All the plants
which had not taken deep root were withered by the power of the sun.
No lasting
Ill effects, however, arose to the human constitution.
A temporary sickness at the stomach, accompanied with lassitude and headache,
attacked many, but they were removed generally in twenty-four hours
by an emetic, followed by an anodyne. During the time it lasted,
we invariably found that the house was cooler than the open air, and that
in proportion as the wind was excluded, was comfort augmented.
But even this heat was judged to be far exceeded in the latter end
of the following February, when the north-west wind again set in,
and blew with great violence for three days. At Sydney, it fell short
by one degree of what I have just recorded: but at Rose Hill, it was allowed,
by every person, to surpass all that they had before felt, either there
or in any other part of the world. Unluckily they had no thermometer
to ascertain its precise height. It must, however, have been intense,
from the effects it produced. An immense flight of bats driven before
the wind, covered all the trees around the settlement, whence they every moment
dropped dead or in a dying state, unable longer to endure the burning state
of the atmosphere. Nor did the 'perroquettes', though tropical birds,
bear it better. The ground was strewn with them in the same condition
as the bats.
Were I asked the cause of this intolerable heat, I should not hesitate
to pronounce that it was occasioned by the wind blowing over immense deserts,
which, I doubt not, exist in a north-west direction from Port Jackson,
and not from fires kindled by the natives.
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