hen
M. de la Perouse entered Botany Bay, the two commanders had barely time
to exchange civilities; and it must naturally have created some surprise
in M. de la Perouse to find our fleet abandoning the harbour at the very
time he was preparing to anchor in it: indeed he afterwards said, that
until he had looked round him in Botany Bay, he could not divine the
cause of our quitting it, which he was so far from expecting, that having
heard at Kamschatka of the intended settlement, he imagined he should
have found a town built and a market established; but from what he had
seen of the country since his arrival, he was convinced of the propriety
and absolute necessity of the measure. M. de la Perouse sailed into the
harbour by Captain Cook's chart of Botany Bay, which lay before him on
the binnacle; and we had the pleasure of hearing him more than once pay a
tribute to our great circumnavigator's memory, by acknowledging the
accuracy of his nautical observations.

The governor, with a party of marines, and some artificers selected from
among the seamen of the _Sirius_ and the convicts, arrived in Port
Jackson, and anchored off the mouth of the cove intended for the
settlement on the evening of the 25th; and in the course of the following
day sufficient ground was cleared for encamping the officer's guard and
the convicts who had been landed in the morning. The spot chosen for this
purpose was at the head of the cove, near the run of fresh water, which
stole silently along through a very thick wood, the stillness of which
had then, for the first time since the creation, been interrupted by the
rude sound of the labourer's axe, and the downfall of its ancient
inhabitants; a stillness and tranquillity which from that day were to
give place to the voice of labour, the confusion of camps and towns, and
'the busy hum of its new possessors.' That these did not bring with them,
'Minds not to be changed by time or place,' was fervently to have been
wished; and if it were possible, that on taking possession of Nature, as
we had thus done, in her simplest, purest garb, we might not sully that
purity by the introduction of vice, profaneness, and immorality. But
this, though much to be wished, was little to be expected; the habits of
youth are not easily laid aside, and the utmost we could hope in our
present situation was to oppose the soft harmonising arts of peace and
civilisation to the baneful influence of vice and immorality.

In