Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/159

( 134 ) rix-dollars. A quantity of copper pennies were put into circulation by the English, but finding it difficult to adjust their intrinsic value to the currency of the colony, without confusion on the one hand, or loss to the importers on the other, it was determined to double their nominal value, by which government gained 60 per cent. at the same time their private importation was made penal.

In Simmon's bay the water is supplied to ships by cocks, at a wharf where boats may lay at most times. Firewood is the scarcest article here: this is owing to the parching S.E. winds preventing the growth of timber, except the silver-tree and pollard oak. The car-