Ixx AN INTRODUCTORY traveller's love of exaggeration ; but no one doubts now that he spoke truthfully as well as prophetically. Phillip confirmed every word he said when writing a few months after his arrival at Sydney Cove— (p. 338) :— The climate is equal to the finest in Europe, and we very seldom have any fogs. All the plants and fruit-trees brought from the Brazil and the Cape, that did not die on the passage, thrive exceedingly well ; and rQ do not want vegetables, good in their kind, which are natural to t^'e country. But long after Phillip's evidence on these points had been published in English newspapers, the cynical spirit of disbelief that has always hung like a cloud over the country met him wherever he went. Ten years after the occupation of it had begun, he told Governor Hunter that he had been uniformly contradicted, except by Governor Phillip (p. 85), whenever he gave his opinion about its soil and climate. There was some authority, too, for the contradiction; for had not the Frenchmen, who dropped into Botany Bay just as the First Fleet was sailing out of it, made it known to the world that " in their whole voyage they nowhere found so poor a country nor such wretched, miserable people " ? (p. 33 n). How they would have ridiculed the idea, had it been mentioned to them by Phillip's officers, of their coming to take possession of such a place ! They would not have taken it as a gift from his Britannic Majesty — not even with all the convicts thrown in. The volumes of their countryman de Brosses were on board their ships; they had all read his description of New Holland and its inhabitants ; and they were prepared to indorse every word of it. Even the poor natives had nothing to recommend them, although they could whistle the air of Malhrooke as soon as they heard it — (121 n). Digitized by Google
