Read "Letters from an Exile at Botany Bay" by Thomas Watling online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Britain, I believe, still entertains, and very justly, an idea of the sterility and miserable state of N. S. Wales. It will be long before ever it can even support itself.--Still that country so famed for charity and liberality of sentiment I doubt not will persevere to continue it.--When I have seen so much wanton cruelty practised on board the English hulks, on poor wretches, without the least colour of justice, what may I not reasonably infer?--French Bastile, nor Spanish Inquisition, could not centre more of horrors.
Our longest day coincides exactly with your shortest; and vice versa. The climate is an extremely sultry one, especially in summer; and yet paradoxical as it may appear, it is in, no wise propitious for tropical vegetation. A few European culinary vegetables grow, but never arrive to their pristine maturity, and when re-transplanted dwindle unto nothing.-- The face of the country is deceitful; having every appearance of fertility; and yet productive of no one article in itself fit for the support of mankind.