Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/89

 SKETCH. bcxix fancy had been fed in England of grassy meadows ready for the plongli, where they could see nothing but rocks and gum-trees ; and of a land abounding in the richest products of tropical islands^ where no better result than a miserable existence could be gained from the most painful toil. Long after that dreadful time had passed away, and when the success of the colony was no longer a matter of uncertainty or dorubt, it still had to struggle against the gulf-stream of depre- ciation which had always swept so strongly toward its shores. The traveller who looks down from the summit of Mount Gambier upon the dark-blue waters of the lake below, sheltered from rude winds by terraced walls on which the grass grows as smooth and green as on a lawn, may find it hard to realise the fact that he stands on the edge of a Yolcano, and that the scene of silent beauty on which he gazes was once a field of raging oceanic fires. It is not less difficult for those who know the colony only in its present stage to bring before the mind^s eye the period of what might be called its volcanic action — ^when elemental forces were at work in constructing the materials of its future wealth and great- ness by the agency of hell-fire and lava. Looking as we do now on great cities and cultivated fields, marked by every sign of an enterprising and prosperous population, we see no trace of the time when the only evidence of civilised life was found in convicts' huts and soldiers' barracks. With the exception of a few streets, roads, and public buildings, every vestige of those times has disappeared from view ; and the antiquarian who seeks to reconstruct the city of the dead finds his efforts baffled at every step of his investigation. But for the literature of the old days — the long forgotten books and newspapers, and the piles of buried records on which the dust of a hundred years has settled down — ^it would not be possible to form any accurate conception of the ideas which prevailed about the colony throughout the long period in which it was known to Englishmen as Botany Bay, and when the name they gave it meant all that was abominable in the eyes of decent people. There is no exaggeration in the statement of a recent writer referring to this country as it was known in England less than forty years ago : — " Most people ' Digitized by Google