72 THE FLEET AT SEA. 1787 amends for failure in other directions.* The selection made October, at the Cape proved an unqualified success ; the plants in- cluded the vine, quince, apple, pear, and strawberry, with the oak, myrtle, and fig trees, the bamboo and the sugar- cane, as well as grain seed of every kind. live stock. Shoop, Cattle, and horses were also obtained at the Cape, but the selection was not made with anything like the care devoted to the plants. All the stock taken on board on public account were — one stallion, three mares, three colts, two bulls, six cows, forty-four sheep, four goats, and twenty- eight hogs.t Phillip and the officers of the marines made private purchases on their own account, but, as Captain Tench informs us, their original intentions on this head were High prices, materially affected by the prices they were asked to pay. This consideration probably deterred Phillip from making a larger investment than he did ; but the list of his purchases seems painfully economical when compared with the extent and nature of the territory for which the stock was intended. With all his confidence in the future of the colony, no idea of its capabilities for stock-raising ever entered his mind. The one fact which ultimately more than satisfied all his predictions never even occurred to him ; and hence it was that he sailed away from the Cape to the greatest pastoral Small country in the world with a few head of cattle and sheep, barely sufficient to stock the farm of an ordinary settler.
- Bennett, Gatherings of a Naturalist, p. 306—" The Orange-tree in
Australia." t Hunter, p. 31 ; Collins, p. xxvii ; Tench, p. 38. Phillip purchased upwards of seventy sheep on his own and on Government account, of wnich one only was alive "^en he wrote his despatch on the 28th September, 1788; post, p. 343. fanning. Digitized by Google
