If we now compare Matra's description of this country-redolent as it is of spices and all manner of good things-with the melancholy picture of it presented by de Brosses less than thirty years before, we may ask-how is this difference in opinion to be accounted for? The Frenchman was not in any way interested in depreciating New Holland or any other part of the Terres Australes as a field for colonisation; we have seen that he wrote for the purpose of stimulating his countrymen to form settlements in that part of the world, wherever it could be done with any prospect of success; and the chapter in which he expanded his ideas on the subject had more to do with the colonisation that subsequently took place than is usually suspected. It would be no answer to say that Cook's account of his explorations brought about the change in public opinion. Matra, it is true, quotes his Voyage, but there is no resemblance between their accounts of the country. The chapter in which its resources are summed up by Hawkesworth is painfully cold and flat.

It is upon the whole rather barren than fertile, yet the rising ground is checquered by woods and lawns, and the plains and vallies are in many places covered with herbage; the soil, however, is frequently sandy, and many of the lawns, or savannahs, are rocky and barren, especially to the northward, where, in the best spots, vegetation was less vigorous than in the southern part of the country; the trees were not so tall, nor was the herbage so rich. The grass in general is high, but thin, and the trees, where they are largest, are seldom less than forty feet asunder; nor is the country inland, as far as we could examine it, better clothed than the sea coast. The banks of the bays are covered with mangroves, to the distance of a mile within the beach, under which the soil is a rank mud, that is always overflowed by a spring tide; farther in the country we sometimes met with a bog, upon which the grass was very thick and luxuriant, and sometimes with a valley, that was clothed with underwood; the soil in some parts seemed to be capable of improvement, but the greater part is such as can

admit of no cultivation. The coast, at least that part of it which lies to the northward of 25° S., abounds with fine bays and harbours, where vessels may lie in perfect security from all winds.

There is no ground for complaint on the score of exaggeration here.* No one who read the chapter could have formed a high opinion of the country it described; and it is certain that the general public were not at all impressed with the notion that New South Wales was destined to be a great colony. The fact that ten years passed by from the publication of Hawkesworth's volumes to the date of Matra's pamphlet, without any sign of a movement in the shape of colonisation, is enough to show that the public mind had not even conceived an idea of that kind. How the ordinary Englishman looked at the contents of those quartos, while they were still fresh in the minds of men, may be seen in Boswell's account of a conversation about them ::

JOHNSON: "A book may be good for nothing; or there may be only one thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through? These voyages (pointing to the three large volumes of Voyages to the South Seas which were just come out), who will read them through? A man had better work his way before the mast than read them through; they will be eaten by rats and mice before they are read through. There can be little entertainment in such books; one set of savages is like another."†

If the account of the great voyage made no deeper impression on Dr. Johnson's mind than that, it is not likely that other men would have seen much more in it than he did. And since the exuberant ideas we find in Matra's sketch of the country are not to be found in Hawkesworth, from what source of information were they obtained? The only other source open to him was

"I gave him [Johnson] an account of a conversation which had passed between me and Captain Cook, the day before, at dinner at Sir John Pringle's, and he was much pleased with the conscientious accuracy of that celebrated circumnavigator, who set me right as to many of the exaggerated accounts given by Dr. Hawkesworth of his voyages." -Boswell's Life of Johnson, by Napier, vol. ii, p. 295. It is not clear from this passage whether the charge of exaggeration referred to the published accounts of the voyage, or to Hawkesworth's conversation about it. His preface says that the manuscript was read over to Cook before it was published, and was approved of by him. That he was not pleased with his editor's work may be suspected from the fact that the title page of the account of his second voyage states that it was "Written by James Cook."

† Boswell, vol. iii, p. 396.

Sir Joseph Banks; and it may therefore be inferred that the facts and arguments which he urged on the attention of the Government were derived from the conversations that had taken place between them. Men in search of information about a particular country usually consult those who can speak of it from their own personal knowledge; and there can be no doubt that Matra had no sooner made up his mind to develop his ideas in a practical form than he betook himself to Banks, and obtained from the fountain-head the hints which he afterwards developed in his sketch. Banks was a traveller as well as a philosopher; he had sailed round the globe when he was a young man of twenty-five; and as the pivot of the whole scheme was a geographical one, he could have no difficulty in foreseeing the substantial advantages that would ultimately accrue from it to England. Conceive him, then, standing before a map of the world and pointing out to Matra how, with a colony at Botany Bay, England would be in a position to hold both her enemies-the Dutch and Spaniards -in check; because she could as easily threaten Timor, Batavia, and the Moluccas with one squadron, as she could operate against Callao and the Spanish merchant ships with another. They could not do any harm by attacking the colony, because it could be secured against any attack they might venture to make. That was a political consideration which alone would justify the establishment of a colony. The commercial advantages were not less obvious; because another glance at the map would show that, with a territory comprising such a variety of climate, tropical and temperate, and a soil producing the very richest vegetation, there could be no room for doubt as to the results. of colonisation. At this point, Banks would naturally bring his varied botanical knowledge to bear on the subject; all the plants. known to commerce would be enumerated, and the probability of their successful cultivation in New South Wales would be demonstrated by the experience of other countries lying in the same parallels of latitude.

Possibly there was a good deal of tropical luxuriance about his eloquence on this subject which-to minds not touched with Matra's enthusiasm-might have suggested the idea of a

traveller's love of exaggeration; but no one doubts now that he spoke truthfully as well as prophetically. Phillip confirmed every word he said when writing a few months after his arrival at Sydney Cove-(p. 338) :—

The climate is equal to the finest in Europe, and we very seldom have any fogs. All the plants and fruit-trees brought from the Brazil and the Cape, that did not die on the passage, thrive exceedingly well; and we do not want vegetables, good in their kind, which are natural to the country.

But long after Phillip's evidence on these points had been published in English newspapers, the cynical spirit of disbelief that has always hung like a cloud over the country met him wherever he went. Ten years after the occupation of it had begun, he told Governor Hunter that he had been "uniformly contradicted, except by Governor Phillip" (p. 85), whenever he gave his opinion about its soil and climate. There was some authority, too, for the contradiction; for had not the Frenchmen, who dropped into Botany Bay just as the First Fleet was sailing out of it, made it known to the world that "in their whole voyage they nowhere found so poor a country nor such wretched, miserable people"? (p. 33 n). How they would have ridiculed the idea, had it been mentioned to them by Phillip's officers, of their coming to take possession of such a place! They would not have taken it as a gift from his Britannic Majesty-not even with all the convicts thrown in. The volumes of their countryman de Brosses were on board their ships; they had all read his description of New Holland and its inhabitants; and they were prepared to indorse every word of it. Even the poor natives had nothing to recommend them, although they could whistle the air of Malbrooke as soon as they heard it (121 n).

LET us now turn for a few moments from the geographers and the Frenchmen to the artists, and endeavour to ascertain what they thought of the country which others held in such little account. Men who form their notions of the earth from poring over maps and charts, or twirling a globe on its pivot, are not usually men of imagination; and no one would expect to meet with poetic descriptions of scenery in French voyages of discovery. English artists, on the other hand, are usually credited with the intuitive perceptions of genius when they take the field in search of landscapes; and in their written accounts of a new country, visited in the interests of their art, we expect to find, at the very least, some freedom from prejudice, if not that glow of enthusiasm which men feel when their imaginations are stimulated by beautiful scenery never seen before.

On board the Endeavour there was a young artist, named. Sydney Parkinson, who had been engaged by Banks for the special purpose of sketching all the picturesque and novel subjects they expected to meet with in the course of their three years' voyage. He not only took sketches but he kept a journal, which, after his death, was published by his brother in a large quarto, 'embellished," as the title-page says, "with twenty-nine views and designs, engraved by capital artists"-(p. 578). Out of the twenty-nine embellishments, there is only one referring to this country; and that represents "two natives of New Holland advancing to combat"-the enemy being Cook and his landing party at Botany Bay. Two illustrations were supplied to Cook's Voyage-one being a view of the Endeavour River, with the ship high and dry on the bank; and the other, a sketch of a kangaroo. These productions may be taken to convey Parkinson's opinion of this part of the world from a professional point of view. The inference is that he did not see any scenery in New South Wales