Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/81

SKETCH. Ixxi Let ua now turn for a few moments from the geograpHers and the Frenchmen to the artists, and endeavour to ascertain what they thought of the country which others held in such little account. Men who form their notions of the earth from poring over maps and charts, or twirling a globe on its pivot, are not usually men of imagination ; and no one would expect to meet with poetic descriptions of scenery in French voyages of discovery. English artists, on the other hand, are usually credited with the intuitive perceptions of genius when they take the field in search of landscapes ; and in their written accounts of a new country, visited in the interests of their art, we expect to find, at the very least, some freedom from prejudice, if not that glow of enthusiasm which men feel when their imaginations are stimulated by beau- tiful scenery never seen before. On board the Endeavour there was a young artist, named Sydney Parkinson, who had been engaged by Banks for the special purpose of sketching all the picturesque and novel subjects they expected to meet with in the course of their three years* voyage. He not only took sketches but he kept a journal, which, after his death, was published by his brother in a large quarto, "embellished," as the title-page says, "with twenty-nine views and designs, engraved by capital artists '^ — (p. 578). Out of the twenty-nine embellishments, there is only one referring to this country; and that represents "two natives of New Holland ad- vancing to combat" — the enemy being Cook and his landing party at Botany Bay. Two illustrations were supplied to Cook's Voyage — one being a view of the Endeavour River, with the ship high and dry on the bank ; and the other, a sketch of a kangaroo. These productions may be taken to convey Parkinson's opinion of this part of the world from a professional point of view. The inference is that he did not see any scenery in New South Wales Digitized by Google