Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/79

SKETCH, Ixix Sir Joseph Banks; and it may therefore be inferred that the facts and arguments which he urged on the attention of the Grovemment were derived from the conversations that had taken place between them. Men in search of information about a par- ticular country usually consult those who can speak of it from their own personal knowledge ; and there can be no doubt that Matra had no sooner made up his mind to develop his ideas in a practical form than he betook himself to Banks, and obtained from the fountain-head the hints which he afterwards developed in his sketch. Banks was a traveller as well as a philosopher ; he had sailed round the globe when he was a young man of twenty-five ; and as the pivot of the whole scheme was a geographical one, he could have no difficulty in foreseeing the substantial advantages that would ultimately accrue from it to England. Conceive him, then, standing before a map of the world and pointing out to Matra how, with a colony at Botany Bay, England would be in a position to hold both her enemies — the Dutch and Spaniards — ^in check ; because she could as easily threaten Timor, Batavia, and the Moluccas with one squadron, as she could operate against Callao and the Spanish merchant ships with another. They coald not do any harm by attacking the colony, because it could be secured against any attack they might venture to make. That was a political consideration which alone would justify the establishment of a colony. The commercial advantages were not less obvious ; because another glance at the map would show that, with a territory comprising such a variety of climate, tropical and temperate, and a soil producing the very richest vegetation, there could be no room for -doubt as to the results of colonisation. At this point. Banks would naturally bring his varied botanical knowledge to bear on the subject ; all the plants known to commerce would be enumerated, and the probability of their successful cultivation in New South Wales would be demonstrated by the experience of other countries lying in the same parallels of latitude. Possibly there was a good deal of tropical luxuriance about his eloquence on this subject which — to minds not touched with Matrass enthusiasm — ^might have suggested the idea of a Digitized by Google