e was landed, had amongst the white people none who would
be truly friends of his;--they would give him scraps from their table,
but the very outcasts of the whites would not have treated him as an
equal,--they had no sympathy with him,--he could not have married a
white woman,--he had no certain means of subsistence open to him,--he
never could have been either a husband or a father, if he had lived
apart from his own people;--where, amongst the whites, was he to find
one who would have filled for him the place of his black mother, whom he
is much attached to? What white man would have been his brother? What
white woman his sister? He had two courses left open to him,--he could
either have renounced all natural ties, and have led a hopeless, joyless
life among the whites, ever a servant, ever an inferior being; or he
could renounce civilisation, and return to the friends of his childhood,
and to the habits of his youth. He chose the latter course, and I think
that I should have done the same."

[Illustration: SYDNEY IN ITS INFANCY--VIEW FROM THE SOUTH.]

CHAPTER VII.

FIRST YEARS OF THE COLONY OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

One of the greatest efforts to which the industry and powers of man
can be directed is to change a lonely uncultivated wilderness into an
enclosed and fruitful country,--to occupy with civilised human beings
and comfortable dwellings those wilds which have hitherto been nearly
deserted, or at best but scantily and occasionally inhabited by savage
barbarians. The colonisation of New South Wales by the English has been
one of the most successful of these efforts; and certainly never before
did the change effected by industry so rapidly make itself visible in
the face of the new country. But, although the settlement of this colony
may now be most certainly pronounced to have been a very successful
experiment, it was by no means without hazard, and disappointment, and
suffering, to those who were first engaged in it. Indeed it would appear
to be the lot of infant colonies to cope with difficulties known only
to first settlers in uncultivated lands; and while the enterprising
colonist has to endure and struggle against these early trials, his
children or grandchildren, or often the stranger who has made a
favourable bargain of his property, are the persons who reap the reward
of his toils. It must assuredly be a subject of interest to every
inquiring mind to trace the feeble beginnings of an infant colo