1798 attachment to Sir Joseph Banks. It is curious to observe how they both turned instantly and hopefully to him when A friend in misfortune overtook them, as if they felt instinctively that either his hand must help them, or none at all. need. These are memorable instances of the singular influence exercised by Sir Joseph with respect to men and matters connected with New South Wales. A remarkable illustration of his fatherly interest in it may be found in a draft letter written by him to the Secretary of the Treasury in Exploration June, 1798. The necessity for exploring the interior of the colony with a view to the development of its resources had evidently occupied his attention; and in the course of his letter he sketched out a plan for the purpose, in which he seems to have felt great confidence. He began by pointing out how much this matter had been neglected: in 1798. We have now occupied the country of New South Wales more than ten years; and so much has the discovery of the interior been neglected that no one article has hitherto been discovered, by the No imports. importation of which the mother country can receive any degree of return for the cost of founding and hitherto maintaining the colony. Rivers and raw material. Mungo A country so extensive must possess a large river system and raw material of some kind: : It is impossible to conceive that such a body of land, as large as all Europe, does not produce vast rivers capable of being navigated into the heart of the interior; or that, if properly investigated, such a country, situate in a most fruitful climate, should not produce some native raw material of importance to such a manufacturing country as England is. A celebrated traveller had just arrived in England, fresh from the work of exploration: Mr. Mungo Park,* lately returned from a journey in Africa, where he penetrated farther into the inland than any European * Mungo Park was sent out to Africa in 1795 on his first exploring expedition by the African Association, on the recommendation of Sir Joseph Banks, a prominent member of the committee. He returned to England in December, 1797. His second expedition to that country, on which he set out in December, 1803, was undertaken at the request of the Government, and proved fatal to him. 1798 before has done, by several hundred miles, and discovered an immense navigable river running westward, which offers the means of penetrating into the centre of that vast continent, . . offers His himself as a volunteer to be employed in exploring the interior of in Africa. New Holland, by its rivers or otherwise, as may in the event be found most expedient. discoveries attainments. His character and qualifications were beyond question:His moral character is unblemished, his temper mild, and his His patience inexhaustible, as he has proved during his African expedition. He is sufficiently versed in astronomy to make and to calculate observations to determine both latitude and longitude; he knows geography enough to construct a map of the countries he may visit ; draws a little; has a competent knowledge of botany and zoology; and has been educated in the medical line. He is very moderate in his terms; he will be contented with 10s. a day and his rations, and happy if his pay is settled at 12s. The amount of his outfit for instruments, arms, presents, &c., will Proposed equipment. not, I think, exceed £100. He will want a decked vessel of about thirty tons, under the command of a lieutenant, with orders to follow his advice in all matters of exploring. Such a vessel may easily be built in the colony, if the one already there, which is found to have very bad qualities as a sea boat, cannot be made sufficiently trustworthy; and Lieutenant Flinders, a countryman Flinders of mine, a man of activity and information, who is already there, will, I am sure, be happy if he is entrusted with the command, and will enter into the spirit of his orders, and agree perfectly with Park. and Park. vessel. The crew of such a vessel need not, in my opinion, consist of An more than ten men-four for boat-keepers and six to proceed in exploring the country with one or both the commanders, as may happen, when the land journies are to be attempted. and corre In the event of this project being carried into execution, Sir Joseph expressed his readiness to draw up instructions Instructions for the parties and to correspond with them during the spondence. execution of their plans, under the superintendence of the Treasury-" such hopes have I of material discoveries being made, and such zeal do I feel for the prospects of a colony in the founding of which I bore a considerable share." 1798-1806 adopted. This proposal, however, does not seem to have met with any acceptance at the hands of the Government, who were probably too much occupied with the war in which they Proposal not were then engaged with France to think of fitting out exploring expeditions to New South Wales. Had the suggestion been adopted, it may well be supposed that, although Mungo Park's idea of exploring the interior by sailing up large navigable rivers might not have been realised, he and Flinders together could hardly have failed to anticipate some of the discoveries made in later years. But the plan was more feasible on paper than it would have been found in practice. In that respect it resembles a proposal made by Flinders to Sir Joseph Banks, in a letter written from Wilhelm's Plains in the Isle of France, March 20th, 1806 Should a peace speedily arrive, and their lordships of the Admiralty wish to have the N.W. coast of Australia examined A proposal immediately, I will be ready to embark on any ship provided for the service that they may chuse to send out. My misfortunes have not abated my ardour in the service of science. from Flin ders. desert. With five or six asses to carry provisions (and they can be procured here), expeditions might be made into the interior of Australia from the head of the Gulph of Carpentaria in 18°, and from the head of the Great Gulph on the south coast in 32°, until the courses should nearly meet : five hundred miles each way would most probably be sufficient, since the country does not appear to be mountainous; a view of my general chart will exemplify this. In case of being again sent to Australia, I should much wish that this was a part of my instructions. Perhaps it was a fortunate thing for Flinders that his Asses in the project for exploring the interior "with five or six asses to carry provisions" was not adopted, or the world might have lost his subsequent contributions to geographical science. But although the idea of exploring Australia in that fashion may provoke a smile, a somewhat similar one was not unsuccessful in later years. When Captain Grey set out from Hanover Bay in 1837 on his exploring tour in the northwest, he took with him twenty-six ponies, for which he had sent to Timor. Although they were "very small and Timor ponies. perfectly wild," they proved useful, if they did not exactly 1797-99 answer the purpose.* confidence future. Sir Joseph was never tired of expressing his conviction Banks's as to the great future which lay before the colony; nor was in the his confidence in it ever shaken, even in the darkest hours of its early years. Among the many expressions of his opinion on the subject to be found in his correspondence, the following passages in letters to Governor Hunter, written in 1797 and 1799, deserve attention: and soil. The climate and soil are, in my own opinion, superior to most Climate which have yet been settled by Europeans. I have always maintained that assertion, grounded on my own experience, but have been uniformly contradicted, except by Governor Phillip, till your last favors have taken away all doubts from the minds of those who have been permitted to peruse them. valuable. Your colony is already a most valuable appendage to Great Already Britain, and I flatter myself we shall, before long, see her Ministers made sensible of its real value. Rest assured in the meantime that no opportunity will be lost by me of impressing them with just ideas of the probable importance to which it is likely before long to attain, and to urge them to pay it that degree of attention which it clearly deserves at their hands. He was writing in a time of gloom and disaster in Europe, and naturally turned his eyes to the star rising in the southern sky: world. I see the future prospect of empire and dominion which now A new cannot be disappointed. Who knows but England may revive in New South Wales when it has sunk in Europe? * The gradual development of the art of exploration is an interesting feature in its history. For means of carriage our first explorers, when they left the rivers, had to depend on their own backs; then came the pack-horse, the bullock-team, the dray and cart, with boats for river work, and lastly camels. Oxley, in 1817, travelled with boats and bullock-teams; Sturt, in 1828, relied on bullock-teams and pack-horses; Mitchell started on his expedition of 1835 with two boats carried on a boat-carriage, seven carts drawn by bullocks, and seven pack-horses; Eyre set out in 1840 with drays and pack-horses; Leichhardt, in 1844, travelled with eight bullocks carrying pack-saddles; in 1847 he took with him one hundred and eighty sheep, two hundred and seventy goats, forty bullocks, fifteen horses, and thirteen mules; while Burke and Wills, in 1860, travelled in unprecedented pomp with twenty-seven camels, led by sepoys, with waggons and pack-horses bringing up the rear. 1787 AUSTRALIA A HUNDRED YEARS AGO. WHO it was that originally applied the name Australia to the land once known to geographers as Terra Australis Incognita, and afterwards as New Holland, has been a standing A problem subject of discussion for many years. When Phillip was sent out on his colonising expedition, the word Australia was certainly not in common use. The whole of the territory unsolved. included within the limits of his Commission was known as New South Wales; the rest of the continent still retaining the title given by the Dutchmen to that portion of it which they claimed by virtue of discovery.* It was not till many years afterwards that these names gave place to that of AusFlinders's tralia as the designation of the whole continent. Flinders has suggestion. been generally credited with the selection, or at least with the first public application of the word, in his Voyage to Terra Australis, published in 1814, in which he wrote: His charts. Had I permitted myself any innovation upon the original term, Terra Australis, it would have been to convert it into AUSTRALIA, as being more agreeable to the ear and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth. The collection of charts published with the narrative of his voyage contains a preliminary one entitled-" General Chart of Terra Australis, or Australia." This chart having "The original name, used by the Dutch themselves until some time after Tasman's second voyage in 1644, was Terra Australis or Great South Land; and when it was displaced by New Holland, the new term was applied only to the parts lying westward of a meridian line passing through Arnheim's Land on the north, and near the Isles of St. Francis and St. Peter on the south; all to the eastward, including the shores of the Gulph of Carpentaria, still remained as Terra Australis."-Flinders, Introduction, p. ii. |