Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/69

SKETCH. lix him that every possible precaution was being taken to make the scheme a success. He himself had enough to do in drawing up the official documents ; but there was Nepean — the permanent Under Secretary — to look after all the details ; he could be trusted to see that the men sent out were of the right sort — young able-bodied fellows, such as the Committee had spoken of — and that they were well supplied with the proper tools, seeds, and plants. Then they had got a really good man in Phillip; they could safely leave everything else to him; he would see that the settlement became self-supporting in a year or two. That was the central point of the whole scheme, and he would be made to understand that from the day of their arrival at Botany Bay, everyone must look for his support to the land, and not to the casks of beef. No conversation of that kind passed between Banks and the Minister, simply because it did not occur to the father of the colony that there could be any necessity for satisfying himself about the management of affairs. The actual course of events at that stage may be seen in the memoranda and letters written by Phillip before the expedition left England — (pp. 37-53). The anxious little Captain — ^he is described as a little man with a '^thin aquiline nose under a large cocked hat" (p. 498) — ^had no sooner received notice of his appointment than he began to busy himself with the preparations for the voyage. No such fleet had ever been got together before ; nor had any captain of a man-of-war ever found himself in charge of such a convoy. Convict ships had crossed the Atlantic often enough ; but there was neither novelty nor romance about their movements. Phillip was in charge of a large fleet, bound for a port into which only one ship had sailed since the sun first shone upon its waters ; ho had not only to navigate an unknown sea, but to found a colony which he felt would one day become an empire. The sense of responsibility that weighed upon him thrills through every lino he wrote about the great work he had in hand ; and for four or five months at least before he sailed, he rarely suffered a week to pass by without a letter to the Minister or the Under Secretary, touching the various points that required attention. He racked Digitized by Google