There were two hundred persons in the ship, and but one survived the disaster.  He was a sailor.  A huge sea flung him up the face of the precipice and stretched him on a narrow shelf of rock midway between the top and the bottom, and there he lay all night.  At any other time he would have lain there for the rest of his life, without chance of discovery; but the next morning the ghastly news swept through Sydney that the Duncan Dunbar had gone down in sight of home, and straightway the walls of the Heads were black with mourners; and one of these, stretching himself out over the precipice to spy out what might be seen below, discovered this miraculously preserved relic of the wreck.  Ropes were brought and the nearly impossible feat of rescuing the man was accomplished.  He was a person with a practical turn of mind, and he hired a hall in Sydney and exhibited himself at sixpence a head till he exhausted the output of the gold fields for that year.

We entered and cast anchor, and in the morning went oh-ing and ah-ing in admiration up through the crooks and turns of the spacious and beautiful harbor—­a harbor which is the darling of Sydney and the wonder of the world.  It is not surprising that the people are proud of it, nor that they put their enthusiasm into eloquent words.  A returning citizen asked me what I thought of it, and I testified with a cordiality which I judged would be up to the market rate.  I said it was beautiful—­superbly beautiful.  Then by a natural impulse I gave God the praise.  The citizen did not seem altogether satisfied.  He said: 

“It is beautiful, of course it’s beautiful—­the Harbor; but that isn’t all of it, it’s only half of it; Sydney’s the other half, and it takes both of them together to ring the supremacy-bell.  God made the Harbor, and that’s all right; but Satan made Sydney.”

Of course I made an apology; and asked him to convey it to his friend.  He was right about Sydney being half of it.  It would be beautiful without Sydney, but not above half as beautiful as it is now, with Sydney added.  It is shaped somewhat like an oak-leaf-a roomy sheet of lovely blue water, with narrow off-shoots of water running up into the country on both sides between long fingers of land, high wooden ridges with sides sloped like graves.  Handsome villas are perched here and there on these ridges, snuggling amongst the foliage, and one catches alluring glimpses of them as the ship swims by toward the city.  The city clothes a cluster of hills and a ruffle of neighboring ridges with its undulating masses of masonry, and out of these masses spring towers and spires and other architectural dignities and grandeurs that break the flowing lines and give picturesqueness to the general effect.