

AND

AN ACCOUNT OF A VOYAGE PERFORMED BY CAPTAIN FLINDERS AND
MR. BASS; BY WHICH THE EXISTENCE OF A STRAIT SEPARATING
VAN DIEMEN'S LAND FROM THE CONTINENT OF NEW HOLLAND WAS
ASCERTAINED.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE JOURNAL OF MR. BASS.

By Lieutenant-Colonel COLLINS, of the Royal Marines ;

SEVERAL YEARS JUDGE ADVOCATE AND SECRE RY OF THE COLONY,

"Many might be saved, who now fuffer an ignominious and an early death; and many might be
" so much purified in the furnace of punishment and adversity, as to become the ornaments
" of that society of which they had formerly been the bane. The vices of mankind must

frequently require the severity of justice; but a wife State will direct that severity to the
greatest moral and political good."

LONDON:

Printed by A. Strahan, Printers Street,

FOR T. CADELL AND W. DAVIES, IN THE STRAND.

1804.

ANON.

TH

PREFACE.

HE Author of the History of the English Colony in New South Wales, having been flattered by the idea that a Second Edition of that work would not prove unacceptable to the Public, and feeling it incumbent on him to shew the grateful sense which he entertained of the favourable reception of the first, had for some time deliberated on the propriety of giving the new Edition in a form which, without lessening the interest of the work, might render it less expensive to the purchafer. A careful Abridgment appeared most likely to answer the end defired; as much of the matter contained in the first publication was now no longer of importance; though at that period curiofity was awake to the most trivial circumstance occurring in a new world, where the actions of two distinct fets of people were to appear in contrast; the one, the children of rude uncultivated nature, just entering upon the stage; the other, the disciples of vice in its most refined state, driven from more polished scenes.

The Publishers having concurred with the Author in this opinion, he was proceeding in the execution of his plan; when an appointment from his SOVEREIGN called him to fulfil its duties in a distant country.

Thus situated, he prevailed on me to undertake a task for which I felt myself but ill calculated; a task that I have performed with reluctance, and which nothing but the defire of complying with his wish could have induced me to perform at all. An early fufpicion, that the deep interest which I had in the Narrator would, if it did not impede my progress, at least render it painful, was fully verified. Scarcely a page was examined, which did not give birth to some uneasy sensation; and my mind was by turns a prey to terror and disgust. It cannot be matter of wonder, that, beholding my fellow-creatures so loft to every sense of feeling, so sunk in hopeless depravity, as to prefer their former evil courses, when even temptation had ceased to hold out a lure, and when comfort and competence were the probable, if not certain rewards of a different conduct, created in my bosom a degrading idea of the human heart, and led me to tremble at the recollection that the Historian, whose faithful records had given birth to those sensations, might at that very hour be exposed to the same evils and the same perils which he had but too recently experienced. That this should be possible, did, indeed, fill me with aftonishment,

I