m NEW SOUTH WALES. 373 Fifty of the American loyalists would have settled all his 1789 agricultural difficulties in a very short time. They would .have shown him how to clear forests^ drain swamps^ make ^^ roads^ and build houses ; how to cultivate the soil^ and how to turn to account every native product of the country they might meet with. They would have led the way in his exploring expeditions, and instead of being compelled to turn back after a few days' helpless wandering in the bush, they would hQ,ve shown him how to cut a way through it as easily as if they had been guided by the unerring instinct of the native. The Blue Mountains would not Exploration. have defied them for five and twenty years ; they would have found their way across its rugged ranges to the pastoral plains of the west, as soon as the increase of their flocks and herds had compelled them to seek fresh pastures. They would have shown, too, how the soil between Sydney Gove and Botany Bay, which he had described as a poor, sandy heath, full of swamps," might be made to yield all Market the vegetable produce that his settlement stood in need of. They would have built their log huts and made their gardens on the banks of Cook's Eiver, the Parramatta, the Hawkes- bury, and the Nepean ; and in the midst of their cultiva- tions would have been found, in due time, the school-house, the market, and the church. Had there been among them any whalers from New England, they would have pointed out how easily a flourishing trade might be established on whaie the coast, with every prospect of proving a source of wealth ^^' to the colony and the mother country.*
- Until the ^ear 1791, no idea seems to have occurred to any one, either
in England or in the colony, as to the probable existence of whales in large numbers off the coast of New South Wales. Neither Matra nor Sir George Young, in describing the various resources of the country and the prospect it afforded of opening up new branches of trade, made any reference to a whale fishery as a possible source of wealth. How plentiful the fish were in Phillip's time may be seen from the fact that one was washed ashore on the coast near Botany Bay in 1788, and another entered the harbour in July, 1790 — where it remamed for several weeks, during which it upset a boat containing a midshipman and three marines, of whom two were drowned. Phillip's silence leaas one to infer that he had not formed any idea on the subject. The first proposal to establish a* fishery came from the master of the transport Britannia, which arrived in October, 1791. He set out on a Digitized by Google
