sisted of the first governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, R. N., with a guard of marines, viz., a major-commandant, twelve subalterns, and twenty-four noncommissioned officers, one hundred and sixty-eight rank and file, with forty women, their wives. These were the unconvicted section of the intended colony. The prisoners were six hundred men, and two hundred and fifty women, the latter being not only the most abandoned of their sex, but many of them aged, infirm, and even idiotic. This fearful disproportion of sexes was maintained, and even increased, until the proportion of men to women was as six to one, and the results became too horrible to be recorded. This "goodly company" was embarked in a frigate, the Sirius, an armed tender, three store-ships, and six transports, under the command of Captain Hunter. At the last moment, by an afterthought, one chaplain was sent on board. There was no schoolmaster, no superintendent, or gaolers, or overseers, except marines with muskets loaded in case of revolt. No agriculturist was sent to teach the highwaymen and pickpockets to plough, and delve, and sow. No system of discipline was planned, nothing beyond mere coercion was attempted. Even the supply of mechanics required for erecting the needful houses and stores was left a matter of chance, dependent on the trades of the six hundred felons; and, as it turned out, there were not half a dozen carpenters, only one bricklayer, and not one mechanic in the whole settlement capable of erecting a corn-mill. DISCOVERY OF PORT JACKSON. 33 The "first fleet" sailed on the 13th May, 1787, and, after a voyage of eight months, during which they touched at the Cape de Verd Islands, Rio de Janeiro, and the Cape of Good Hope, everywhere received with the greatest attention and courtesy, on the 20th January, 1788, anchored in Botany Bay. Within four and twenty hours after landing, Governor Phillip ascertained that Botany Bay was quite unsuitable for the site of a colony, that a sufficient quantity of cultivable agricultural land, and of fresh water, were wanting, and that the harbor was unsafe for ships of burden. Without disembarking his charge, he set out with a party of three boats, to explore the coast to the northward, and particularly Broken Bay, an inlet favorably mentioned by Captain Cook, distant about eighteen miles from Botany Bay; but, as he sailed along the barrier of cliffs which line the shores, he decided to examine a narrow cleft which Cook, passing by as a mere boat harbor, had named after the look-out man who viewed it, Port Jackson. The day was mild and serene. The expedition sailed along the coast near enough to see, and hear the wild cries of, the astonished natives, who followed them as far as the rugged nature of the land would permit. As they approached Port Jackson, the coast wore such an appearance that Captain Phillip fully expected to find Captain Cook's unfavorable impressions realized; but he was destined to be most agreeably disappointed. The first tack carried the expedition out of the long heavy swell of the Pacific Ocean into the smooth water of a canal protected by two projecting "heads," and soon they came within sight of a vast land-locked lake, stretching as far as the eye could reach, dotted with small islands, whose shores sloped, forest-covered, down to the water's edge. Black swans and other rare water-birds fluttered up as the white strangers sailed on, charmed with a scene in which every feature was beautiful, yet strange: they had discovered one of the finest harbors in the world. Coasting round the shores of this great natural basin, Governor Phillip determined to plant his colony on a promontory where a small clear stream trickled into the salt water. After three days spent in exploration, he returned to Botany Bay. On the morning of the 25th January, as they were working out, the English fleet were astonished by seeing two strange ships of war sailing into the bay. These were the Boussole and Astrolabe, the French expedition of discovery under the command of M. de la Pérouse, which had left France in 1785. La Pérouse "had sailed into Botany Bay by Captain Cook's chart, which lay before him on the binnacle. Having heard at Kamtschatka of the intended settlement, he had expected to have found a town built and market established." Thus it was probably but by a few days that the honor of discovering Port Jackson fell to England. The French squadron remained until the 10th March to refresh and refit, and, then departing, were never heard of more until, in 1826, Mr. Dillon discovered at the Manicola Islands FOUNDATION OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 35 traces of arms and ornaments which proved their mournful fate-shipwrecked and murdered by sav ages. A monument has been erected to the memory of La Pérouse and his crew in Botany Bay. CHAPTER II. GOVERNOR PHILLIP TO GOVERNOR KING. FOUNDATION OF NEW SOUTH WALES - THE FIRST CHURCH-WILD CATTLE FOUND-GOVERNOR HUNTER- GOVERNOR KING. ON the 26th January, 1788, an English fleet anchored in deep water close along the shore of Sydney Cove, so called after Lord Sydney, one of the lords of the Admiralty; a formal disembarkation took place - a detachment of marines and blue jackets leaped from their boats into the shades of a primeval forest; after hoisting British colors "near where the colonnade in Bridge-street now stands," the proclamation and commission constituting the colony were read, a salute of small arms was fired, and the career of the province of New South Wales commenced. The whole party landed amounted to one thousand and thirty souls, who encamped under tents, and under and within hollow trees, " in a country resembling the more woody parts of a deer park in England." Such were the incidents of the foundation, and such the founders, of our colonial empire in Australia. No sooner had the convict colonists been disembarked, and the erection of the necessary buildings commenced, than the want of a sufficient body of artificers was experienced. The ships furnished sixteen, and the prisoners twelve, carpenters; and by a piece of unexpected good fortune, which caused much rejoicing, "an experienced bricklayer was discovered among the convicts. He was at once placed at the head of a party of laborers, with orders to construct a number of brick huts: in the meantime the governor occupied a tent." This first example is a fair specimen of the manner in which the penal discipline in the colony was conducted for a long series of years. A useful man was placed in authority, and allowed a variety of indulgencies, quite irrespective of his moral qualities. The greatest ruffians became overseers, and occupied places of trust. Men of no use mere drudges treated worse than beasts of burden. were In the month of May the entire live stock of the colony, public and private, consisted of The cattle were of the Cape breed, humpy on the soulders, and long-horned, a fact which it afterwards became of consequence to remember. In the ensuing month it is recorded as a public calamity that two bulls and four cows wandered away |