steps to withdraw the settlement, at least such as are living, or remove them to some other place; this is so much out of the world and tract of commerce that it could never answer. How a business of this kind (the expence of which must be great) could first be thought of without sending to examine the country, as was Captain Thompson's errand to the coast of Africa, is to every person here a matter of great surprise.'
Most of these letters were written privately to friends in England, and the friends no doubt thought the best thing to do with them was to send them to the newspapers, where they were generally published as from 'Officers at Botany Bay.' Another letter, identified as coming from Tench, says:—
'By the time this reaches you, the fate of this settlement and all it contains will be decided. It is now more than two years since we landed here, and within a month less than three since we left England. So cut off from intercourse with the rest of mankind are we, that, subsequent to the month of August 1788, we know not of any transaction that has happened in Europe, and are no more assured of the welfare or existence of any of our friends than of what passes in the moon. It is by those only who have felt the anguish and distress of such a state that its miseries can be conceived.
'The little European knowledge that we are
