Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/368

 256 THE CHRONICLES OF SYDNEY COVE. 1796 Hismelan- choly. Snrgit aniari aliquid. Physio* Ic^cal problem. freshwater river, first seen some time since by Captain Tench, and supposed to be a branch of the Hawkesbury."* But the discovery of those rivers was undoubtedly a turning point in the history of the settlement, and must have done much to dispel the doubts which had previously hung over its future. The monotonous tone of lamentation which marks so many of his pages is mainly the result of a peculiar frame of mind, which led him to concentrate his attention on the unplea- sant side of every picture placed before him. If an occa- sional gleam of humour had lightened up his reflections on passing events, the. narrative he has left us would have been none the less faithful. But there is no attempt at any time to deal pleasantly with the subject he has in hand. He speaks sometimes like Virgil when conducting Dante through the shades below ; sometimes like a warder when showing an inquisitive traveller through the corridors of a gaol, stop- ping now and then at the doors of a cell to tell the dreadful story of its inmate. Even when a fair opportunity comes in his way for amusing himself and his readers with the scenes and topics to which he alludes, he seems to turn away from it, as if the bare suspicion of a jest would com- promise his judicial dignity. Any other writer in his place, suffering from a dearth of subjects free from any criminal flavour, might have welcomed the phenomenon recorded by him with respect to the breeding operations of the settle- ment. " It was observed with concern," he says (p. 76), '^ that hitherto by far a greater proportion of males than females had been produced by the animals we had brought for the purpose of breeding." This fact he does not attempt to account for; he has no turn for speculation. He con- tents himself with saying that " this, in any other situa- tion, might not have been so nicely remarked ; but here, where a country was to be stocked, a litter of twelve pigs whereof three only were females became a subject of con- Digitized by Google
 * Account of the Colony, pp. 72, 89.