U.S. Sailor's View of Sydney, 1839

From Twenty Years Before the Mast, by Charles Erskine (Fossil, 2016), Kindle p. 61:

Portions of the island of Australia were visited by the Spaniards as early as the year 1520. The Dutch, when they captured it in the year 1606, named it New Holland. When the English took possession of it they named it New South Wales. It is now called Australia. It was to this place that England used to transport her convicts, and from this fact it was named the pickpockets’ quarter of the globe. Sydney is its capital and seat of government. George Street is the Broadway of Sydney. The Cove — God save the name! — is the old Ann Street of Boston; South Street of Philadelphia; River of Styx, Norfolk; Sausage Row, Cincinnati; Five Points or the Hook of New York; Hog Lane of Canton. In fact, it is more than the Ratcliffe Highway of London. There are plenty of old Fagins and old Fagin’s pupils living here. Here you will find all nations mixed up together, eating, drinking, singing, dancing, gambling, quarreling, and fighting. Inns abound here, for which the English, you know, are celebrated. Here is the Sailors’ Inn, the Soldiers’ Inn, the Ladies’ Inn, Punch-Bowl Inn, Shamrock Inn, Thistle Inn, the Ship’s Inn, King’s Arms Inn, and others too numerous to mention, not forgetting the Dew Drop Inn.