Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 2.djvu/166

 138 PROGRESS OF THE SETTLEMENT ^^®^ as many as twelve or fourteen convicts. Considerable pro- gress had also been made with a niunber of pnblic buildings ; amongst others, ^' a house of lathe and plaister 44 feet long, by 16 wide for the Governor on a ground-floor only, with excellent outhouses and appurtenances attached to it/' In December, 1791, Tench again visited Rose Hill. The '^great road " of convict huts was then finished. It was " a very noble one, of great breadth and a mile long in a strait line,'* calculated to " make Pall Mall and Portland Place hide their diminished heads/^* In the eyes of Tench and many of Dertinyof his Contemporaries, Parramatta was the future metropolis of the settlement. At first no distinction was made between the " town" and the surrounding district. They were both known as Rose Hill ; but on the 4th June, 1791, Phillip took advantage of the ceremonials in connection with the anniversary of the birthday of George III, to publicly announce that from that date it would be known by the native name of the spot on which it stood, viz., Parramatta.f Between the Parramatta • Tench, Complete Account, pp. 75, 78, 140. t '*The Governor called it rar-ra-mat-ta, being the name by which the natives distinguished the part of the country on which the town stood." — Collins, vol. i, p. 165. At this distance of time it is very difficult to say with certainty the ori^ and meaning of the native name Parramatta. Bennett, Australian Discovery and C>>lonisation, p. 125, states that it means the ** place of eels." The Hon. Richard Hill, M.L.C., who for many years has been recognised as an authority on the habits and language of the natives, states that he remembers having heard many years ago from the old blankfellows that this was the meaning of the word. When the distribution of blankets was made to the blacks at Windsor on 24th May, 1894, the Hon. W. Walker, M.L.C., who for many years has resided in that district, kindly made inquiries, at the request of the Editor, amongst the oldest of the natives, whose dialect corresponds with that of the Port Jackson and Parramatta natives. One very old but intelligent native informed him that the word *' Para" meant eels ; and that the name arose from the fact of a sreat number of eels having been once killed in the river there. On the other hand, we have the statement of Mrs. Macarthur, writing from Parramatta in the year 1795, that the name signified " the head of a river." — Historical Records, vol. ii, p. 509. Many old residents allege that the word signifies the *' meeting of the waters," and point to the fact that where the town now stands the river originally ran over a ledge of rock ; the water above being auite fresh, and that below brackish. The weiffht of evidence and the well-known practice of the natives of distin- guishing localities by the class of food to he obtained there, appear to point to the first-mentioned translation as the true one. Instances of the practice