426 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



Port Cook sailed from Botany Bay at daylight on the 7th 



Jackson. Q M av> At noon they were two or three miles from land, 

 and " abreast of a Bay wherein there appeared to be safe 

 anchorage." Cook called the Bay Port Jackson, in honour 

 of a Secretary of the Admiralty whose name had already 

 been given to a Bay in New Zealand. Banks does not 

 mention a Bay, but remarks that the coast " appeared 

 broken and likely for harbours." 1 Eighteen years later 

 Governor Phillip, exploring the coast for some harbour 

 less bad than Botany Bay, came to Port Jackson, saw 

 in a flash of the eye that it was " the finest harbour in 

 the world," and dumped his convicts down on the banks 

 of Sydney Cove, five miles 'from the heads. Cook, who 

 sailed two or three miles from land, could see only a little 

 way into the harbour, but his chart, says Wharton, " gives 

 the shape of what he could see very accurately." 

 Broken Next day he saw "some broken land" that appeared 

 to form a Bay, which he named " Broken Bay." Cook's 

 Stephens. " Broken Bay " was in the neighbourhood of Narrabeen. 

 The Broken Bay of the modern map, that splendid entrance 

 to a river which Anthony Trollope thought more beautiful 

 than the Rhine, was a few miles to the North, and was 

 not seen from the Endeavour. On the nth Cook saw 

 " a small round rock or island, laying close under the land," 

 which has been identified with Nobby Head at the entrance 

 of Newcastle Harbour. But Cook suspected the existence 

 neither of this fine harbour, nor of the river which flows 

 into it, draining a fertile valley, which would have been 



just as dry " (Narrative, p. 52). But after a nine days' survey of the 

 Bay in Sept. 1789, he wrote : " We were unanimously of opinion 

 that, had not the nautical part of Cook's description been so accurate, 

 there would exist the utmost reason to believe that those who have 

 described the contiguous country had never seen it. On the sides 

 of the harbour, a line of sea-coast more than 30 miles long, we did 

 not find 200 acres that could be cultivated " (Tench's Settlement at 

 Port Jackson, p. 30). 



1 In the Journal now at Auckland, however, Banks wrote : "A Bay 

 or Harbour in which appeared to be good anchorage, this was called 

 Port Jackson. Then he crossed out " good," and wrote " safe " Cook's 

 word. The correction seems interesting and almost conclusive evidence 

 that in this Auckland Journal Banks made a digest of Cook's Journal. 

 See above, pp. 384-385. 



