Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/365

1770 Upon the whole, New Holland, though in every respect the most barren country I have seen, is not so bad but that between the productions of sea and land, a company who had the misfortune to be shipwrecked upon it might support themselves, even by the resources that we have seen: undoubtedly a longer stay and a visit to different parts would discover many more.

This immense tract of land, the largest known which does not bear the name of a continent, as it is considerably larger than all Europe, is thinly inhabited, even to admiration, at least that part of it that we saw. We never but once saw so many as thirty Indians together, and that was a family, men, women, and children, assembled upon a rock to see the ship pass by. At Sting-ray's Bay, where they evidently came down several times to fight us, they never could muster above fourteen or fifteen fighting men, indeed in other places they generally ran away from us, whence it might be concluded that there were greater numbers than we saw, but their houses and sheds in the woods, which we never failed to find, convinced us of the smallness of their parties. We saw, indeed, only the sea coast; what the immense tract of inland country may produce is to us totally unknown. We may have liberty to conjecture, however, that it is totally uninhabited. The sea has, I believe, been universally found to be the chief source of supplies to Indians ignorant of the arts of cultivation. The wild produce of the land alone seems scarcely able to support them at all seasons, at least I do not remember to have read of any inland nation who did not cultivate the ground more or less: even the North Americans, who are so well versed in hunting, sow their maize. But should a people live inland, who supported themselves by cultivation, these inhabitants of the sea coast must certainly have learned to imitate them in some degree at least, otherwise their reason must be supposed to hold a rank little superior to that of monkeys.

What may be the reason of this absence of people is