The early history of New South Wales as told in the pages of Collins reads like a romance. Captain Arthur Phillip, R. N., the first governor, started from Portsmouth in the month of March, 1787, with nine transports and two men-of-war--the "first fleet" of Australian annals. Unlike the _Mayflower_, bearing its Pilgrim Fathers, men of austere piety and worth, to the shores of New England, this first fleet carried convicts, criminals only, and their guards. Some vessels were laden deeply with stores, others with agricultural implements. Before the fleet was out of the English channel a plot was discovered among some of these desperate characters to seize the ship they were on board, and escape from the fleet. Nearing the Cape of Good Hope a second similar conspiracy came to light, and all through the voyage offences, such as thefts, assaults, abscondings, attempts to pass counterfeit coin, were numerous, and needed exemplary punishment. After a dreary eight months at sea, broken only by short stays at Teneriffe, Rio, and the Cape of Good Hope, the fleet reached Botany Bay in January, 1788. Never had name been more evidently misapplied. The teeming luxuriant vegetation was all a myth, and on closer inspection the "Botanists' Bay" proved to be mere barren swamps and sterile sands. The anchorage though extensive was exposed, and in easterly gales torn by a tremendous surf. Before debarking, therefore, Captain Phillip determined to seek along the coast some site more suitable for the new settlement. Starting with a select party in a small boat for Broken Bay, he passed _en route_ an opening marked upon the chart as Port Jackson, named thus from the look-out man in Cook's ship, who had made it out from the masthead. This is known now as one of the finest and most secure harbours in the world. Here in a cove, where there was deep water for ships of the heaviest burden close in shore, the foundations of the new town were to be laid. It was christened Sydney, after the Secretary of State for the Colonies; and thither a party of convict artificers, guarded by marines, was at once removed to clear land for the intended settlement. When this was accomplished, the remainder of the colonists, 1,030 souls in all, were put on shore.