Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/78

lxvii admit of no cultivation. The coast, at least that part of it which lies to the northward of 25" S., abounds with fine bays and harbours, where vessels may lie in perfect security from all winds. There is no ground for complaint on the score of exaggeration Jiere.* No one who read the chapter could have formed a high opinion of the country it described ; and it is certain that the general public were not at all impressed with the notion that New South Wales was destined to be a great colony. The fact that ten years passed by from the publication of HawkeswortVs volumes to the date of Matrass pamphlet, without any sign of a movement in the shape of colonisation, is enough to show that the public mind had not even conceived an idea of that kind. How the ordinary Englishman looked at the contents of those quartos, while they were still fresh in the minds of men, may be seen in Boswell's account of a conversation about them : — Johnson : " A book may be good for nothing ; or there may be only one thing in it worth knowing ; are we to read it all through ? These voyages (pointing to the three large volumes of Voyages to the Soutli Seas which were just come out), who will read them through ? A man had better work his way before the mast than read them through ; they will be eaten by rats and mice before they are read through. There can be little entertainment in such books ; one set of savages is like another."t If the account of the great voyage made no deeper impression on Dr. Johnson's mind than that, it is not likely that other men would have seen much more in it than he did. And since the exuberant ideas we find in Matrass sketch of the country are not to be found in Hawkesworth, from what source of information were they obtained? The only other source open to him was me and Captain Cook, the day before, at dinner at Sir John Pringle's, and he was much pleased with the conscientious accuracy of that celebrated circumnayigator, who set me right as to many of the exaggerated accounts given by Dr. Hawkesworth of his voyages." — Boswell's Life of Johnson, by Napier, vol. ii, p. 295. It is not- clear from this passage whether the charge of exaggeration referred to the published accounts of the voyage, or to Hawkesworth's conversation about it. His preface nays that the manuscript was read over to Cook before it was published, and was approved of by him. That he was not pleased with his editor's work may bt» suspected from the fact that the title page of the account of his second royage states that it was " Written by James Cook." t Boswell, vol. iii, p. 396. Digitized by Google
 * " I gavo him [Johnson] an account of a conTcrsation which had passed between