inconvenience they have experienced from not having any one familiar with the productions of a tropical climate.
"On asking if they had attempted to grow rice, I was told that they had, but little of it came up; and on further inquiry, I found they had sown the clean rice, instead of the grain in its natural state of paddy,—this will give an idea of the clumsy way things have been done in these settlements.
"At present all works are suspended under an impression that the two establishments are to be concentrated at Port Essington, which is certainly the most eligible port at present known for a principal settlement on the north coast of New Holland, being about four miles by land from Raffles Bay, and 170 by sea from Melville Island, and all three in the same degree of latitude.
"I cannot help thinking it would be a great sacrifice to abandon those settlements, now the principal privations and difficulties, necessarily attending the formation of any new colony, are surmounted. It would be better to form another at Port Essington, it being the annual rendezvous of the Malays of Macassar and Arroe Islands, who come over with the end of the easterly monsoon, to collect and cure trepang for the China market; though last year finding there was an European settlement at Raffles Bay, three proas, with about thirty men in each, took their quarters up at the fort, and collected and cured what they could, so as to sail with the end of the monsoon. The natives are particularly hostile to the Malays, which made them very glad to have the protection of the fort.
I understand that one of the objects in forming these settlements was to open a trade with the Eastern Islands and China, which would be very easy from the great number of proas (ten or twelve per day having been seen from the fort) that annually visit the coast, from Macassar and the islands eastward, to collect and cure trepang for the Canton market; most of which bartered with the Dutch residents among the different islands, sent thence from Amboyna and Batavia, and from thence to China.
"But, as a tropical climate must be uncongenial to the manual exertions of Europeans, I conceive it would be a much more efficient and less expensive plan to colonize New Holland principally from India.
