Читать книгу Early Tasmania - James Backhouse Walker - Страница 5

As the subject of the present Paper may appear to be scarcely within the scope of the objects of the Royal Society, it seems, proper to state briefly the occasion of its being written and submitted to the consideration of the Fellows.

Some two years ago, the Tasmanian Government—of which the Hon. James Wilson Agnew, Honorary Secretary of the Royal Society, was Premier—following the good example set by the Governments of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and New Zealand, directed search to be made in the English State Record Office for papers relating to the settlement and early history of this Colony. The idea originated in a suggestion from Mr. James Bonwick, F.R.G.S., the well-known writer on the Tasmanian Aborigines, who had been employed for years on similar work for various Colonial Governments, and to him the task was entrusted by Dr. Agnew. Mr. Bonwick searched, not only the Record Office, but the papers of the Admiralty, the Foreign Office, the Privy Council, and the British Museum, and discovered and copied a large mass of documents relating to the early days of Tasmania. In the early part of this year, these copies, extending over some 640 foolscap pages, were received in Hobart, and the present Premier—the Hon. Philip Oakley Fysh—obligingly allowed me to peruse them. I found them to be of great interest. They threw quite a new light on the causes which led to the first occupation of this Island; gave a complete history of Bowen's first settlement at Risdon Cove; and supplied materials for other hitherto unwritten chapters of Tasmanian history. Upon informing Mr. Fysh of the result of my examination, he entered warmly into my proposal to put before the public in a narrative form the information acquired, and placed the documents at my disposal for that purpose. It is at Mr. Fysh's suggestion that this first paper on the subject is now submitted to the Royal Society. The introductory sketch of the operations of the French in Tasmania has been compiled from the original published narratives of the expeditions. Some history of preceding events seemed necessary for a proper understanding of the transactions referred to in the documents under notice. My object has been, not to give a history of the discovery and early exploration of our Island, but merely such an outline of the rivalries of the French and English in these seas as would suffice for a better apprehension of the motives which prompted the first occupation of the Derwent.

The story of the first settlement of Tasmania, and of Lieutenant Bowen's little colony at Risdon Cove, has never yet been told, so far as I can discover. West, Fenton, and other authors give meagre, inaccurate, and contradictory particulars. No writer records even the date of Bowen's landing. Mr. Bonwick's researches now, for the first time, enable us to give this missing first chapter of Tasmanian history.