My observations had been in a great measure confined to those points which curiosity, or a desire of personal information, had prompted me to investigate.

I did not, therefore, venture to flatter myself that I had collected materials of sufficient importance on general topics to enable me to write for the information of others.
Since my return to England, however, I have been strenuously urged to give a short description of the colony before entering upon my personal narrative; and I have conversed with so many individuals whose ideas of Australia are totally at variance with its actual state, that I am encouraged to indulge the hope that my observations, desultory as they are, may be of some interest to the public.

I am strengthened in this hope by the consideration that some kind friends have enabled me to add much valuable matter to that which I had myself collected.

It is not my intention, however, to enter at any length on the commercial or agricultural interests of New South Wales.

It may be necessary for me to touch lightly on those important subjects, but it is my wish to connect this preliminary chapter, as much as possible with the subjects treated of in the body of the work, and chiefly to notice the physical structure, the soil, climate, and productions of the colony, in order to convey to the reader general information on these points, before I lead him into the remote interior.
NAME OF AUSTRALIA.
It may be worthy of remark that the name "Australia," has of late years been affixed to that extensive tract of land which Great Britain possesses in the Southern Seas, and which, having been a discovery of the early Dutch navigators, was previously termed "New Holland." The change of name was, I believe, introduced by the celebrated French geographer, Malte Brun, who, in his division of the globe, gave the appellation of Austral Asia and Polynesia to the new discovered lands in the southern ocean; in which division he meant to include the numerous insular groups scattered over the Pacific.
IMPRESSIONS OF ITS EARLY VISITORS.
Australia is properly speaking an island, but it is so much larger than every other island on the face of the globe, that it is classed as a continent in order to convey to the mind a just idea of its magnitude.
Stretching from the 115th to the 153rd degree of east longitude, and from the 10th to the 37th of south latitude, it averages 2700 miles in length by 1800 in breadth; and balanced, as it were, upon the tropic of that hemisphere in which it is situated, it receives the fiery heat of the equator at one extremity, while it enjoys the refreshing coolness of the temperate zone at the other.