SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 85 perfectly wild," they proved useful, if they did not exactly 1797-99 answer the purpose.* Sir Joseph was never tired of expressing his conviction Banks's as to the great future which lay before the colony ; nor was in the his confidence in it ever shaken, even in the darkest hours of its early years. Among the many expressions of his opinion on the subject to be found in his correspondence, the following passages in letters to Governor Hunter, written in 1797 and 1799, deserve attention :— The climate and soil are, in my own opinion, superior to most climate which have yet been settled by Europeana I have always main- *° *^ tained that assertion, grounded on my own experience, but have been tiniform]y contradicted, except by Governor Phillip, till your last favors have taken away all doubts from the minds of those who have been permitted to peruse them. Your colony is already a most valuable appendage to Great Aireodv Britain, and I flatter myself we shall, before long, see her Minis- ters made sensible of its real value. Kest assured in the mean- time that no opportunity will be lost by me of impressing them with just ideas of the probable importance to which it is likely before long to attain, and to urge them to pay it that degree of attention which it clearly deserves at their handa He was writing in a time of gloom and disaster in Europe, and naturally turned his eyes to the star rising in the southern sky : — 1 see the future prospect of empire and dominion which now a new cannot be disappointed. Who knows but England may revive in New South Wales when it has sunk in Europe 1
- The gradual development of the art of exploration is an interesting fea-
ture in its history. For means of carriage our first explorers, when they left the riven, had to depend on their own backs ; then came the pack-horse, the bollock-team, the dray and cart, with boats for river work, and lastly <:uDel8. Oxley, in 1817, travelled with boats and bnllock-teams ; Sturt, in 1928, relied on bnllock-teams and pack-horses ; Mitchell started on his ex- Wition of 1835 with two boats carried on a boat-carriage, seven carts drawn hy bollocks, and seven i>ack*horses ; Eyre set out in 1840 with drays and pack-horses ; Leichharat, in 1844, travelled with eight bullocks carrying P>ck-nddles ; in 1847 he took with him one hundred and eighty sheep, two bimdred and seventy goats, forty bullocks, fifteen horses, and thirteen mules ; vbile Borke and Wuls, in 1860, travelled in unprecedented pomp with twenty-seven camels, led by sepoys, with waggons and pack-horses bringing up the rear. Digitized by Google
