better such a home than the deck of a ship--persistently searched for good
land, and before his five years of office had expired agricultural
settlement was fairly under way.

On the seaboard, although he was almost without vessels (scarcely a decent
open boat could be mustered among the possessions of the colonists), with
the boats of the _Sirius_ the coast was searched by Phillip in person as
well as by his junior officers.

Major Ross, who commanded the Marines, and who was also
lieutenant-governor, described the settlement thus:--

"In the whole world there is not a worse country than what we have
yet seen of this. All that is contiguous to us is so very barren
and forbidding, that it may with truth be said, 'Here nature is
reversed, and if not so, she is nearly worn out'; for almost all
the seed we have put in the ground has rotted, and I have no doubt
it will, like the wood of this vile country, when burned or rotten
turn to sand;"

Captain Tench, one of Ross' officers, wrote:--

"The country is very wretched and totally incapable of yielding to
Great Britain a return for colonising it.... The dread of
perishing by famine stares us in the face. [Sidenote: 1792]
The country contains less resources than any in the known world;"

and the principal surgeon, White, described the colony in these words:--

"I cannot, without neglect of my duty to my country, refrain from