1770 SCARCITY OF INHABITANTS 307 



Upon the whole, New Holland, though in every respect 

 the most barren country I have seen, is not so bad but that 

 between the productions of sea and land, a company who 

 had the misfortune to be shipwrecked upon it might support 

 themselves, even by the resources that we have seen : un- 

 doubtedly a longer stay and a visit to different parts would 

 discover many more. 



This immense tract of land, the largest known which 

 does not bear the name of a continent, as it is considerably 

 larger than all Europe, is thinly inhabited, even to admira- 

 tion, at least that part of it that we saw. We never but 

 once saw so many as thirty Indians together, and that was 

 a family, men, women, and children, assembled upon a rock 

 to see the ship pass by. At Sting-ray's Bay, 1 where they 

 evidently came down several times to fight us, they never 

 could muster above fourteen or fifteen fighting men, indeed 

 in other places they generally ran away from us, whence it 

 might be concluded that there were greater numbers than 

 we saw, but their houses and sheds in the woods, which we 

 never failed to find, convinced us of the smallness of their 

 parties. We saw, indeed, only the sea coast; what the 

 immense tract of inland country may produce is to us 

 totally unknown. We may have liberty to conjecture, how- 

 ever, that it is totally uninhabited. The sea has, I 

 believe, been universally found to be the chief source of 

 supplies to Indians ignorant of the arts of cultivation. The 

 wild produce of the land alone seems scarcely able to 

 support them at all seasons, at least I do not remember to 

 have read of any inland nation who did not cultivate the 

 ground more or less : even the North Americans, who are 

 so well versed in hunting, sow their maize. But should 

 a people live inland, who supported themselves by cultiva- 

 tion, these inhabitants of the sea coast must certainly have 

 learned to imitate them in some degree at least, otherwise 

 their reason must be supposed to hold a rank little superior 

 to that of monkeys. 



What may be the reason of this absence of people is 



1 Afterwards called Botany Bay. 



