Free Watkin Tench's 1788 by Watkin; Tim; Tench Flannery

to Port Jackson, touched at a small island in latitude 31° 36′ south, longitude 159° 4′ east of Greenwich, which he had been fortunate enough to discover on his passage to Norfolk and to which he gave the name of Lord Howe’s Island. It is entirely without inhabitants, or any traces of any having ever been there. But it happily abounds in what will be of infinitely more importance to the settlers on New South Wales. Green turtle of the finest kind frequent it in the summer season. Of this Mr Ball gave us some very handsome and acceptable specimens on his return. Besides turtle, the island is well stocked with birds, many of them so tame as to be knocked down by the seamen with sticks. At the distance of four leagues from Lord Howe’s Island and in latitude 31° 30′ south, longitude 159° 8′ east, stands a remarkable rock of considerable height, to which Mr Ball gave the name of Ball’s Pyramid, from the shape it bears.
    While the Supply was absent Governor Phillip made an excursion to Broken Bay, a few leagues to the northward of Port Jackson, in order to explore it. As a harbour it almost equals the latter, but the adjacent country was found so rocky and bare as to preclude all possibility of turning it to account. Some rivulets of fresh water fall into the head of the bay, forming a very picturesque scene. The Indians who live on its banks are numerous and behaved attentively in a variety of instances while our people remained among them.
    â€  The Hawaiian Islands.
    â€ â€  Hawaii.
    â€ â€ â€  ‘Here lies L. Receveur the Minorite, priest, physician, who died on 17 February 1788 while circumnavigating the globe under the leadership of La Perouse.’

13
    Transactions at Port Jackson in the months of April and May 1788
    As winter was fast approaching it became necessary to secure ourselves in quarters which might shield us from the cold we were taught to expect in this hemisphere, though in so low a latitude. The erection of barracks for the soldiers was projected, and the private men of each company undertook to build for themselves two wooden houses, of sixty-eight feet in length and twenty-three in breadth. To forward the design, several sawpits were immediately set to work, and four ship carpenters attached to the battalion for the purpose of directing and completing this necessary undertaking. In prosecuting it, however, so many difficulties occurred that we were fain to circumscribe our original intentions and, instead of eight houses, content ourselves with four. And even these, from the badness of the timber, the scarcity of artificers and other impediments are, at the day on which I write, so little advanced that it will be well if at the close of the year 1788 we shall be established in them. In the meanwhile the married people, by proceeding on a more contracted scale, were soon under comfortable shelter. Nor were the convicts forgotten; and, as leisure was frequently afforded them for the purpose, little edifices quickly multiplied on the ground allotted them to build upon.
    But as these habitations were intended by Governor Phillip to answer only the exigency of the moment, the plan of a town was drawn and the ground on which it is hereafter to stand surveyed and marked out. To proceed on a narrow, confined scale, in a country of the extensive limits we possess, would be unpardonable. Extent of empire demands grandeur of design. That this has been our view will be readily believed when I tell the reader that the principal street in our projected city will be, when completed agreeable to the plan laid down, two hundred feet in breadth, and all the rest of a corresponding proportion. How far this will be accompanied with adequate dispatch is another question, as the incredulous among us are sometimes hardy enough to declare that ten times our strength would not be able to finish it in as many years.
    Invariably intent on exploring a country from which