434 



THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



A walk up 

 the river. 



Indians." 



it " morally certain " that Quiros " never was upon any 

 part of this coast." He did not know that, the year before, 

 Bougainville had made the same thing absolutely certain 

 by sailing from the land of Quiros to the reefs off New 

 Holland. 



One day Banks and the Second Lieutenant walked 

 a good way up the river, and Banks made the most favour- 

 able remark that he ever made about any part of Australia. 

 The country, he said, was " generally low, thickly covered 

 with long grass, and seemed to promise great fertility 

 were the people to plant and improve it." They camped 

 for the night on the banks of the river, and made a fire ; 

 but the mosquitoes " followed us into the very smoke, 

 nay almost into the fire, which, hot as the climate was, 

 we could better bear the heat of than their intolerable 

 stings." Next day they hunted " the animal," and camped 

 at night on a broad sand-bank, lying on plaintain leaves 

 under the shade of a bush. The mosquitoes did not 

 trouble, and the weary were at rest ; " all of us slept 

 almost without intermission." They returned to the ship 

 next day, shooting some ducks, and observing a seven-foot 

 alligator crawl from the mangroves into the water. 



It was in the Endeavour River that the Englishmen 

 made their only successful attempt to become acquainted 

 with the natives. At Botany Bay these had remained 

 sullenly hostile. At Bustard Bay and Thirsty Sound 

 none had been seen. But at Endeavour Rivef a very 

 precarious friendship was established. For though the 

 natives showed no interest in the Englishmen's toys, 

 they showed a very deep interest in the turtles which 

 the Englishmen caught on the reef. They came on board 

 ship and asked for one, and, when their request was refused, 

 it was their reef, and therefore it was their turtle 

 they began to haul it away. And, when the unjust 

 Englishmen took it from them, they started a bush- 

 fire, which all but consumed Banks's tent. " I had little 

 idea," he writes, " of the fury with which the grass burnt 

 in this hot climate, nor of the difficulty of extinguishing 

 it when once alighted." 



