An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port …

Rare and important. c.18th account by John Hunter, of the foundation of the penal colony at Sydney Cove, based on the Journals of Governors Phillip, King and Lieutenant Ball. It recounts the Voyages, from the first Sailing of the Sirius in 1787, to the return of that Ship’s Company to England in 1792.

Quarto, portrait  of Captain John Hunter and engraved vignette on title page, 5 pp. list of subscribers, 583pp, 17 pl. and maps. Bound in dark green morocco spine with cloth boards, raised gilt bans and corners with gilt tooling. Minor spots to a few pages and plates and maps as usual. The seventeen engraved plates and maps, include, portraits, large folding maps;
1. Territory of New South Wales showing the extent of settlement.
2. Chart of  the coast between Botany Bay, Port Jackson, and Broken-Bay,
3. Australia (upside down)
4. View of the Settlement in 1788 is the first engraving of Sydney

” A valuable work on the early history of the English settlement in Australia ” (Hill).   (includes the first published engraving of Sydney, with William Blake’s engraving of P.G. King’s “A Family of New South Wales”.

John Hunter’s An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island (1793) is an important foundation work on the British settlement in Australia, providing a detailed eyewitness account of the arrival of the First Fleet and the formative years of the colony. The work functions both as a practical record of colonial administration and as a contemporary narrative of the establishment of British authority in a distant territory. At the same time, it preserves observations that reveal the profound consequences of colonisation for the Indigenous inhabitants of the region. As the second Governor of New South Wales, Hunter wrote with the disciplined clarity of a naval officer. His descriptions of the geography, flora, and fauna of the region reflect the empirical interests of the late eighteenth century and contributed to the growing European body of knowledge concerning the southern hemisphere. The journal also supplied the British Admiralty with information relevant to the management and defence of the colony, including assessments of Norfolk Island and remarks on coastal navigation in the Pacific, matters of practical importance for the maintenance and development of the settlement.

The work is also notable for its early observations of the Eora people. Although shaped by the assumptions of a colonial observer, Hunter’s references to Indigenous customs, language, and encounters with the British particularly those involving Bennelong provide material of value to later historical and ethnographic study. His account illustrates the difficulties faced by the colonists in attempting to impose familiar forms of order within an unfamiliar environment and in their encounters with societies whose structures and traditions they only partially understood.