[CHAPTER X]
The Results of the Pioneers' Work
About the time that Bligh was dispatched in the Bounty to obtain bread-fruit plants great developments were instituted in regard to Australia as the result of Cook's earlier voyages. The revolt of the American colonies and other circumstances had deprived the British Government of a region across the seas, to which convicted criminals might be sent as a cheap and easy way of getting rid of them. It was accordingly suggested to the British Government by various persons, including Sir Joseph Banks, that New South Wales (as Cook had called the eastern part of Australia) would be an excellent region in which to found a penal settlement, as well as to take steps for the ultimate founding of a free colony, a region to which British emigrants might go.
Australia and Tasmania need no longer take it to heart that their foundation as nations dates from such a cause as the transportation of convicts, since from a remote period in the history of civilized peoples this is how many and many a new colony has been founded. More especially was it so in the case of British America and the oldest of the British West India Islands. These settlements were chiefly valued for nearly 200 years by the British Government because they were places to which persons convicted of felony or of political crimes could be transported. Moreover, the free emigrants of good character who colonized Australia and Tasmania from the first considerably outnumbered the convicts who were sent to Tasmania, New South Wales, Victoria, and West Australia. Amongst these again the criminal convicts for the most part died out without leaving issue. It was the political prisoners among the transported persons who chiefly prospered and founded families. In short, the colonization of Australia resembled in its processes the colonization of the United States. The person appointed to superintend the first settlement of Australia was Captain Arthur Phillip, the son of a German teacher of languages in London, who had entered the British Navy and served with great distinction. He commanded the first expedition to New South Wales, and left England in 1787 with a fleet of two men-of-war and six transports, conveying 550 men and 200 women convicts, and three store ships. There were also some free emigrants; in all about 1100 persons. The ships sailed round the Cape of Good Hope and reached Botany Bay on 18 January, 1788. Less than a month afterwards Phillip had already chosen and named the wonderful harbour of Sydney as the capital of the future colony, and almost on that very day there arrived at Botany Bay two French ships under the command of the Comte de la Pérouse, who had been sent out from France on a scientific expedition similar to those of Captain Cook. It is possible that but for the punctual arrival of Governor Phillip the French flag would have been hoisted over Australia. Though, as it would certainly have been pulled down again a few years later by the British conquest of the seas, the possibility is not one to give rise to sensational writing. But Governor Phillip was a man of energy. He not only asserted the British claim to all the coasts of eastern and southern Australia, but sent a party to take possession of Norfolk Island and its splendid sources of timber supply, and here a number of convicts were set on shore.[108]
The interest of the French Government in the lands of the Pacific Ocean did not cease with the remarkable voyage of Bougainville. In 1785 Jean-François Galaup, Count of the Perouse (a native of Albi in the south-west of France, who had done gallant service for his country in Canada), took command of an expedition of two vessels, La Boussole and L'Astrolabe, which was to explore more especially the northern parts of the Pacific. Although France had recently been expelled from Canada by the success of the British arms, and had transferred Louisiana to Spain, she still hoped in some way to regain her position in North America; and in spite of Cook's inability to find a navigable strait of water across the vast breadth of the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the opinion still persisted in France that such a sea route across the continent did exist.[109] De la Pérouse was also directed to explore the coasts of north-eastern Asia, China, Japan, New Guinea, and Australia. His explorations of north-east Asia were very remarkable, but do not come within the scope of this narrative. He reached the Samoa archipelago in the winter of 1787. Here the officers and crew of the Astrolabe quarrelled with the natives, and as a result eleven of the Frenchmen were killed. From Samoa the French expedition passed by way of Tonga and Norfolk Island to the coast of New South Wales, and, as already related, arrived at Botany Bay only a few days after the British expedition under Governor Phillip. After a brief stay in Botany Bay the Comte de la Pérouse sailed away northwards, and his expedition was heard of no more, nor was his actual fate ever completely made known. Apparently the two ships were wrecked on the coral reefs of Vanikoro, a small island in the Santa Cruz group to the north of the New Hebrides. The natives of the Santa Cruz Islands showed themselves very hostile to strangers and white men in earlier times. It was here that Bishop Patterson was murdered in 1871, and it is possible that after the two French ships were driven on to the coral rocks by some storm their crews perished at the hands of the savages.
In 1791 another expedition, under the command of Bruni D'Entrecasteaux, Governor of Mauritius, was dispatched from Mauritius with two ships, La Recherche and L'Espérance, to search for de la Pérouse. D'Entrecasteaux obtained no information about the fate of his predecessor's ships, but his voyage added considerably to our knowledge of Australasia. He did much to complete Cook's very imperfect outline of the coast of New Caledonia, he surveyed a good deal of the Tasmanian coast (though he failed to find out that this was after all an island), and he explored the south coast of Australia, which, except for the preceding voyage of Vancouver, had remained almost entirely unknown since the hasty exploration of Pieter Nuyts in 1628.
George Vancouver (whose great work as a British pioneer is associated more with the north-west coast of America) had in 1791 mapped a good deal of the south-west Australian coast and had pointed out the value as a harbour of King George's Sound. He also added to our knowledge of New Zealand, and then continued his route across the Pacific towards what is now the coast of British Columbia.
The troubles which ensued in France, owing to the Revolution and the uprise of Napoleon, diverted the attention of the French from oversea discovery for something like eight years. The British took advantage of this lull to increase their knowledge of the Australian coast and their claims to this region, which even in 1788 were defined as extending from Cape York on Torres Straits, round the east coast of Australia to the southernmost point of Tasmania, and to comprise all the adjacent islands of the Pacific Ocean. A remarkable discovery of an outcrop of coal on the Australian coast near Tasmania by shipwrecked sailors attracted the attention of George Bass, the surgeon of a small Government vessel. This bold man, embarking in a mere whaleboat, passed along the Australian coast until he found the outcrop of coal. In the following year, 1798, his explorations of these regions convinced him that Tasmania was an island. Bass was accompanied on his circumnavigation of Tasmania by Lieutenant Matthew Flinders. This first circumnavigation of Tasmania, which lasted for five months, was undertaken in a little vessel which had been constructed in Australia from the timber of the Norfolk Island pine, and was only of 25 tons burden. In this same vessel the gallant Flinders[110]—one of the most remarkable amongst Australian pioneers—in 1799 explored the coast of what we now know as Queensland, which was then called the Moreton Bay district. In 1802 Flinders had become the commander of H.M.S. Investigator, a ship of 334 tons. He christened the continent for the first time definitely with the name of Australia; and having already added to Cook's exploration of the Queensland coast, he now turned his attention to that of South Australia, which at the commencement of the nineteenth century was most imperfectly known, being only vaguely delineated from the surmised outline put down in the early part of the seventeenth century by the Dutch explorers, together with a little work achieved by Captain Vancouver and the Frenchman D'Entrecasteaux. Amongst other points Flinders discovered Kangaru Island off the coast of South Australia.[111] The French seem to have had some conception of the indentation of the South Australian coast known as Spencer's Gulf, and from this hint arose the theory put forward at the end of the eighteenth century that New South Wales was one vast island and New Holland another, separated by a strait of water uniting Spencer Gulf on the south with the Gulf of Carpentaria on the north. Flinders's exploration of Spencer's Gulf definitely proved the continuity of the whole Australian area.