Chapter I.

Public utility of voyages—­Peculiar circumstances of this—­New Holland properly a continent—­Reasons for fixing our settlement there—­Transportation to America, its origin, advantages, and cessation—­Experiments made—­The present plan adopted—­Disadvantages of other expedients.

From voyages undertaken expressly for the purpose of discovery, the public naturally looks for information of various kinds:  and it is a fact which we cannot but contemplate with pleasure, that by the excellent publications subsequent to such enterprises, very considerable additions have been made, during the present reign, to our general knowledge of the globe, of the various tribes by which it is peopled, and of the animals and vegetables to which it gives support.

An expedition occasioned by motives of legislative policy, carried on by public authority, and concluded by a fixed establishment in a country very remote, not only excites an unusual interest concerning the fate of those sent out, but promises to lead us to some points of knowledge which, by the former mode, however judiciously employed, could not have been attained.  A transient visit to the coast of a great continent cannot, in the nature of things, produce a complete information respecting its inhabitants, productions, soil, or climate:  all which when contemplated by resident observers, in every possible circumstance of variation, though they should be viewed with less philosophical acuteness, must yet gradually become more fully known:  Errors, sometimes inseparable from hasty observation, will then be corrected by infallible experience; and many objects will present themselves to view, which before had escaped notice, or had happened to be so situated that they could not be observed.

The full discovery of the extent of New Holland, by our illustrious navigator, Capt.  Cook, has formed a singular epocha in geography; a doubt having arisen from it, whether to a land of such magnitude the name of island or that of continent may more properly be applied.  To this question it may be answered, that though the etymology of the word island,* and of others synonymous to it, points out only a land surrounded by the sea, or by any water, (in which sense the term is applicable even to the largest portions of the habitable globe) yet it is certain that, in the usual acceptation, an island is conceived to signify a land of only moderate extent, surrounded by the sea.** To define at what point of magnitude precisely, a country so situated shall begin to be a continent, could not answer any purpose of utility; but the best and clearest rule for removing the doubt appears to be the following:  As long as the peculiar advantages of an insular situation can be enjoyed by the inhabitants of such a country, let it have the title of an island; when it exceeds those limits let it be considered as a continent.  Now the first and principal advantage