Botany Bay

'...Dined with John Swinton en famille. He told me an odd circumstance. Coming from Berwickshire in the mail coach he met with a passenger who seemed more like a military man than anything else. They talked on all sorts of subjects, at length on politics. Malachi's letters were mentioned, when the stranger observed they were much more seditious than some expressions for which he had three or four years ago been nearly sent to Botany Bay...'

On January 18, 1788, 736 convicts were delivered to Botany Bay's penal colony by Britain's First Fleet.  Botany Bay was the site of James Cook's landing in 1770.  The text above comes from Scott's Journal; July 10, 1826.