The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay, by
Watkin Tench

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Title: A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay

Author: Watkin Tench

Release Date: May 8, 2006 [EBook #3535]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A NARRATIVE OF THE EXPEDITION TO BOTANY BAY

by Watkin Tench

INTRODUCTION

In offering this little tract to the public, it is equally the writer's
wish to conduce to their amusement and information.

The expedition on which he is engaged has excited much curiosity, and
given birth to many speculations, respecting the consequences to arise
from it. While men continue to think freely, they will judge variously.
Some have been sanguine enough to foresee the most beneficial effects to
the Parent State, from the Colony we are endeavouring to establish;
and some have not been wanting to pronounce the scheme big with folly,
impolicy, and ruin. Which of these predictions will be completed, I
leave to the decision of the public. I cannot, however, dismiss the
subject without expressing a hope, that the candid and liberal of each
opinion, induced by the humane and benevolent intention in which it
originated, will unite in waiting the result of a fair trial to an
experiment, no less new in its design, than difficult in its execution.

As this publication enters the world with the name of the author,
candour will, he trusts, induce its readers to believe, that no
consideration could weigh with him in an endeavour to mislead them.
Facts are related simply as they happened, and when opinions are
hazarded, they are such as, he hopes, patient inquiry, and deliberate
decision, will be found to have authorised. For the most part he has
spoken from actual observation; and in those places where the relations
of others have been unavoidably adopted. He has been careful to search
for the truth, and repress that spirit of exaggeration which is almost
ever the effect of novelty on ignorance.

The nautical part of the work is co