The city stands on Sydney Cove, one of the numberless bays or harbors of Port Jackson, about four miles from the entrance from the ocean. We will further remark that fortifications have been erected at the Heads, and the authorities are confident that a hostile fleet or army coming to attack them could be successfully resisted. Doctor Bronson told the youths that the harbor which resembled Port Jackson more nearly than any other of which he knew, was Avatcha Bay, in Kamchatka. "It has," said he, "several little bays or harbors around it, just as Port Jackson has, and is fully as capacious and easy of access. I wish we had a diagram of it to show to our Australian friends."
"Before we left New Zealand," said Frank in his journal, "Doctor Bronson telegraphed to an old friend, Mr. Donald Manson, telling him by what steamer we expected to arrive. Mr. Manson was at the dock to meet us; he had secured rooms for us at the best hotel, and under his care we saw everything that was worth seeing in Sydney. Later, in Melbourne, where he was equally well acquainted, he was similarly attentive, and we hereby record our unanimous vote of thanks to him for his unvarying and unwearying politeness. If we tried his patience at any time he never allowed us to know it, and we found him a perfect encyclopædia in everything relating to Australia, where he has been a resident for a goodly number of years.
"One day when a proposition was made to go on a hunting excursion, Fred innocently suggested that he had read about Sydney ducks, and would like to shoot some, provided, of course, they were in season. Mr. Manson suppressed a smile as he answered that the shooting of those peculiar birds was no longer practised; he then explained that Sydney ducks can hardly be said to exist at present, the term having been applied to runaway convicts, ticket-of-leave men, and other waifs and strays, of the time when Australia was the receptacle of transported criminals from England and the other British Isles.
"Sydney seems to have been founded by or for these unfortunates. Mr. Manson told us that the settlement was made here in January, 1788, by Captain Phillip, who came here with a fleet of store and transport ships, for the purpose of founding a convict establishment. He had previously landed in Botany Bay, but finding it unsuitable, had abandoned it for the future site of Sydney. The name of the place was given in honor of Viscount Sydney, who first suggested the colonization of New South Wales, and the bay was called Port Jackson, after Sir George Jackson, who was then Secretary to the Lords of the Admiralty.
