Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/493

 TERRA INCOGNITA. 379 conduct of the business. When Collins expressed the hope 1780 that his pages would show " with how much Wisdom the Measure was suggested and conducted," he knew that they showed only too conclusively with how little wisdom Quantuia the colonisation of the territory had been planned and con- mundus , . * gubcrnatur. ducted by the Minister. It is manifest that the whole scheme had been narrowed down in his mind to a point which enabled him to meet the pressing emergency of the day ; and as soon as that was accomplished, he thought nothing of sacrificing the infinitely larger considerations involved in the work. Everything was made to give way to the mere exigency of the moment. That the scheme escaped utter wreck and ruin, was due almost entirely to the vigil- ance and foresight displayed by Phillip throughout the term of his command. In justice to Sydney, it should be borne in mind that, while he was engaged in framing his colonial policy, so to speak, he could not have had any conception as to the real or prospective value of the territory which was about to vaiue of the be occupied in the old convict fashion. Beyond the account noTknown. he had read in Cook's Voyage of the land at Botany Bay, and the information he had obtained from Sir Joseph Banks, he knew nothing about the capabilities of the soil or the character of the country; and possibly he was so far misled on the subject as to believe that the cultivation of the land would soon render the colonists independent of further supplies. Until the publication of CooVs volumes, there was nothing to encourage a belief that the east coast of New Holland was very much better than the prevalent west, which Dampier had described as a dreary waste, occu- pied by the miserablest people in the world. The descrip- tions given by Matra and Sir George Young of the various products of New South Wales, and of the valuable trade that might be carried on with them, may have been regarded either as visionary speculations, or else as involving difficult complications with the East India Company. It was not until Phillip^ s despatches were read that very different ideas Digitized by Google