Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/278

258 Five miles from the heads, on "Sydney Cove," is the city of Sydney, the head-quarters of the Governor-General, the residence and episcopal city of the Bishop of Australia, and the greatest wool port in the world. The still waters, alive with steamers passing and repassing, with ships of English and American flags, and a crowd of small craft, yachts, and pleasure-boats, betoken the approach to a centre of busy commerce, even before the church spires show themselves against the sky. In this city, which has been too often described to need any detailed account here, every comfort and every luxury of Europe is to be obtained that can be purchased with money.

The entrance to Port Jackson is so safe and easy that the American surveying ships ran in at night without a pilot; and when the inhabitants rose in the morning they found themselves under the guns of a frigate carrying the stripes and stars.

Vessels of considerable burden can unload alongside the quays.

Sydney Cove is formed by two small promontories, between which the rivulet flows which induced Governor Phillip to choose this site for his settlement, as it possessed a safe harbour, wood and water, three essential points, although not alone sufficient to support a flourishing colony. The first harbour is of little value, unless it is the outlet to a country capable of producing some exports.

Tanks were cut for storing the water of the fresh-water stream during the summer; but the increase of the town having rendered this supply insufficient, water was brought from Botany Bay; and recently further extensive works have been executed, by which an aqueduct is brought from Cook's River, where a dam has been built to exclude the salt water.

Along the hollow formed by the two promontories or ridges, where the native track through the woods formerly led down to the water's edge, George-street extends, and holds in the colonial metropolis the relative ranks of the Strand and Regent-street. There, until recently, stately plate-glass shops were to be found side by side with wooden huts.

The harbour of Port Jackson affords an almost unlimited line of deep water, along which, when needed by the extension of commerce, quays and Avarehouses may be erected at a very trifling expense. Many of the coves in Port Jackson are even now as much in a state of nature as when Captain Phillip first discovered it. As a central point for the commerce of the Australian seas, it is not probable that it can ever be superseded as a maritime station, even by other colonies planted in a more fertile situation, although it may be asserted that, with rare