DISCOVERY OF EASTERN AUSTRALIA 425 



good water, though in very insufficient quantity, 1 and in 

 a place which the ships could not approach. The " light 

 sandy soil " that might so easily be cultivated still remains 

 uncultivated. Exasperated colonists searched in vain 

 for " the fine meadows talked of in Cook's voyage." " I 

 could never see them," writes Surgeon White, " though 

 I took some pains to find them out ; nor have I ever 

 heard of a person that has seen any part resembling them." 2 

 In George's River, at the head of the Bay, " several good 

 situations offered," wrote Phillip, " for a small number 

 of people, but none that appeared calculated for our 

 numbers," and " the swamps rendered the most eligible 

 situation unhealthy." It was true that there was 

 plenty of good stone, but the colonists were asking for 

 bread. Botany Bay proved to be, as a London writer 3 

 summed up the news, " picturesque and pleasing to philo- 

 sophers." In fact Cook's description seems inexplicably 

 optimistic ; though it is fair to remember that he was 

 not thinking of convict colonists, and that he was in no 

 way responsible for Banks's preposterous promise that 

 they would be able to maintain themselves after one 

 year without help from England. We seem to be led 

 to the conclusion that Sydney owes its foundation to the 

 fact that Cook, one of the most exact observers who have 

 ever observed, once in his life made a singular series of 

 mistakes. 4 



1 Tench writes : " Close to us was the spring at which Mr. Cook 

 watered, but we did not think the water very excellent, nor did it run 

 freely." 



2 King, however, climbing a hill, apparently near San Souci, found 

 " an exceedingly fine black mould, with some excellent timber trees, 

 and very rich grass " (Historical Records of N.S.W., vol. ii. p. 541). 



3 Phillip's Voyages. 



* The opinions of early visitors were universally bad. " The whole 

 country, as far as we saw," wrote Ross, " appeared to us to be either 

 sand, rock or swamp, and unfit for any kind of cultivation." " A 

 country and place so forbidding and so hateful as only to merit execra- 

 tion and curses," wrote White under date iyth April, 1790. Peron 

 wrote in 1802 : " Botany Bay is a humid, marshy, rather sterile 

 place, and the anchorage for vessels is neither good nor sure." 

 Tench admits that the country round George's River " far exceeds 

 in richness the soil about Cape Banks or Point Solander, though it is 



