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 ''. By forming more than one of such separate establishments, the means of classifying the offenders, according to the degrees of crime, would be facilitated, and that salutary apprehension of the punishment revived which can alone make it available for the grave offences to which it is at present applied''."

In accordance with these suggestions, Mr. Commissioner Bigge, coinciding entirely with Earl Bathurst, as to the propriety of removing a large number of the convicts from the existing settlements in New South Wales, recommended the progressive establishment of three new settlements to the northward of Sydney; viz. at Moreton Bay, Port Curtis, and Port Bowen; the last of which lies within the southern tropic, in lat. 22° 28' south. Orders to that effect were accordingly transmitted to Sir Thomas Brisbane, governor of New South Wales, in the year 1823; and during the following year an expedition was fitted out by His Excellency's orders, to ascertain the comparative advantages of these localities. The result of this expedition was the discovery of the Brisbane river, one of the largest on the east coast of New Holland, which empties itself into the extensive inlet of Moreton Bay in lat. 27½° south. The great importance of this discovery, and the vast extent of available