Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 2.djvu/51

 THE PAMIKE OP 1789-90. 35 He could not fail to notice, both in his intercourse with his l^^^^W staff and at every step he took abroad, the despondency that had settled upon the community ; and he knew full well that it would find expression in the letters of both soldiers and convicts. Unfavourable accounts did reach {^^^^'JJ^^ England, and were published in the London papers. The names of the writers, with one exception,* were not given, but their identity must have been an open secret — in the colony at any rate. The majority of the letters were pub- lished as from '^ officers*^ stationed at " Botany Bay."t They all tell the one story : The country " will never answer the intentions of Government,'* it was " the outcast "The ' outcast of of God's works."t Surgeon White described it as " so for- ^^^„ bidding and so hateful, as only to merit execrations and curses. . . . The wood is bad, the soil light, poor and sandy, nor has it anything to recommend it."§ Another letter, in which it is not difficult to trace the hand of Captain Face to face Tench, represented the country as "very wretched, and totally incapable of yielding to Great Britain a return for colonizing it. . . . The dread of perishing by famine stares us in the face.''|| The country contained "less resources than any in the known world."^ One officer remarked that he could not, without " neglect of my duty to my country," refrain from declaring, that if a " favour- able picture  had been drawn, it was a " gross falsehood and base deception *"^ — the country " had no one thing to Nothing to recommend it.^^ Foremost in the ranks of the malcontents thTooimSy. stood Boss. In July, 1788, he assured Nepean, "in con- fidence," that although com might grow, yet the country would not support itself for a " hundred years." His own solution of the transportation question was — that it would be " cheaper to feed the convicts on turtle and venison at • That of Mr. White, the Chief Surgeon.— Vol. i, p. 506 ; Historical Beoords, toI. i, part 2, p. 8d2. Grose's letter to Nepean, 2nd April, 1792, was published anoDjmously in the London papers. — lb., p. 618. t Vol. i, p. 508. X Historical Records, vol. ii, p. 745. § Historical Beoords, vol. i, part 2, p. 838. II Historical Becords, toI. ii, p. 761. % lb., p. 769. •• lb., p. 763.