piece of pork, hold out his fingers for others to smell, with strong marks of disgust; and tho' they seldom refused bread or meat if offered them, I have never been able to make them eat with us, and when they left us they generally threw away the bread and meat; but fish they always accepted, and would broil and eat it.' Phillip estimated the number of blacks living about Botany Bay, Broken Bay, Port Jackson and the immediate coast as not less than fifteen hundred.
Soon after landing. Captain Hunter, with the first lieutenant of the Sirius, set about making a survey of Port Jackson and exploring the bays and arms of Sydney Harbour. Hunter often came across the natives while at this work, and the shyness of the blacks was beginning to wear off when the trouble with the Frenchmen at Botany Bay and a similar incident in Sydney Cove put a temporary stop to friendly relations.
The natives were accustomed to leave their possessions—clubs, spears, fire sticks and so on—lying on the beach, and the Europeans received a strict order never to touch them. The whites, of course, disobeyed this order—they wanted curios—and thus began a quarrel. The natives, determined to have some return for their lost property, to the number of about a score, landed on an island and seized some European tools. The blacks were only driven into their canoes after the two or three white men in charge of the island opened fire on them, wounding
