1770 SCARCITY OF INHABITANTS 307 
Upon the whole, New Holland, though in every respect 
the most barren country I have seen, is not so bad but that 
between the productions 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: un- 
doubtedly a longer stay and a visit to different parts would 
discover many more. 
This immense tract of land, the largest known which 
does not bear the name of a continent, as it is considerably 
larger than all Europe, is thinly inhabited, even to admira- 
tion, at least that part of it that we saw. We never but 
once saw so many as thirty Indians together, and that was 
a family, men, women, and children, assembled upon a rock 
to see the ship pass by. At Sting-ray’s Bay,’ where they 
evidently came down several times to fight us, they never 
could muster above fourteen or fifteen fighting men, indeed 
in other places they generally ran away from us, whence it 
might be concluded that there were greater numbers than 
we saw, but their houses and sheds in the woods, which we 
never failed to find, convinced us of the smallness of their 
parties. We saw, indeed, only the sea coast; what the 
immense tract of inland country may produce is to us 
totally unknown. We may have liberty to conjecture, how- 
ever, that it is totally uninhabited. The sea has, I 
believe, been universally found to be the chief source of 
supplies to Indians ignorant of the arts of cultivation. The 
wild produce of the land alone seems scarcely able to 
support them at all seasons, at least I do not remember to 
have read of any inland nation who did not cultivate the 
ground more or less: even the North Americans, who are 
so well versed in hunting, sow their maize. But should 
a people live inland, who supported themselves by cultiva- 
tion, these inhabitants of the sea coast must certainly have 
learned to imitate them in some degree at least, otherwise 
their reason must be supposed to hold a rank little superior 
to that of monkeys. 
What may be the reason of this absence of people is 
1 Afterwards called Botany Bay. 
