The Founding of Sydney
On April 20th, 1770, writes W. Charnley, Captain James Cook, commissioned to observe the transit of Venus, first watched the shores of Australia rising slowly above the westward horizon.
In January 1836, Charles Darwin, who was circling the globe as a naturalist on H.M.S. Beagle, stepped ashore in Sydney:
“We anchored within Sydney Cove. We found the little basin occupied by many large ships, and surrounded by warehouses. In the evening I walked through the town, and returned full of admiration at the whole scene.
It is a most magnificent testimony to the power of the British nation. Here, in a less promising country, scores of years have done many times more than an equal number of centuries have effected in South America. My first feeling was to congratulate myself that I was born an Englishman.”
Sydney was then fifty-two years of age. Its story begins with the Rev. Jeremiah Horrocks, curate on £40 a year to the village of Hoole, Lancashire. From his meagre stipend Mr. Horrocks had bought a telescope, and through this, on November 24th, 1639, he became the first man to view the transit of Venus across the sun’s disc.
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