446 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



save in the South a cherry with nothing but a slightly 

 acid taste to recommend it, and in the North " a very 

 indifferent fig." They tried some palm nuts, but were 

 " deterred from a second experiment by a hearty fit of 

 vomiting." The hogs ate the nuts with good appetite, 

 and the men envied the . hogs their powers of digestion ; 

 but two hogs died, and the rest were saved only by careful 

 nursing. The only useful plants were the gum tree, 

 and a bulrush which gave a resin of a bright yellow. In 

 view of the barrenness of the soil, the variety of plants 

 seemed wonderful, but they were as useless as they were 

 various. Even the timber was so hard that the carpenter 

 who cut firewood complained that his tools were damaged. 

 nor meat. As to fish, flesh, and fowl, voyagers sick of sea-fare 



could eat with joy anything that was not salt and 

 that was not poisonous. " A hawk or a crow was to 

 us as delicate, and perhaps a better relished meal than 

 a partridge or a pheasant to those who had plenty of 

 dainties." But " Kangooroos " were scarce, and birds were 

 shy. " A crow in England, though in general sufficiently 

 wary, is, I must say, a fool to a New Holland crow, and the 

 same may be said of almost all, if not all, the birds of the 

 country." And, making an effort to say all that could be 

 said for the country, he concludes as follows : " Upon the 

 whole, New Holland, though in every respect the most 

 barren country I have seen, is not so bad but that, between 

 the production of sea and land, a company who had the 

 misfortune to be shipwrecked upon it might support 

 themselves even by the resources that we have seen ; 

 undoubtedly a longer stay and a visit to different parts 

 would discover many more." 



No That was the best that our Patron Saint could say in 



a colony 011 favour of our country. We cannot complain of his 

 criticism, for it was just criticism of what he saw. But 

 we may, perhaps, be permitted to wonder at the contrast 

 between this criticism of 1770 and the praise of 1779 

 and of later dates. In 1797 he wrote that the soil of New 

 Holland was in his opinion superior to most that have been 

 settled by Europeans, and that this opinion was grounded 



