[Australia Twice Traversed The Romance of Exploration by Ernest Giles]@TWC D-Link bookAustralia Twice Traversed The Romance of Exploration INTRODUCTION 5/50
In 1845 Captain Sturt found the same flower on his Central Australian expedition, and it is now generally known as Sturt's Desert Pea, but it is properly named in its botanical classification, after its original discoverer. After Dampier's discoveries, something like sixty years elapsed before Cook appeared upon the scene, and it was not until his return to England that practical results seemed likely to accrue to any nation from the far-off land.
I shall not recapitulate Cook's voyages; the first fitted out by the British Government was made in 1768, but Cook did not touch upon Australia's coast until two years later, when, voyaging northwards along the eastern coast, he anchored at a spot he called Botany Bay, from the brightness and abundance of the beautiful wild flowers he found growing there.
Here two natives attempted to prevent his landing, although the boats were manned with forty men. The natives threw stones and spears at the invaders, but nobody was killed.
At this remote and previously unvisited spot one of the crew named Forby Sutherland, who had died on board the Endeavour, was buried, his being the first white man's grave ever dug upon Australia's shore; at least the first authenticated one--for might not the remaining one of the two unfortunate convicts left by Pelsart have dug a grave for his companion who was the first to die, no man remaining to bury the survivor? Cook's route on this voyage was along the eastern coast from Cape Howe in south latitude 37 degrees 30' to Cape York in Torres Straits in latitude 10 degrees 40'.
He called the country New South Wales, from its fancied resemblance to that older land, and he took possession of the whole in the name of George III as England's territory. Cook reported so favourably of the regions he had discovered that the British Government decided to establish a colony there; the spot finally selected was at Port Jackson, and the settlement was called Sydney in 1788.
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