ked as frisky and larky as a
boy. He skipped up and down the deck, and took an interest in
everything. This lasted so long as the water was smooth. When he came
in sight of the broken water at the Heads, I fancy his spirit
barometer went down a little. But when the ship began to put her nose
into the waves freely, a total change seemed to pass over him. I very
soon saw his retreating skirts. For the next three days--three long,
rough, wave-tossing days--very little was seen of him, and when he at
length did make his appearance on deck, alas! he seemed no longer the
brisk and juvenile passenger that had come on board at Sandridge only
a few days before.

Indeed, it was a very rough and "dirty" passage. The passengers were
mostly prostrate during the whole of the voyage. The sea was rolling
in from the east in great billows, which our little boat breasted
gallantly; but it was tossed about like a cork, inclining at all sorts
of angles by turns. It was not much that I could see of the coast,
though at some places it is bold, at others beautiful. We passed very
near to it at Ram Head and Cape Howe--a grand promontory forming the
south-west point of Australia.

On the third day from Melbourne, about daybreak, I found we were
steaming close along shore, under dark brown cliffs, not very high,
topped with verdure. The wind had gone down, but the boat was pitching
in the heavy sea as much as ever. The waves were breaking with fury
and noise along the beach under the cliffs. At 9 A.M. we passed Botany
Bay--the first part of New South Wales sighted by Captain Cook just a
hundred years ago. It was here that he first landed, and erected a
mound of stones and a flag to commemorate the event.[14] Banks and
Solander, who were with him, found the land covered with new and
beautiful flowers, and hence the name which was given it, of "Botany
Bay"--afterwards a name of terror, associated only with crime and
convict life.

We steamed across the entrance to the bay, until we were close under
the cliffs of the outer South Head, guarding the entrance to Port
Jackson. The white Macquarie lighthouse on the summit of the Head is
seen plainly at a great distance. Steaming on, we were soon under the
inner South Head, and at the entrance to the famous harbour, said to
be the finest in the world.

The opening into Port Jackson is comparatively narrow,--so much so,
that when Captain Cook first sailed past it, he considered it to be
merely a boa