Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/12

 viii PREFACE. in Tartaria, the charitable Lady Callamata supplied my necessities. In the utmost of many extremities, that blessed Fokahontas, the great King's daughter of Virginia, oft saved my life. "When I escaped the cruelty of pirates and most furious storms, a long time alone in a small boat at sea, and driven ashore in France, the good lady Madam Ghanoyes bountifully assisted me. Captain Phillip had not any such conquests as these to boast of ; we do not know that he captivated a single princess among the sable tribes he met with in such numbers on these shores, and so far the tale he has to tell derives no charm from romance. No blessed Pokahontas figures in his story ; but what it wants in point of sentiment is more than atoned for by its realistic pictures of the life around him. The American chronicler leaves his reader in doubt as to when he is relating plain facts and when he is merely filling up gaps with imaginary adventures. Phillip never leaves us in doubt as to any matter he deals with ; although his language has neither point nor polish, it is minutely circum- stantial and therefore free from suspicion — free, too, from the stilted phraseology of official correspondence. Similar criticism might be applied to those of his contempo- raries, — Collins, Hunter, King, Tench, and White — ^who wrote their journals from day to day during the first years of the settlement. The sketches left by these men, each of whom wrote from a different point of view, combine to make up a perfectly faithful picture of the great event in which they were concerned — a picture as accurate in every line as a photograph ; for had the sketchers been using sunlight instead of ink for the scenes they described, their work could not have been more true to nature than it is. Where in the history of colonisation shall we look for equally faithful work on the part of chroniclers ? In the records left by Phillip and his companions, the natural evolution of that complex organism which we call society may be studied as minutely as the naturalist examines the movements of an insect under a microscope. The rudimentary limbs and organs may be seen slowly developing themselves out of the embryo ; struggling into existence, it is true, under the most unfavourable conditions, and frequently threatened with death Digitized by Google