Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/373

261 THE FOUNDATION OF THE COLONY. PffOLip's first despatcli from Sydney Cove is dated 15th 1788 May, 1788. Prom the day of his amTal in the Supply, on the 25th January, to the date of his despatch, his time had been fnlly employed in getting the settlement into some degree of order, and in exploring the country round about it It was his practice at that time to keep a journal, in Phiiup's which he set down " the little incidents " of his life from day to day, and from which he subsequently wrote his letters to the Secretary of State. The first was necessarily a lengthy one, but its contents are of peculiar interest in the present day. There is no similar record in which the fitoTy of the foundation of a great colony is told with so much personal interest. The events connected with the ^^^^ settlement of the American colonies were not chronicled nntil long after the principal actors had disappeared from the scene, and consequently their early history is buried in obscurity. But the despatches written by Phillip contain a narrative so clear and graphic in its way that the reader can find no difficulty in realising the scenes he describes, or in following the course of events to which he refers. It win be observed that he does not make any mention of the public ceremony which took place on the 26th January — ^the day after his arrival — when the British flaff was un- a new furled at the head of Sydney Cove. On the evening of that in another day, Phillip and the party that had arrived with him in the Supply from Botany Bay the day before, assembled at the point where they had first landed in the morning, and on which a flagstafE had been erected. There, with the Union Jack flying over their heads^ he proposed several toasts — Digitized by Google