SKETCH, ■ Ixvli If we now compare Matra's description of this country — redolent as it is of spices and all manner of good things — ^with the melan- choly picture of it presented by de Brosses less than thirty years before, we may ask — ^how is this difference in opinion to be ac- counted for ? The Frenchman was not in any way interested in depreciating New Holland or any other part of the Terres Aiis- trales as a field for colonisation ; we haye seen that he wrote for the purpose of stimulating his countrymen to form settlements in that part of the world, wherever it could be done with any prospect of success ; and the chapter in which he expanded his ideas on the subject had more to do with the colonisation that subsequently took place than is usually suspected. It would be no answer to say that Cook's account of his explorations brought about the change in public opinion. Matra, it is true, quotes his Voyage, but there is no resemblance between their accounts of the country. The chapter in which its resources are summed up by Hawkesworth is painfully cold and flat. It is upon the whole rather barren than fertile, yet the rising ground is checquered by woods and lawns, and the plains and vallies are in many places covered with herbage; the soil, however, is frequently sandy, and many of the lawns, or savannahs, are rocky and barren, especially to the northward, where, in the best spots, vegetation was less vigorous than in the southern part of the country ; the trees were not so tall, nor was the herbage so rich. The grass in general is high, but thin, and the trees, where they are largest, are seldom less than forty feet asunder; nor is the country inland, as far as we could examine it, better clothed than the sea coast. The banks of the bays are covered with mangroves, to the distance of a mile within the beach, under which the soil is a rank mud, that is always overflowed by a spring tide ; farther in the country we sometimes met with a bog, upon which the grass was very thick and luxuriant, and sometimes with a valley, that was clothed with underwood ; the soil in some parts seemed to be capable of improvement, but the greater pai*t is such as can Digitized by Google
