424 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



safe, and commodious," and who points to " the very 

 fine stream " on the North Shore, in a place where " a 

 ship might lay almost land-locked." It is Cook who 

 makes the suggestive and misleading remark that the 

 country might be cultivated without the cutting down 

 of a single tree. It is Cook who found at the head of 

 the inlet " a deep black soil capable of producing any 

 kind of grain," and that did produce " as fine meadow 

 as ever was seen." It is Cook again who notes that " the 

 stone is sandy, and very proper for building." In short 

 it is Cook who thought that Botany Bay would be a good 

 place for a settlement. We do not know that he ever 

 had the opportunity to testify publicly to this effect. 

 But one must guess that his conversation impressed 

 his friends, and among them Banks. Banks's recom- 

 mendation of Botany Bay as a place of settlement leaves 

 me puzzled. But we may note, in partial explanation, 

 that, while it receives no support from his own Journal, 

 it receives fairly good support from Cook's. 



Cook's And Cook was entirely wrong. Botany Bay is " spacious " 



enough, but it is neither " safe " nor " commodious." 

 When, eighteen years later, Governor Phillip sailed into the 

 Bay with his seven hundred convict colonists, he found that 

 there was no shelter from the East winds, and that the 

 greater part was so shoal that ships of even a moderate 

 draught of water were obliged to anchor with the entrance 

 of the Bay open, and were " exposed to a heavy sea that 

 rolls in when it blows hard from the Eastward." 1 ;i I 

 did not see any site," he wrote, " to which there was not 

 strong objection." The " very fine stream " on the North 

 Shore was observed, 2 and Laperouse must have used 

 it when he anchored by that shore a week later. But to 

 Phillip it seemed that the least bad of all bad places was 

 near Point Sutherland, where there was a small run of 



1 " It will easily be perceived by looking at the draft of this Bay," 

 wrote Hunter, after a careful ten days' survey in 1789, " that it is 

 not possible to lie land-locked with a ship in any part of it ; you will 

 always be exposed to the large sea which tumbles in here with an easterly 

 wind " (Hunter, p. 162, and Chart, p. 160). 



2 Historical Records of N.S.W., vol. ii. p. 589. 



