Page:Admiral Phillip.djvu/28

 relatives in England of the apathy of the Government in not sending even a mail to the new settlement, they could do so; he was too proud and self-contained a man to make domestic anxieties a peg on which to hang even a just grievance, and thus set an example which would have been contagious, and might have led to the disintegration and even the decay of the community.

One who met him in 1796 thus describes his personal appearance:—

'Well I remember his little figure, smothered up in his brown camlet cloak lined with green baize, his face shrivelled, and thin aquiline nose, under a large cocked hat, gathered up in a heap, his chin between his knees, sitting under the lee of the mainmast, his sharp and powerful voice exclaiming, "I cannot bear this, I am as sick as a dog!"'

This description of the man is not very impressive; but remember the situation. Phillip was seated in the stern of a small boat which was beating out of Mutton Cove, at Plymouth, in a strong squall and nasty sea, and, to tell the truth, was—as the best of sailors sometimes are—overcome with sea-sickness!

Had Phillip made enemies as did one of his successors in the Governorship of New South Wales—Bligh—this incident would, perhaps, have been made the occasion of saying that the founder of Australia was notoriously unfitted for a naval command. The military traducers of Bligh slandered his reputation by