AND HIS STAFF. 189 such mformation to his Majesty's Ministers respecting the 1790 settlement I had es(tablished as conld not be conveyed by letter." Probably there was another reason for this mission, the state of affairs at Sydney Goto being so desperate Kin^ sent to at that time that the necessity for bzdnging it home to the minds of Ministers by personal representations most have been strongly felt. King was accordingly discharged from the Sirins and placed in the position of an envoy, with the prospect of farther promotion in addition to a trip home. During his two years' residence on the island, he had not spared himself in his efforts to cultivate the wilderness of pines and supple-jacks which he was expected to convert into a fi^ranary. His first rarden was made in '^a fine valley. Farming in which a number of plantain or banana trees were lound," island. to which he gave the name of Arthur's Vale in memory of his friend, whom he had already commemorated by naming Phillip Isle — ^an island off the coast — after him. The sort of couutry he had to operate on at that time may be judged from his description of it : — I took the first opportunity of examining the island around me, and found it almost impenetrable from the size of the trees and the entangled state of their roots, which were in general two feet above the ground, and ran along it to a considerable distance. On the spaces of ground unoccupied by these roots there grew a kind of supple-jack, which in general was as thick as a man's leg ; these a vir^ supple-jacks ran up the trees, and as they grew in every direction *^*^ they formed an impenetrable kind of network ; bending some trees to the ground cmd then taking root again, they twined round other trees in the same manner, until l^e whole became an im- pervious forest As I had only twelve men (one of whom was se7enty<two years of age, and another a boy of fifteen), exclusive of the mate and surgeon, my progress must be very slow.* When Cook landed on the island in October, 1774, he cookat found the ground, for about two hundred yards from the island. shore, ^^ covered so thick with shrubs and plants as hardly to be penetrated farther inland." ♦ Hunter, p. 301. Digitized byCjOOQlC
