Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/52

xlii the event. On another day, "while Mr. Banks was gathering plants near the watering place," Cook went with Solander and one of his officers to examine the country at the head of the bay — by which, he probably meant that part of it lying near the mouth of George's River ; although he makes no mention either of that or of the other river since named after him. Here he seems to have been still more pleased with what he saw : —

We went up the country for some distance, and found the face of it nearly the same with that which has been described already, but the soil was much richer ; for instead of sand, I found a deep black mould, which I thought very fit for the production of grain of any kind. In the woods we found interspersed some of the finest meadows in the world : some places however were rocky, but these were comparatively few : the stone is sandy, and might be used with advantage for building.

"Cook's meadows " became a standing joke in the settlement formed by Phillip on the shores of Sydney Cove. All the officers on board the First Fleet had read his account of Botany Bay before they left England — it is not difficult to imagine how eagerly they took up the third volume of Hawkesworth for the purpose ; and on their arrival they expected to find themselves in possession of ready-made meadows, where the plough might be driven without cutting down a tree. Because they did not land on the exact spot described by Cook, they considered them- selves cruelly deceived ; and in the bitterness of their disappoint- ment they wrote very angry letters to their friends in England, denouncing the country and everything in it. One of these indig- nant gentlemen wrote that they were all " very much surprised at Mr. Cook's description of Botany Bay " ; and another that " the country for several miles round the bay does not afford a spot large enough for a cabbage garden, that was fit for cultivation" (pp. 503–7). Nevertheless, the natural meadows were there all the time, and Cook's observations were as exact in this as they are known to be in every other instance. The explanation of the difference between his account of the country and that of the angry correspondents is, that they made the mistake of applying his description to all parts of it, instead of to one. Their knowledge of the land was practically confined to the northern shore