Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/55

 SKETCH. xlv Port Jackson or Broken Bay — it would have been his good fortune to see his first impressions more than confirmed, and he would then have been able to proclaim on his return homo that the English flag had been hoisted on the finest field for colonisation in the world. Even as things stood, he had no hesitation in giving his opinion in very confident terms. When examined as a witness before a Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in 1779 to inquire into the state of the gaols and the question of transportation, he spoke strongly in favour of Botany Bay as a field of operations, arguing that its soil and climate were such as would -soon enable a settlement to become self-supporting. As his evidence on the subject may be said to form the starting point of our history, it is worth while to reproduce it. It should be recollected that he was addressing a number of gentlemen whose minds were concentrated on one question — what should be doiie with the felons ? Joseph Banks, Esquire, being requested, in case it should be thought expedient to establish a colony of convicted felons in any distant part of the globe, from whence their escape might be difficult, and where, from the fertility of the soil, they might be enabled to maintain them- selves, after the first year, with little or no aid from the mother country, to give his opinion what place would be most eligible for such settle- ment, informed your Committee that the place which appeared to him l3est adapted for such a purpose was Botany Bay, on the coast of New Holland, in the Indian Ocean, which was about seven months' voyage from England ; that he apprehended there would be little probability of any opposition from the natives, as during his stay there in the year 1770 he saw very few, and did not think there were above fifty in all the neighbourhood, and had reason to believe the country was very thinly peopled ; those he saw were naked, treacherous, and armed with lances, but extremely cowardly, and constantly retired from our people when they made the least appearance of resistance. He was in this bay in the end of April and beginning of May, 1770, when the weather was mild and moderate ; that the climate, he apprehended, was similar to that about Toulouse, in the south of France, having found the Southern Hemisphere colder than the Northern, in such proportion that any given climate in the Southern answered to one in the Northern about ten degrees nearer to the pole ; the proportion of rich soil was small in comparison to the barren, but sufficient to support a very large number Digitized by Google