444 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



Both Cook and Banks wrote systematic descriptions 

 of the land which they had coasted for two thousand 

 miles. 



Banks's Banks's description of the country of which he was to 



opinion of i . TI <- 



Australia. become the Patron Saint was in the highest degree un- 

 favourable. Patriotic Australians cannot resent his des- 

 scription, for it is a very accurate description of what he 

 saw. But we may regret that our candid friend enjoyed 

 no opportunity to see some of the more pleasing aspects 

 of the country which he was to recommend nine years later 

 as the best possible locality for a British settlement. One 

 would imagine, as one reads his Journal, that his main 

 purpose was to make quite sure that no Englishman would 

 ever think of settling in New Holland. 



" Doomed to " j n the whole length of the coast which we sailed 



everlasting 



barrenness." along, there was a very unusual sameness to be observed 



in the face of the country. Barren it may justly be called, 

 and in a very high degree, at least as far as we saw. The 

 soil in general is sandy and very light ; on it grows grass 

 tall enough, but thin set, and trees of a tolerable size, 

 never however near together, being in general forty, 

 fifty or sixty feet apart. This, and spots of loose sand, 

 sometimes very large, constitute the general face of the 



unlikely that Cook would have in mind this New South Wales of Hudson's 

 Bay when he beat his brains for a name for the Eastern coast of New Hol- 

 land. But the coincidence of the change from New Wales to New South 

 W-ales is certainly curious ; and it is also noteworthy that, as Captain 

 Watson has remarked, the " General Chart " of the world in the 1784 

 edition of Cook's Voyages has New South Wales not only in New Holland 

 but also in Hudson's Bay. Cook had a way of naming places without 

 giving his reasons ; and, when his reasons are given -by another, they 

 are not always reasons that would have occurred to everybody. He 

 gave the name New Hebrides, Forster explains, because " the Hebrides 

 are the westernmost islands of Great Britain " ; and the name of New 

 Caledonia because it " suited not only the good disposition of the 

 people, but also with the nature of the country." The natives, Cook 

 wrote, " had little else than good nature to bestow, in which they 

 exceed all the nations we have yet met with " ; but he considered it 

 unnecessary and superfluous to explain that it was for this reason that 

 he called their country New Caledonia (see below, p. 470). He may 

 have had an equally good reason for giving the name of New Wales 

 and New South Wales, but it remains unexplained. The best guess 

 in fact the only guess is that there came into mind Thomas Button's 

 discovery of " a great continent, called by him New Wales." 



