CORNER AND BOTANY BAY.
Corner's Log, having been re-written, corrected in spelling, &c., and afterwards printed and circulated as a veritable Cook's Log, what it had to say about Botany Bay may reasonably excite the deepest interest and attention.
In various Logs, elsewhere described, the Bay has been called Sting Rea or Ray Harbour, and the reason stated in Cook's own words, and those of his chief officer, was on account of the numbers of the fish Stingray, Skeats, or Skate.
Corner's, May 6th, says, on the contrary:
"The great quantity of plants Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander found in this place occasioned my giving it the name of Botany Bay."
On May 30th we read of:
"The same sort of Water Fowl as we saw in Botany Bay."
We cannot avoid expressing surprise at finding that the gentleman whose duty it was to fill up the vacant spaces, purposely left open for the insertion of names of places, was not always correct in orthography. He may have intended always to write Botany, but varied it in Bottany, Bottony, Bottonest, Botony, Botanist.
He is not sure even when describing "which I called Port Jackson" as he is led to write, "it lies 3 Leags to the Northwd of Botóny Bay."
When, however, we come carefully to examine the full original paragraph about Botany Bay, we seem to understand the mode of action. The alteration was not made by the first copyist of the Log, nor by one particular person afterwards. There may have been some doubt even then about the settlement, or else why the erasure of one way of spelling, the substitution of another, and even traces of further erasure before final arrangement of name.
It was this that excited my suspicions. I was very candid in statement to some officials at the Admiralty of my honest belief that there had been some foul play in London. Later on, when I had again, with others, looked at the real journals in the British Museum, regarded, and copied, the Logs found at the Deptford Victualling Yard, and especially had made personal inspection for three days at Sunderland of a Log given by Cook himself to his old Admiral, Sir Hugh Palliser, my doubts of this Log were confirmed.
Let us now refer to the original Corner's Log, transported by purchase from Mr. Corner, to New South Wales, where, if not further affected, it will be seen as I state.
If the reader mentally divide the Botany Bay story, under May 6, he will discover first the usual Log transcriber. In the space which he left, by somebody's order, he would perceive quite a different hand ("plants Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander"). Then returns the first hand, "found in this place occasioned my giving it the name of" ——. Another space is filled with a half erased second-hand "Botóny" followed by the word in original "bay."
In a tracing I took some years ago, under head of May 6, I read: "appeared to be safe anchorage which I called" (in original hand); but in the space adjoining, in the second hand I read: "Port Jackson." Then, as usual, the first resumed: "it lies 3 Leags to the Northwd of." After a space, or, rather, within the space, is a bungling "Bottony" Bay.
Under May 13 we read: "we found (in the space) Bottonist Harbour." Eight lines lower, though in distinctly altered form, we read: "saw at Botany Harbour."
How different all this from the unaltered, unspaced account by the Captain's copy, given by himself to Sir Hugh Palliser, in which it only says: "The great Quantity of these sort of fish found here occasion'd my giving it the name of Stingray Harbour"!
So it is hardly correct to say, "It is, however, called Botany Bay from the first in the Journals," any more than "No autograph Journal is, so far as is known, in existence."
The fact of this "Corner's Log" becoming another ground for the publication of one, or many more, "Cook's Endeavour," can arise only from the supposition of its likeness to the so-called "Queen's Log" and "Admiralty Log." But these, admitted to be copies, cannot compare with the one personally sent by Cook, with his signature, to Palliser, or that sent to the British Museum as Cook's by his companion on the voyage, Sir Joseph Banks; or, far more, that in Cook's own hand and signature, as seen in his own official letters.
Yet this Harbour was placed on a French map, dating from the reign of our Henry VIII, as Baie des Herbages.
Geographers have not been the most reticent upon the singularity and apparent after-thought of the name Botany Bay. It was hardly to be expected that Cook, though a skilled draftsman and interested in charts, would trouble himself about old Mappemondes, dealing with localities that were scarcely likely to come in his way, or, at any rate, until his appointment to observe the Transit of Venus in the Northern Pacific; yet he was not ignorant of what French navigators had done. In the British Museum one may see his translation of a French Voyage from Havre up the St. Lawrence. This copy is dated 1755. He may, therefore, be credited with the knowledge of French Mappemondes before the Fronde Civil Wars; in which charts, parts, at least, of Australia were delineated, and of dates anterior to Dutch movements.
The Gazette Nationale of February 11, 1807, discusses the question as to the possibility of Cook making acquaintance of a celebrated map in London, before the Endeavour sailed in August, 1768.
That wonderful and precious Dauphin Mappemonde, which I have seen at the Museum, dating from 1542, might not have been known to non-scientific Englishmen, but found a home at last in our Museum. Was Dr. Solander, Cook's botanical fellow-voyager, curator at the Museum when it arrived there? Were he or his friend Banks aware of its existence, or only learnt of it after their return? On that Map the whole eastern coast of New Holland, afterwards known as New South Wales, is laid down distinctly.
In that case, there was no marvel in Cook's striking from New Zealand, in a direct line to the southern extremity of that coast, at Cape Howe, and following the shore northward, instead of seeking a connection with the Dutch Nuyt's discovery to the south-west. He would be going over the old waters traversed by the ships from Spain and Portugal.
That gorgeous Dauphin map had its places marked in a sort of Frenchified Portuguese, as if a Dieppe cartographer had not got hold of the right words, or had, for a purpose, disguised them. Thereon, however, we read "coste dangerouse" about the spot where Cook was afterwards wrecked, as well as Baie des Plantes on the site of our Botany Bay.
The Gazette Nationale writer notes that the Dauphin map, marked with the Arms of France, was discovered, by chance, in the house of a private person, and asks if the news of it could have reached the Dutch, and so got known to a few English before its real presence in London about 1767, it not being there in 1766.
Referring to the Librarian, Solander, the French critic of 1807 adds: "That the denomination of Baie des Plantes, which he had read upon the Map confided to him, might be a fresh stimulus in the hope of botanizing on this unknown coast, since the memory of it no longer existed, and particularly in a place designated by a name so attractive to him."
It is curious that Cook gave Solander's name to the south point of the bay, "as if," says the French writer, "he were pleased to compliment his botanical friend, on perceiving at length this land, the object of his desires, where since it was already named the Bay of Plants, he must have hoped to reap an ample harvest."
Yet the secret, if so, was well kept till after the voyage of the Endeavour, since then only did the name of Botany Bay appear in Dr. Hawkesworth's work. In all Cook's old Logs we see merely Stingray or Skeat Bay, and similarly in all the Logs or journals of the chief officers and the petty officers.
Or, had Dr. Hawkesworth, Cook, Banks and Solander meanwhile made acquaintance with the appellation of Baie des Plantes and appropriated it for history? This theory would account for the various alterations of Botany on Corner's Log.