Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 2.djvu/52

 36 THE FAMINE OP 1789-^0. 1789-90 |j1i0 London Tavern than be at the expence of sending them A cortiy here/'* Writing to Nepean some months later, he informed him, ^' as this letter is only for your private perusal/' that ^' in the whole world there is not a worse country than what we have yet seen of this. All that is contiguous to us is so ^^ very barren and forbidding, that it may with truth be said, here nature is reversed ; and, if not so, she is nearly worn out ; for almost all the seed we have put into the ground has rotted, and I have no doubt but will, like the wood of this vile country, when burned or rotten, turn to sand."t The Public Advertiser of 28th December, 1790, summed up the news from '^ Botany Bay " in a few words : — " The flourishing state of the colony at Botany Bay has certainly been contradicted by all private letters.'' Phillip's suspicion — or it would be better, perhaps, to say his knowledge — that accounts less favourable than his own S*p^*^® would find their way to England was, therefore, justified by the event. It would have been wrong for him to write as an alarmist ; but it may be questioned whether, under the circumstances, he did the best for the little community under his care in speaking so confidently of a position which, short of absolute starvation, was about as bad as it could be. That the condition of the settlement was more critical than Philip was willing to admit in his official despatches, is SntSn ' ^ ovident from the narratives published by officers after their »ri«8. return to England; and, therefore, at a time when they could write dispassionately, and without the feeling engen- dered by the events of the hour.f X Captain Tencli wrote : — *'Our impatience of news iTom Europe sfcrongly marked the commencement of the year [1790]. We had now been two years m the country, and thirty-two months horn. England, in which long period no supplies, except what had been procured at the Cape of Qood Hope by the Sirius, had reached us. From intelligence of our friends and connections we had been entirely cut off, no communication whatever having passed with our native country since the 18th of May, 1787, the day of our depaa-tnre from Portsmouth. Famine besides was approaching with gigantic strides, and gloom and dejection overspread eveiy conntenance. Men abandoned ibem-
 * Historic&l Becords, toI. i, port 2, p. ] 76. f lb., p. 212.