nt a thing well done in a
distant part of the world; when I want a man with a good head, a good
heart, lots of pluck, and plenty of common-sense, I always send for a
captain of the navy."

A captain of a man-of-war then, as now, began at the bottom of the ladder,
learning how to do little things, picking up such knowledge of detail as
qualified him to teach others, to know what could be done and how it ought
to be done. In all professions this rule holds good, but on shipboard men
acquire something more. On land a man learns his particular business in
the world; at sea his ship is a man's world, and on the completeness of
the captain's knowledge of how to feed, to clothe, to govern, his people
depended then, and in a great measure now depends, the comfort, the lives
even, of seamen. So that, being trained in this self-dependence--in the
problem of supplying food to men, and in the art of governing them, as
well as in the trade of sailorizing--the sea-captain ought to make the
best kind of governor for a new and desolate country. If your sea-captain
has brains, has a mind, in fact, as well as a training, then he ought to
make the ideal king.

Phillip's despatches contain passages that strikingly show his peculiar
qualifications in both these respects. His capacity for detail and
readiness of resource were continually demonstrated, these qualifications
doubtless due to his sea-training; his sound judgment of men and things,
his wonderful foresight, which enabled him to predict the great future of
the colony and to so govern it as to hold this future ever in view, were
qualifications belonging to the _man_, and were such that no professional
training could have given.

Barton, in his _History of New South Wales from the Records_, incomparably
the best work on the subject, says: "The policy of the Government in his
day consisted mainly of finding something to eat." This is true so far as
it goes, but Barton himself shows what finding something to eat meant in
those days, and Phillip's despatches prove that, although the food
question was the practical every-day problem to be grappled with, he, in
the midst of the most harassing famine-time, was able to look beyond when
he wrote these words: "This country will yet be the most valuable
acquisition Great Britain has ever made."

In future chapters we shall go more particularly into the early life of
the colony and see how the problems that harassed Phillip's administration