TO BOTANY BAY. 25 provoked a desire to f ouiid other colonies, which in course 1786 of time might compensate England for them; and in the second place, there was the clear political necessity of occupying the territory discovered by Captain Cook, in order to prevent its occupation by the French.* The sequence of events during the twenty-five years which preceded the expedition under Governor Phillip is Htotorfcai too strikingly suggestive to be overlooked. We have only to review the great historical occurrences of that time in order to see the connection between them. 1. The Peace of Paris in 1763 put an end to the long Peace of
- . ° Pftrlfl, 1768.
struggle between Prance and England for the possession of Canada and India. The French having lost both, it was inevitable that they should seek to retrieve the disaster by fresh discoveries in other parts of the world. 2. Accordingly, an expedition of discovery in the South De Bougain- Sea was despatched under the command of Louis de Bou- gainville, Colonel of Foot and Commodore, in 1766. He sailed round the world — the first achievement of the kind in the history of French navigation — and discovered various islands in the Pacific Ocean. 3. The English expedition under Captain Cook, " for Captain making discoveries in the southern hemisphere,^' followed in 1768, and the publication of his voyages in 1773 directed attention to one of the greatest fields for colonisa- tion that had yet been made known. 4. The French Government despatched another expedition Marion, in 1772, under Captain Marion Du Fresne, to make dis- coveries in the Southern Ocean. He touched at Van Die- men^s Land and New Zealand, but added little or nothing to their geography. 5. A second expedition under Captain Cook was de- captain spatched in 1772 for the purpose of making discoveries in the unexplored part of the southern hemisphere. New Cale- donia and Norfolk Island were discovered on this voyage. Digitized by Google
