Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/367

OF SYDNEY COVE. 355 bj the mistaken principle on which the author worked^ 1706 especially in the first volume. Instead of writing an account of the colonj^ as his title-page expressed^ he wrote an ac- count of a penal settlement— occupying himself almost ex- clusiyely with the unhappy creatures who had been sent to work out their redemption in chains. The impression left upon the reader's mind is that of having waded through a chronide lengthy catalogue of crimes and their punishments^ added to ^ a dismal tale of suffering and privation. From page to page he finds his attention concentrated on the unsavoury de- tails connected with the early years of the settlement^ almost everything that could relieve the depth of shade in the picture being ignored. The result is that he finds himself slowly descending from one gloomy circle of the Inferno to Pande- another^ each filled with a succession of repulsive groups. There is little or nothing to relieve the monotony of woe. There is not a word, for instance^ about the scenery of the harbour and the surrounding country, which, by the way, seems to have left no other impression upon Collins than one of loneliness and desolation. He found no such source of encouragement as Phillip did in the prospect of future greatness for the country, when the inevitable di£Sculties attending the foundation of a colony had been overcome, and the unbounded resources it contained had been fully de- veloped by the industry of successive generations. The work of exploration in which Phillip, Hunter, Tench, and Dawes No interegt made themselves conspicuous, had very little attraction for wonf ^ ^^ him. Although he accompanied them on more than one occasion in their excursions, he made very slight allusion to the matter in his book ; in some cases none at all. The dis- covery of the Hawkesbury did not by any means inflame his imagination. He was a member of the expedition which traced it up to Bichmond Hill, and yet he disposed of the whole matter in a paragraph as curt and dry as if he had been describing the robbery of a cabbage-garden and the execution of the thief. He makes no mention of the dis- covery of the Nepean, beyond a passing allusion to '* the Digitized by Google