A GERMAN OVERSEER IGNORANT OF ENGLISH.

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and education which endure to this day, and have spread their humanizing influences all over the wide empire of the American republic. While under the rule of a sovereign which some, disparaging the present, are accustomed to specially glorify as the reign of a Christian king, the lash, the pillory, the gallows, were afforded as freely as teaching and preaching were neglected.

It sounds strangely in this age to hear that, "the clergyman complaining of non-attendance at divine service," which was generally performed in the open air, alike unsheltered from wind and rain, as from the fervour of the summer's sun, "it was ordered that three pounds of flour should be deducted from the ration of each overseer, and two pounds from each labouring convict, who should not attend prayers once on each Sunday, unless some reasonable excuse for absence should be assigned."

In 1791 (April) we find Mr. Schaffer, a German, arriving from England as a superintendent of convicts; but ondiscovery that, as he spoke no English, he was unable to discharge his duties, he retired, and accepted a grant of land of 140 acres at Rosehill. One cannot help feeling curious to know under whose patronage and for what services a German, not speaking English, was sent as superintendent of convicts at the antipodes. Is it possible that Miss Burney's friend, Madame Schwellenberg, could have had anything to do with this little appointment?

At the same time James Ruse received a grant of the same quantity of land as a reward for being the first settler who had declared himselt able to support himself on a farm he had occupied fifteen months, and to dispense with an allowance from the government stores.

These incidents, with the arrival, in two detachments, of a regiment raised for the purpose of serving in the colony, under the title of the New South Wales Corps, are the most remarkable events during the latter years of the reign of Governor Phillip, who resigned his office to Lieutenant-Governor Grose, and returned to England on the 11th December, 1792.

At that date there were sixty-seven settlers, holding under grant three thousand four hundred and seventy acres, of which four hundred and seventeen acres were in cultivation, and a hundred more cleared. We have no means of ascertaining where all these grants were situated, but the greater part is now occupied as building land, and was miserably barren, yet covered with gigantic gum-trees.

But this summary of the cultivation by free or freedmen settlers is interesting, because it marks the first step towards rendering the colony self-supporting. These settlers were, if they required, victualled and

clothed from the public store for eighteen months from the time of their going on their grants, furnished with tools and implements of husbandry, grain to sow their grounds, such stock as could be spared from the public, and, at the discretion of the governor, the use of as many convicts as they would undertake to clothe, feed, and employ. Every free or freed man had a hut erected on his farm at public expense.

On ground of ordinary fertility, with settlers of average industry, these terms would have ensured early independence; but the greater part of the district was and is as barren as the seashore, and the majority of the settlers who were not idle were perfectly ignorant of agriculture. As for the difficulties of cutting down and removing the forests of gum-trees, they were so great that, without the assistance of compulsory convict labour for a quarter of a century, the Sydney district never could have been cleared.

During this period the government was obliged to carry on cultivation as well as it could on public account, although with indifferent success. A principle as old as the first step the first tribes made toward civilization, which, however, many statesmen and economists even now appear not to understand, was illustrated by the answer of a settler, when he was reproached with not having worked so well for the jointstock account as he did on his own grant of land,-" We are working for ourselves now."

The following were the prices of agricultural stock and produce at the close of 1792 :

Flour, 9d. per lb.

Potatoes, 3d. per lb.

Sheep (the Cape breed), £10 10s. each.

Milk goats, £8 8s.

Breeding sows, £7 7s. to £10 10s.

Laying fowls, 10s.

Tea, 8s. to 16s. per lb.

Sugar, 1s. 6d. per lb.

Spirits, 12s. to 20s. per gallon.

Porter, 1s. per quart.

At these famine prices the mortality among the convict population was fearful. Between the 1st January and the 31st December, 1792, there died two persons of the civil department, six soldiers, four hundred and eighteen male convicts, eighteen female convicts, and seventy-nine children.

Governor Phillip took with him to England two of the aborigines, with whom, throughout the period of his government, he had endea

ALCOHOL THE CURRENCY OF THE COLONY.

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voured to promote a good understanding-a task involving great difficulties, arising from the brutality of the convicts and the untameable nature of the savages. The tribes that swarmed round Port Jackson and Botany Bay have, with one exception, all died out; the character and customs of those who survive in less settled districts remain unchanged, or at any rate not more changed than the fox chained in a courtyard, or a pheasant in an aviary.

In September, 1795, Governor Hunter arrived, superseded Lieutenant-Governor Grose, and remained the usual term of five years. His difficulties were less formidable than those of Governor Phillip, which were not extravagantly rewarded by a retiring pension of £500; his office was no sinecure.

He had had a large body of convict colonists under his command who would not work, who would drink, and who were therefore dependent for subsistence on supplies imported from England and India. By every ship that left the harbour there was an attempt, generally successful, to escape, on the part of convicts; fifty were taken from one ship at a time "when the loss of the labour of one man was important;" and it was no wonder that all who could endeavoured to fly from a colony where the population was annually put on short allowance of food, and very often in danger of actual starvation.

At this period, and for more than twenty years, spirits were the ordinary currency of the colony. Almost all extra work was paid for in spirits, and it was thought quite proper to stimulate the diligence of prisoners, in unloading a vessel laden with government stores, by giving half a pint of spirits to each. Among free and bond, drunkenness was a prevailing vice. The tyranny of the prisoneroverseers was so great that the best-inclined convicts were goaded to recklessness and crime. Criminal assaults on women were so common that "the poor unfortunate victims were designated by a title expressive of the insults they had received."

The whole population, on the arrival of Captain Hunter, with the exception of one hundred and seventy-nine, were dependent on the public stores for rations, many of the exceptions being reputed thieves, presumed to subsist on plunder from stores and gardens.

The most favourable feature of this epoch was the extension of cultivation by settlers along the rich alluvial land on the banks of the River Hawkesbury, one of the first districts which seemed to yield a fair return to industry.

Among the events of this five years may be noted the first use of a printing-press, the discovery of the lost herd of cattle, and the

foundation of a settlement, called Newcastle, on the Coaeve or Hunter's River.

A printing-press had been sent out with the first fleet, but no printers; and all public and private announcements were made in manuscript, or by the bellman, until Governor Hunter discovered a printer among his convict subjects, and established a government gazette. In this age of newspapers it seems incredible that a number of officers and gentlemen should have been satisfied for so many years without something in the shape of a newspaper; but the colony was divided into slavedrivers and slaves, who were equally content to spend their time in feeding pigs and getting drunk.

The reports of the natives led the governor to send out as scouts men employed as hunters, to collect fresh provisions for public use, and they discovered, feeding on rich pastures on the other side of the River Nepean, still known as Cow Pastures, a herd of sixty cattle, the produce of the five cows and two bulls lost in 1788.

To realize this sight, so pleasant to the eyes of men condemned to perpetual rations of salt meat, rarely varied by fresh pork, the governor himself set out on an expedition, and tracked and viewed the herd with great delight. An old bull, fiercely and obstinately charging, was

THE LOST HERD OF CATTLE.

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slaughtered in self-defence; he proved to be of the humpy-shouldered Cape breed of the lost stock, which left no doubt of the identity of the herd, and dispelled the notion of indigenous cattle; the party made a delicious meal, and a few pounds were carried back thirtyeight miles, over a rough road, to Paramatta, the rest being left to the native dogs and hawks, with deep regret, "as meat fresh or salt had long been a rarity with the poor sick in the hospital." Many an Australian within the last ten years, galloping through Cow Pastures to purchase the finest cattle at £2 a head, to boil down for tallow, has been reminded of the time when a bit of bull beef, that a well-bred dog would now reject, was a luxury to a governor

and his suite!

These wild cattle were preserved and increased greatly, dividing into "mobs," each under the charge of a victorious bull, until the general increase of stock diminished their value: many were consumed by surrounding small settlers, and the rest, being fierce and a nuisance, were destroyed by order of the government, when beef ceased to be a luxury.

About the time these wild herds were discovered, three miserable cows of the Indian breed sold for £189, and two years afterwards two colonial ships were employed eight months in bringing 51 cows, 3 bulls, and 90 sheep from the Cape, at a cost exceeding the highest price ever paid for the finest short-horns.

Governor Hunter, with the best intentions and an excusable ignorance of the laws of political economy, more than once endeavoured to fix the wages of labour, by a convention of employers, and mutual agreement not to outbid each other. Harvest wages were settled at 10s. a day; but we find, from frequent proclamations, that the rule of supply and demand prevailed, and labourers when much needed obtained "exorbitant terms," although a reward and indemnity were offered to informers.

At this period officers were allowed the use of ten prisoners for agricultural and three for domestic services, and so on in a diminishing scale to every description of settler down to the emancipist, who was allowed the use of one prisoner to assist in tilling his grant. All these servants were fed and clothed by the crown.

In 1797 the first school building was erected for the benefit of three hundred children, and the chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Johnson, began to catechise them after the service on each Sunday.

That instruction was much needed among all classes there can be no doubt; for on one occasion the sails of the public mill, by which the