The French in Van Diemen's Land, and the first settlement at the Derwent

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