The Explorers (14 page)

Between the house and the magazine, just mentioned, is the public school: here are educated, in those principles of religion, morality and virtue, those young females who are the hope of the rising colony but whose parents are either too degenerate or too poor to give them proper instruction. In the public school, however, under respectable matrons, they are taught, from their earliest years, all the duties of a good mother of a family. Such is one great advantage of the excellent colonial system established in these distant regions.

Behind the house of the lieutenant-governor-general, in a large magazine, are deposited all the dried pulse and corn belonging to the state. It is a sort of public granary, intended for the support of the troops and the people who receive their subsistence from the government. The barracks occupy a considerable square, and have in front several fieldpieces; the edifices, for the accommodation of the officers, form the lateral parts or ends of the building, and the powder magazine is in the middle. Near this, in a small private house, the principal civil and military officers assemble. It is a sort of coffee-house, maintained by subscription, in which there are several amusements, but particularly billiards, at which any person may play, free of expense.

Behind the armoury is a large square tower, which serves for an observatory to those English officers who study astronomy. At the base of this tower the foundation of a church has been laid of which the building, just mentioned, is intended to form the steeple; but a structure of this kind, requiring considerable time, labour, and expense, the governors have hitherto neglected to carry it into execution, preferring the formation of such establishments as are more immediately necessary for the preservation of the colony. While waiting, however, for the erection of a church, divine service is performed in one of the apartments of the great corn magazine. Two fine windmills terminate on this side the series of the principal public edifices.

Over the rivulet that intersects the town, there was a wooden bridge which, together with a strong causeway, may be said to occupy all the bottom of the valley. We passed over this bridge in order to take a rapid view of the eastern part of Sydney Town. Before our departure the wooden bridge was destroyed to make way for one which they were about to build of stone; at the same time, a watermill was built here by the government, and strong locks had been formed, either to keep in the water of the rivulet, or to stop that of the marshes, which runs to a considerable distance into the valley and might be advantageously employed in turning the mill.

At the east point of the creek is a second battery, the fire of which crosses that of the signal station. The one of which I am now speaking was dismantled at the time of our arrival at Port Jackson, but it has been put in order since our departure. On the shore, as you approach the town, is a small salt-pit, where the Americans, who were allowed to settle for the purpose at Port Jackson in 1795, prepared most of the salt used in the colony. Farther on, and towards the bottom of the harbour, is the part called Government Greek, because it is reserved for the agents and vessels of the state. Between this creek and the salt-pit is the place for docking and careening the ships. The natural quays are so perpendicular and well formed that, without any kind of labour or expense on the part of the English, the largest ships might be laid along them in perfect security.

Near the Government Creek are three public magazines. One of them contains all the articles necessary for the various purposes of domestic life, such as earthenware, household furniture, culinary utensils, instruments of agriculture etc. The number of these articles that is here amassed is truly astonishing, and the mode in which they are delivered out is wise and salutary. In this distant country, the merchandises of Europe bear so high a price that it would have been next to impossible for the population to procure such as are indispensable to the common wants of life. The English government has therefore anticipated these wants by filling large storehouses with every article that can be required, all of which are delivered to the colonists at fixed prices that are extremely moderate, sometimes even below what they cost in Europe. But in order to prevent avaricious speculations, or waste, no one is admitted into these depots without a written order from the governor in which are specified the articles that the bearer is in need of. In another house are preserved the different uniforms and clothing for the troops and convicts, as well as vast quantities of sailcloth and cordage for the government ships. The last of the three buildings just mentioned is a kind of public manufactory in which are employed female convicts.

Behind these magazines is the governor's house, which is built in the Italian style, surrounded by a colonnade, as simple as it is elegant, and in front of which is a fine garden that descends to the seashore. Already in this garden may be seen the Norfolk Island pine, the superb Columbia, growing by the side of the bamboo of Asia; farther on is the Portugal orange and Canary fig, ripening beneath the shade of the French apple tree; the cherry, peach, pear, and apricot, are interspersed amongst the
Banksia, Metrosideros, Correa, Melaleuca, Casuarina, Eucalyptus
and a great number of other indigenous trees.

Beyond the government garden, on the other side of a neighbouring hill, is the windmill, the bakehouse and the state ovens that are used for making ship biscuit: these are capable of furnishing from fifteen to eighteen hundred pounds per day. Not far from a contiguous creek, at a spot which the natives call
Wallamoula
, is the charming habitation of Mr Palmer, the commissary general.
^†
A rivulet of fresh water runs before it, and empties itself into the creek which here forms a safe and convenient basin. Here, Mr Palmer has built several small vessels which he employs in whale fishing, and catching Phocae, or sea elephants, either at New Zealand or in Bass's Straits. The neighbouring brick-fields furnish a considerable quantity of bricks and tiles for the public and private buildings of the colony.

A short distance to the southward of Sydney Town, to the left of the great road that leads to Parramatta, you observe the remains of the first gibbet that was erected on the continent of New Holland. The increase of habitations having caused it to be, as it were, surrounded, it has been succeeded by another that has been erected farther off, in the same direction, and near the village of Brick-field.
^†
This village, which consists of about two score of houses, contains several manufactories of tiles, earthenware, crockery etc. Its site is agreeable, and the soil, less sterile than that of Sydney, is better adapted to the different kinds of cultivation that have been introduced into these distant regions.

The great road just mentioned passes through the middle of Brick-field; while a small rivulet intersects it in an opposite direction. Between this village and Sydney Town is the public burying-ground, which is already rendered an object of interest and curiosity by several striking monuments that have been erected in it; and the execution of which is much better than could reasonably have been expected from the state of the arts in so young a colony.
^††

A crowd of objects, equally interesting, demanded our notice in every direction. In the port we saw, drawn up together, a number of vessels that had arrived from different parts of the world, and most of which were destined to perform new and difficult voyages. Some of them had come from the banks of the Thames or the Shannon to pursue whale-fishing on the frigid shores of New Zealand. Others, bound to China after depositing the freight which they had received from the English government for this colony, were preparing to sail for the mouth of the Yellow River; while some, laden with pit-coal, were about to convey that precious combustible to India, and the Cape of Good Hope. Several smaller vessels were on their way to Bass's Straits to receive skins, collected by a few individuals who had established themselves on the isles of those straits to catch the marine animals that resort to them.

Other ships, stronger built than those just alluded to and manned by more numerous and daring crews who were provided with all kinds of arms, were on the point of sailing for the western coast of America. Laden with various sorts of merchandise, these vessels were intended to carry on, by force of arms, a contraband trade on the Peruvian shores, which could not fail to prove extremely advantageous to the adventurers. Here they were preparing an expedition to carry on a skin trade with the people of the north-west shores of America; there all hands were engaged in sending off a fleet of provision ships to the Navigators', the Friendly, and the Society Islands, to procure for the colony a stock of salt provisions.
^†

At the same time the intrepid Captain Flinders, after effecting a junction with his companion ship, the
Lady Nelson
, was getting ready to continue his grand voyage round New Holland, a voyage which was soon afterwards terminated by the greatest misfortunes.
^††
In short, at this period, the harbour of Port Jackson had become familiar to the American navigators, and their flag was continually flying in it during our residence.

All these great maritime operations gave to the place a character of importance and activity far beyond what we expected to meet with on shores scarcely known to Europeans, even by name, and the interest we took in the scene was only equalled by our admiration.

The population of the colony was to us a new subject of astonishment and contemplation. Perhaps there never was a more worthy object of study presented to the philosopher—never was the influence of social institutions proved in a manner more striking and honourable to the distant country in question. Here we found united, like one family, those banditti who had so long been the terror of their mother country. Repelled from European society, and sent off to the extremity of the globe, placed from the very hour of their exile in a state between the certainty of chastisement and the hope of a better fate, incessantly subjected to an inspection as inflexible as it is active, they have been compelled to abandon their anti-social manners; and the majority of them, having expiated their crimes by a hard period of slavery, have been restored to the rank which they held amongst their fellow men. Obliged to interest themselves in the maintenance of order and justice, for the purpose of preserving the property which they have acquired, while they behold themselves in the situation of husbands and fathers, they have the most interesting and powerful motives for becoming good members of the community in which they exist.

The same revolution, effected by the same means, has taken place amongst the women, and those who were wretched prostitutes have imperceptibly been brought to a regular mode of life and now form intelligent and laborious mothers of families. But it is not merely in the moral character of the women that these important alterations are discoverable, but also in their physical condition, the results of which are worthy the consideration both of the legislator and the philosopher. For example, everybody knows that the common women of great capitals are in general unfruitful: at Petersburgh and Madrid, at Paris and London, pregnancy is a sort of phenomenon amongst persons of that description, though we are unable to assign any other cause than a sort of insusceptibility of conception. The difficulty of researches, as to this subject, has prevented philosophers from determining how far this sterility ought to be attributed to the mode of life of such women, and to what degree it may be modified or altered by a change of condition and manners.

But both these problems are resolved by what takes place in the singular establishment that we are describing. After residing a year or two at Port Jackson most of the English prostitutes become remarkably fruitful; and what, in my opinion, clearly proves that the effect arises much less from the climate than from the change of manners amongst the women is that those prostitutes in the colony, who are permitted by the police to continue in their immoral way of life, remain barren the same as in Europe. Hence we may be permitted to deduce the important physiological result that an excess of sexual intercourse destroys the sensibility of the female organs to such a degree as to render them incapable of conception; while to restore the frame to its pristine activity nothing is necessary but to renounce those fatal excesses.

F
RANCIS
B
ARRALLIER

Portions Of a Monkey, 1802

In November 1802, Francis Barrallier, French-speaking ensign of the New South Wales Corps, came within a whisker of crossing the Blue Mountains. Although Barrallier turned back too soon, he brought with him the first evidence of the koala, an animal which the colonists knew about only by rumour. The creature's feet, pickled in rum, at first confused and then amazed Europe's savants. Was it a monkey—or an arboreal wombat?

7 November—After having walked for a little while, I perceived two natives seated under a bush, one of whom seemed as if he were anxious to run away, while the other one remained seated and appeared to be trying to persuade the former to stay.