1787 room, and having requested all of us to be seated, placed himself by the Commodore in a position that fronted us. In return for September. our thanks, he said, "it gave him infinite pleasure and satisfaction to find that the place had afforded us the supplies we stood in need of." To this he added that "the attention of the inhabitants, which we were good enough to notice, was much short of his wishes." We then arose and took our leave; but not before his Excellency had expressed a desire of hearing from the Commodore, with an account of his success in the establishment of the new colony. from Rio. A final letter was written to Nepean on the 3rd Sep- Departure tember-the day before the fleet sailed from Rio. Phillip had every reason to be satisfied with the attentions paid to him and his officers during their stay there, which evidently formed a very pleasant break in the long voyage. Everything had gone well so far; but his letters show the extreme anxiety with which he scrutinised every detail connected with the health of his people. of guese. I have been prevented sailing this morning from the accounts being not yet finally settled—that is, the vouchers not yet sent off I sail to-morrow, and at the Cape shall have more time, for here, as the only one that understands the language, I have been Knowledge obliged to be linguist and commissary. By the master of the tortuSirius you will have some private as well as public letters, and by a ship going to Lisbon you will receive this and copies of my public letters sent by the master; who, as he met with his accident in doing his duty on board the ship, will, I hope, get some little provision. honours. I have told you in one of my letters how far the Vice-King (the same who was here when I past for India) has carried his politeness, and that tho' I desired much to be received here as the cap- Public tain of the Sirius only, and for which I had particular reason, he refused my request, and gave it out in orders that I received the same honor as himself, that is, as Captain-General. This has prevented my having any house on shore, and that for obvious reasons. matters. I have endeavored to explain to Mr. Rose why I have drawn Financial on the Treasury for £135. The little matters paid by me when the ships were at Portsmouth, and the expenses here in procuring seeds and plants that are not publicly sold, could not be paid for 1787 October. by the Commissary. To have hired a store and the island would have been more than the whole sum. The things have been granted as favours, but returns expected, and I made them first at my own expense, till I found I was £100 out of pocket, and then thought Government that Government had not been so very liberal to me as to make it necessary to pay such a compliment. not very iberal. Seeds and plants. Rams. If I can preserve the seeds and plants procured here, I shall be very indifferent about those articles at the Cape. Sir Joseph Banks will receive from the master a small box that contains some plants he was very anxious to procure. The rams are in good health, and my breeding sows, as well as the ladies, seem well calculated for the end proposed. I intend making a very short stay at the Cape, as the ships are now in much better order than when they left England. The last letter written on the voyage out was addressed to Nepean from the Cape of Good Hope, undated. The fleet had anchored in Table Bay on the 13th October, and reAt the Cape. mained there till the 12th of the following month. Mynheer Von Graaffe, the Dutch Governor of the Cape, did not pay such attentions to his visitors as the Viceroy of the Brazils had done; but they were supplied with provisions for the fleet, as well as the plants and live stock required for the colony. Difficulty about sup plies. You will please to inform the Right Hon. the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty that I sailed from Rio Janeiro the 4th of September and anchored here the 13th of October with the ships under my command. Having immediately on my arrival requested permission to procure refreshments and such provisions as were wanted for her Majesty's ship Sirius and Supply tender, I was informed that, the crops of corn having failed the year before last, the inhabitants had been reduced to the greatest distress, and that I could not be permitted to purchase any flour or bread. I, however, obtained an order for three days' bread for all the ships; and as I found on inquiry that the last year's crops had been very good, I requested, by letter to the Governor and Council, permission to purchase what provisions were wanted for the Sirius and Supply, as likewise corn for seed, and what was necessary for the live stock intended to be embarked at this place. The three days granted for the bread being expired, leave was given for three days longer, and which permission was afterwards continued till the 23rd, when I received an answer from the Council, who had taken that time to deliberate on my letter of the 15th, granting permission to receive bread daily for the use of the ships while we remained in this port, and the same evening I received a letter from the Governor granting all my demands. 1787 October. The Good Our passage from Rio de Janeiro was very favourable. number of sick on our arrival here was twenty marines and ninetythree convicts. The Sirius and Supply had only eight sick on board, and as all the ships were very amply supplied with soft bread, vegetables, and fresh meat, I did not think it necessary to land any of the sick. Their lordships will see by the returns that there are very few sick at present. passage. for sea We are now ready for sea. What live cattle the ships can stow Ready are now getting on board, with such grain and seeds as was wanted, and I shall sail immediately. The remaining so long before I could obtain leave to procure the necessaries we wanted has detained me longer in this port than I wished, but it will, I hope, be the means of keeping the people in health for the rest of the passage. and seed. While at the Cape, Phillip availed himself of every Plants opportunity for the purpose of procuring the plants and seed required for his farming operations. "As it was earnestly wished to introduce the fruits of the Cape into the new settlement, Captain Phillip was ably assisted in his endeavours to procure the rarest and the best of every species, both in plant and seed, by the King's botanist."* The collection made, both at the Cape and at Rio, included almost every kind of useful plant considered likely to thrive in the new country. With most of them Phillip's expectations. were fully realised from the first; but it took time and experience to learn that the coffee, cocoa, cotton, and banana Tropical plants, collected at Rio, required a rather more tropical climate than that of Botany Bay. Nor were the ipecacuanha and jalap plants, laid in at Rio, destined to take any place in the list of exports from the colony; but the orange, lime, and lemon trees obtained there made ample Collins, p. xxvii. plants. 1787 October. Live stock. amends for failure in other directions.* The selection made at the Cape proved an unqualified success; the plants included the vine, quince, apple, pear, and strawberry, with the oak, myrtle, and fig trees, the bamboo and the sugarcane, as well as grain seed of every kind. Sheep, cattle, and horses were also obtained at the Cape, but the selection was not made with anything like the care devoted to the plants. All the stock taken on board on public account were-one stallion, three mares, three colts, two bulls, six cows, forty-four sheep, four goats, and twentyeight hogs. Phillip and the officers of the marines made private purchases on their own account, but, as Captain Tench informs us, their original intentions on this head were High prices. materially affected by the prices they were asked to pay. This consideration probably deterred Phillip from making a larger investment than he did; but the list of his purchases seems painfully economical when compared with the extent and nature of the territory for which the stock was intended. With all his confidence in the future of the colony, no idea of its capabilities for stock-raising ever entered his mind. The one fact which ultimately more than satisfied all his predictions never even occurred to him; and hence it was that he sailed away from the Cape to the greatest pastoral country in the world with a few head of cattle and sheep, barely sufficient to stock the farm of an ordinary settler. Small farming. * Bennett, Gatherings of a Naturalist, p. 306-"The Orange-tree in Australia." + Hunter, p. 31; Collins, p. xxvii; Tench, p. 38. Phillip purchased upwards of seventy sheep on his own and on Government account, of which one only was alive when he wrote his despatch on the 28th September, 1788; post, p. 343. ENGLAND A HUNDRED YEARS AGO. to the Expe THE fact that Phillip's expedition attracted very little public 1787 attention in England is one of the most striking circumstances connected with it. Measured by its results, it may be said to have been one of the greatest events in English Indifference history during the eighteenth century, just as Sir Walter dition. Raleigh's attempts to colonise North America formed one of the greatest events of the sixteenth; but few except Phillip seem to have formed any conception of its real importance. The Ministers who organised it and carried it into execution introduced it to the notice of Parliament simply as a plan for the disposal of felons and the relief of gaols. No one in the House of Commons had much to say about it. Lord Sydney claimed no credit for it. Pitt never made any reference to it. Burke, whose sympathy Conciliation with the American colonists had been so strongly moved for America, many years previously, and who, beyond all his contemporaries, had learned to appreciate the importance of the colonies, was silent upon the subject. He touched the skirts of it, so to speak, in 1785, when he pleaded for some merciful consideration towards the unfortunate people who were then awaiting transportation, crowded together in the gaols to the number of 100,000. The swampy coasts of Africa Penal settlewere then supposed to be their destination. It was under- African stood that the Government had some design of establishing convict settlements in that part of the world, notwithstanding its known unhealthiness; and probably Burke's protest against any such project, which he pronounced inhuman, with 1774. ment on the coast. |