4i8 



THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



A walk on 

 the North 

 side. 



Stingrays 

 and botany. 



besides timber, as fine meadow as ever was seen ; l however, 

 we found it not all like this, some places were very rocky, 

 but this I believe to be uncommon. The stone is sandy, 

 and very proper for building." 



On the afternoon of the 5th, Cook crossed to the North 

 Shore, and walked three or four miles towards the future 

 site of Sydney. " We met," he says, " with nothing 

 remarkable ; great part of the country, for some distance 

 inland from the sea coast, is mostly a barren heath diver- 

 sified with marshes and morasses." One may to-day 

 take Cook's afternoon walk, and still find " a barren 

 heath diversified with marshes and morasses," though 

 a suburb is now at last on its fringe. It is a lovely bush 

 walk, on the side of still lovelier coastal scenery. But 

 Cook was thinking, not of scenery, but of commerce 

 and colonies ; and the Sydney side showed " nothing 

 remarkable." 



What name shall we give to this Bay, so " spacious, 

 safe, and commodious " ? Two things had seemed specially 

 remarkable, the fish and the wild-flowers. Shall we 

 name it after its stingrays or after its botany ? The 



1 Where were Cook's meadows ? The question was asked with 

 bitterness by the first colonists, and is still discussed by Sydney his- 

 torians. " The pinnace," wrote Cook, " went to the head of the 

 Bay. . . . After which we took water, and went almost to the head 

 of the inlet." Was " the inlet " George's River ? Cook's map (p. 414) 

 . marks its estuary up to Tom Ugly's Point and a little beyond. In 

 1788 Lieut. King saw, apparently near Sans Souci, " an exceedingly 

 fine black mould, with some excellent timber trees, and very rich 

 grass." And Tench, after going up George's River, wrote that " the 

 country around far exceeded in richness of soil that about Cape Banks 

 and Cape Solander." Or was " the inlet " Cook's River ? It is 

 marked on Cook's map to a point near Tempe railway station. Tench's 

 opinion was that " Cook's meadows " were the swamps about the 

 estuary of Cook's River, in which he plunged knee deep, in his hunt 

 after Indian murderers. " We had passed," he wrote, " through the 

 country which the discoverers of Botany Bay extol as ' some of the 

 finest meadows in the world.' These meadows, instead of grass, are 

 covered with high coarse rushes growing in a rotten spongy bog, into 

 which we were plunged knee-deep at every step." Tench's Complete 

 Account, p. 1 02. "Inland," wrote Banks in his description of New 

 Holland, " you sometimes meet with a bog, upon which the grass 

 grows rank and thick, so that no doubt the soil is sufficiently fertile." 

 Did Cook omit to notice that the " deep black soil," which produced the 

 " fine meadows " was a bog ? This seems the most probable opinion. 



