country, also one or two convicts who were recommended to this favour by their good conduct, and many of the productions of the country both animal and vegetable. On the 11th he set sail. It is almost unnecessary to say, that he was not merely attended to the shore with the honours due to his rank, but with the sincere regret of all classes of people.

Mr. Phillip was a man of undeniable merit; at once ardent and firm in the execution of his duty. His faults could scarcely be called such; a quickness of temper, a disposition more peremptory than is absolutely necessary in command, a too punctilious jealousy of station, with manners founded upon these qualities. But if that amenity was wanting, which history has sometimes delighted to paint in the characters of her favourites, he was not essentially harsh or severe. He scorned the display or semblance of that benevolence, of which, it must have been seen in the course of this narrative, that he had such well-founded claims to the reality.

The administration of the colony, in the absence of a governor, now devolved, by his Majesty's letters patent, upon the lieutenant

governor, and the usual oaths were administered by the judge-advocate.

At this time, the Hope, an American ship, from Rhode Island, commanded by Mr. Benjamin Page, put into the cove for wood and water. She had a cargo of spirits and American-cured beef for sale, part of which the lieutenant-governor thought it advisable to purchase. This ship had touched at the Falkland Islands, in order to collect skins from the different American vessels employed there in the seal trade, which article she was to carry to the Chinese market. Her passage from the Cape of Good Hope had been performed in two months and one day. The master said he found the prevailing winds to be from the N.W. and described the weather as the most boisterous he had ever known for such a length of time. A few days after this ship, the Chesterfield whaler, an English vessel, put into the cove.

A suffocating closeness of the atmosphere was produced at this time, from the circumstance of the woods and grass having, from whatever cause, been on fire for a considerable

extent.

Between the 1st of January and 31st of

December 1792, the diminution of the numbers by death in the colony, was as follows; two persons of the civil department, six soldiers, four hundred and eighteen male convicts, eighteen female convicts and twenty-nine children; two convicts were executed and three lost in the woods; in all four hundred and seventy-eight persons.

L

CHAPTER XVI.

Allotments of Land to Settlers.

On the 15th of January a ship was seen from the look-out. In the evening, a large fire was made for the stranger's information. At ten o'clock the following morning, the Bellona transport anchored in the cove from England, having on board a cargo of stores and provisions, seventeen female convicts, five settlers with their families, a person of the name of Thorpe, engaged as a master mill-wright at a certain salary, together with a master blacksmith. Amongst other articles, a considerable quantity of wine and spirits were by this ship consigned to the governor, for the purpose of being sold to the officers of the civil and military establishments at prime cost. This measure had been adopted by his Majesty's government for the accommodation of those gentlemen, in consequence of the impositions to which it was found that they were liable both in price and quality, when dependent upon the ordinary means of supply.

The settlers who came out in this transport,

received allotments of land the following month, a few miles from Sydney, in a situation to which they chose to give the name of Liberty Plains. One of them, Thomas Rose, a farmer from Dorsetshire, in consideration of his having brought with him a wife and four children, had one hundred and twenty acres marked out for him; two others, Webb and Powell, having wives, received eighty acres each; those who were unmarried, sixty. The conditions under which these persons had engaged to settle were, that their passage should be defrayed by government, that they should be provided with a proper assortment of farming utensils, together with two years' provisions; their lands to be granted free of expense, the service of a sufficient number of convicts to be assigned them, and the said convicts to be supplied with two years' rations and one year's clothing. An emancipated convict likewise received an allotment in the same neighbourhood, and being a good bricklayer as well as a quiet industrious man, he proved of essential service to them. Allotments of one hundred acres each, were also granted to the clergyman, the principal surgeon, and several military officers; a permission for the grants to these latter having been just received from Europe.