of V. D. Land, except the pines, generally sink; in some parts of the Colony it is called Black-wood, on account of its dark colour. Other timber trees are known here by the names of Pink-wood, Carpodontos lucida, Hard-wood, a species of Olea, Sasafras, Athosperma moschata, Stinkwood, Zieria arborescens, &c. Forest Tea Tree, a species of Leptospermum, is valued for fuel; some crooked portions of its trunk are finely veined, and well adapted for fancy-work. The black substance forming part of the stems of tree ferns, is used for reeding, in inlaying, for which purpose it is superior to Ebony. Respectable hats have been manufactured from the shavings of some species of Acacia, as well as from broad leaved sedges, Lepidosperma gladiata; the leaves being first boiled and bleached.
Notwithstanding the fine scenery of Macquarie Harbour, it was a gloomy place in the eyes of a prisoner, from the privations he suffered there, in being shut out from the rest of the world, and restricted to a limited quantity of food, which did not include fresh meat; from being kept under a military guard; from the hardship he endured, in toiling almost constantly in the wet, at felling timber and rolling it to the water, and from other severe labour, without wages, as well as from the liability to be flogged or subjected to solitary confinement, for small offences.
Out of 85 deaths that occurred here in eleven years, commencing with 1822, only 35 were from natural causes; of the remainder, 27 were drowned, 8 killed accidentally, chiefly by the falling of trees, 3 were shot by the military, and 12 murdered by their comrades. There is reason to believe that some of these murders were committed for the purpose of obtaining for the murderers, and those who might be called upon as witnesses on their trials, a removal from this place, though at the ultimate cost of the life of the murderers, and without a prospect of liberation on the part of the others! Some of the prisoners who returned hither with us in the Tamar, had been witnesses in such a case; but they had had the privilege of the change, for a time, to the penitentiary at Hobart Town! These circumstances, with the fact, that within the eleven years, 112 prisoners had eloped from
