CHAPTEB I. 

 INTRODUCTORY. 



THE adventures and discoveries of the navigators who visited the 

 coasts of Australia before the close of the eighteenth century have 

 little direct connection with the history of Victoria. Their pictu- 

 resque story has been ably told by writers covering a larger area, 

 and for all practical purposes the voyage of the First Fleet, which 

 left England in May, 1787, to found a permanent settlement at the 

 Antipodes, may be regarded as the starting-point of Colonial annals. 



As this voyage represents the initiatory effort of Australian 

 colonisation it is worth recording at some length. 



The year 1787 was not a brilliant one in English history. The 

 country was smarting under the sense of defeat and humiliation in 

 the but recently finished strife with the North American colonies. 

 George III. was a recognised lunatic, but had not yet been super- 

 seded. His son and successor had entered upon a career of pro- 

 fligacy that discredited royalty, and brought him annually before 

 Parliament as a suppliant for the means to pacify his creditors. 

 The substratum of society was in that electrical condition of dis- 

 satisfaction with things in general which characterised the period 

 immediately preceding the outburst of the French Eevolution; 

 snarling in sullen discontent, living from hand to mouth in a 

 savage contest with hunger and poverty. The penal laws were 

 ferocious in conception and harsh in administration. As a con- 

 sequence, the prisons were full to overflowing, and there was 

 neither the consideration nor the opportunity for regarding the 

 reformatory aspect of punishment. 



To get rid of this sweltering mass of moral corruption was the 

 main consideration of the Government of the day ; to get it out of 



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