CHAPTER VIIAT BOTANY BAY
Yearsago the Christy Minstrels sang a droll song about the adventures of a Chinaman in Botany Bay. London audiences rocked with laughter at the mention of the famous convict settlement. Had they better understood all that was meant by Botany Bay they might well have wept.
Fresh from reading the story of Captain Cook’s travels, and the subsequent story of the penal life in New South Wales, I find myself in an excellent mood to appreciate a visit to the famous spot which is known as the birthplace of Australian history. We go to Sydney upon a fine Inter-state steamer, theKaroola, a boat that for sheer comfort, deck space, saloon and table compares well with the mail liners.
The entry into Sydney Harbour in the early morning is an event to be remembered. There is no other place on earth exactly like this famous harbour. Its innumerable windings offer a fascinating panorama to the visitor who has the advantage of a position on the upper deck of a mail steamer. Sydney does homage to its harbour. The city crowds to the water’s edge. The new suburbs on the northern side are growing at a rapid rate, and soon there will be noplot of land unoccupied. It is difficult to believe that less than a century ago the “bush†came to the edge of the harbour. Where now maritime life reigns, there was formerly a desolation or a wildness which well harmonised with a country still in the possession of the aborigines. The few pictures extant of Sydney Harbour as it was form the best measure of the progress that has since been made.
Botany Bay is eclipsed by Port Jackson. It is the Plymouth Rock of Australia, yet it is not to Australians what Plymouth Rock is to Americans. The present generation “knows not Josephâ€â€”or, rather, James. Captain Cook is, for the many, a mere name; he does not represent, nor evoke, an enthusiasm. One day, when Australia has grown to the dimensions of America, there will be a Cook cult, and Botany Bay will become a shrine. To-day it is merely a place for picnics; an easy lounge from Sydney for persons who have neither historic nor national imagination.
A fourpenny tram ticket from Circular Quay takes one to the village of Botany. Thence a steamer crosses the bay, calls in at La Perouse, and deposits its passengers at the famous spot where, on April 28, 1770, Captain Cook landed from his toy boat, theEndeavour. There is little to see: a large rock, a small jetty, and a monument. The latter—an obelisk—is enclosed within chains. It was erected by the Hon. Thomas Holt. Of Cook monuments and inscriptions there are many. Yet there is only one statue of Cook himself, and that is in Hyde Park,Sydney. The intrepid explorer is depicted with right hand extended, while in his left hand he carries the chart of his voyage. Wherever Captain Cook’s feet trod there the memorialist has certified the fact in a permanent manner. Upon the face of the cliffs at Kurnell, Botany Bay, an inscription is found setting forth the fact that:
“Under the auspices of British Science ... these Shores were discovered by James Cook and Joseph Banks, the Columbus and Mæcenas of their time.â€
“Under the auspices of British Science ... these Shores were discovered by James Cook and Joseph Banks, the Columbus and Mæcenas of their time.â€
The final inscription appears on a tree in Hawaii, and sets forth the tragic fact that “near this spot fell Captain James Cook, the renowned circumnavigator.†But, of course, I have not seen that.
A final monument alone is needed, and that is theEndeavouritself, or part of it. Alas! this monument must remain unerected. Englishmen appreciated theVictory, and took care to preserve it for the nation, but the discovery of so insignificant a place as Australia passed without attracting the attention that it deserved. The men of that time had no prophetic gift of insight enabling them to see what the new country might yet mean to the Motherland, hence they allowed theEndeavourto become a whaler, to fly the French flag, and eventually to sink in the waters around Rhode Island. Thus America holds the famous four-hundred tonner to which the highest honour is attached. One day Australia may ask whether theEndeavouris so far sunk that it cannotbe raised, if only in parts, and established in an Australian museum....
Botany Bay compels thought and awakens imagination. Upon the pivot of that rock what events will yet turn? What was it that Captain Cook really discovered when he landed on Australian soil? Something more than a gold mine or a vast and fertile orchard. Suppose it should turn out to be the fact that he discovered a land which of all lands is best able, geographically and politically (when it is properly populated), to affect for good the fortunes of the awakening East and to relieve the distress of the congested West? The world has not yet appreciated what Australia is capable of both socially and politically.
As we look out over the waters from Botany Bay, the greatness of Captain Cook becomes a reality. Yonder is the illimitable stretch of the great Pacific Ocean. Nothing between us and America save this magnificent waste of waters. There our mother tongue is spoken. Beyond, are our own kin, the Canadians. And on the farther side of that great continent another stretch of waters, and then the Home Land itself. To the north of us India, to the west of us Africa. It is an immense circle of British interests, and we are in its centre. And to Captain Cook we owe it. When we think of that little barque of 368 tons venturing across the great oceans, we seem to be in the neighbourhood of miracle. The very least of beginnings; what will be the ending?
Turning our back on the ocean, and looking inwardto the harbour and the city, the miracle seems to grow. There a million people live and work and grow wealthy. Everywhere the scrub disappears, the trees fall, and the soil yields its riches. And millions more of acres await men and machinery. Yet on that wonderful day in 1770 all that Captain Cook saw is expressed in his line from thelog:—
“At day break we discovered a bay and anchored under the South Shore, about 2 miles from the Entrance, in six fathom water.â€
“At day break we discovered a bay and anchored under the South Shore, about 2 miles from the Entrance, in six fathom water.â€
“A bay.†Just a bay! How little did he dream of the wealth behind it all. Australia ought not to forget its first hero and explorer. Captain Cook should be more to it than a name; yet to the many it is only that.
But Botany Bay also makes us think gravely of the “bad old days.†England had a new possession in 1770, a vast continent of whose immense treasures she knew nothing. “Happy thought! let us turn it into a rubbish heap,†her leaders said. Mad and blind policy! But had we been there should we have done better? Should we—any better than they—have foreseen the development of our industrial system and the congested state of our great cities and towns? Had the gift of foresight been granted to the leaders of that great epoch, it is more than likely that the present industrial unrest “at home†would never have been created, for Australia would have been, long ago, a second home for the British nation,and not merely a big hole from which the swift and the strong dug out gold.
A dumping ground for criminals! That was the first use to which Britain put Australia. America was closed against her owing to the war of 1776. The English gaols were congested. Political offenders multiplied. “Justice†was little better than legal murder. For the most trivial offences men lost their lives, or were transported. The English Court was rotten. “Liberty†was a mere fiction. Those were the “good old times,†of which our modern croakers—blind and deaf—never cease to babble. Botany Bay—the entrance to a new and golden world—was converted into a penal settlement. There came into it in the month of January, 1788, eleven vessels bearing a thousand convicts, and their wives and children. Seven weary months had those wretched people been upon the high seas. Those merciful days made no provision for the humanities. The convicts came out like cattle, and their drivers were worse than themselves. “Convictsâ€â€”but not necessarily criminals! Convicted by bad “laws,†but often enough, in the sight of high heaven, guiltless of crime. They came out, high and low, bad and good, and were all dumped down at Botany Bay. Some undoubtedly were bad enough, and others were victims of political malice. When I read the story of that time my heart warms towards many of the convicts and hardens towards most of their masters. It was a cruel and brutal epoch. The story of early Sydney gives one gooseflesh at the reading. Someof the English “judges†sent out were drunken and cruel scoundrels, not fit to have the management of cattle, to say nothing of men. Hangings were general; human life was accounted of little value. Governor Philip was one of the worst of his class. A man without pity—a brute. And he went to church at times!
Here is the story of one of his merciful acts. A convict woman one day picked up in the street a small parcel. Taking it to a retired place she opened it and found it to contain a watch, a ring, and some money. At once she sought to restore it. But she was a mere convict, and she had committed the unpardonable offence of opening a parcel found in the street. The articles, it appeared, had been stolen, and the thief in fright had dropped the parcel in the street. The woman was tried by a jury of military men, who promptly sentenced her to death. She appealed to Governor Philip, who replied, “If you tell me the truth I will pardon you.†In anguish the condemned woman cried, “As God is my witness I have told you the truth.†To which the representative of Britain answered, “You shall stand before your God before the clock strikes nine to-morrow.†And as Governor Philip drank his coffee at breakfast time on the next day, he had the joy of seeing the woman drop, strangled, from the cross-beam of the gallows.
Botany Bay!—gate of a new continent and ante-room of hell—your memories are at once bright and bloody. The nightmare and the stains have disappeared; the brightness remains. No more shallyou witness the inhumanities of the past; the day of liberty and of justice has come. And when Australia has become one of the great nations of the world you will not be forgotten, for you first, on this soil, gave hospitality to Captain Cook.