Page:An account of the English colony in New South Wales.djvu/54

 the necessity of sheltering the detachment; and until barracks could be built, most of them covered their tents with thatch, or erected for themselves temporary clay huts. The barracks were begun early in March; but much difficulty was found in providing proper materials, the timber being in general shakey and rotten. They were to consist of four buildings, and were placed at a convenient distance from each other for the benefit of air and cleanliness, and with a space in the centre for a parade.

On or about the 10th of March, the French ships failed from Botany Bay, bound, as they said, to the northward, and carrying with them the most unfavourable ideas of this country and its native inhabitants; the officers having declared, that in their whole voyage they nowhere found so poor a country, nor such miserable people. There had been, during their stay in this country, a very friendly and pleasant intercourse kept up between them and the English; they had among their officers men of abilities, whose observations and exertions in the search after knowledge will most amply illustrate the history of their voyage; and it reflected much credit on the minister, when he arranged the plan of it, that people of the first talents for navigation, astronomy, natural history, and every other science that could render it conspicuously useful, should have been selected for that purpose.

A wharf for the convenience of landing stores was begun, under the direction of the surveyor-general: the ordnance, consisting of two brass six-pounders on travelling carriages, four iron twelve-pounders, and two iron six-pounders, were landed; the transports, which were chartered for China, were cleared; the long-boats of the ships in the Cove were employed in bringing cabbage-tree from the lower part of the harbour, where it grew in great abundance, and was found, when cut into proper lengths, very fit for the purpose of erecting temporary huts; the posts and plates of which, being made of the pine of the country, and the sides and ends filled with lengths of the cabbage- tree, plastered over with clay, formed a very good hovel. The roofs were generally thatched with the grass of the gum-rush; some were