An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales Volume I Part 42

[** Such as the marine settlers, those at Liberty Plains, and others who never had been prisoners.]

As much inconvenience also was felt, and the end for which government gave up the services of these convicts to individuals liable to be defeated by their not residing at their respective farms, the settlers were directed as much as possible to prevent their servants from having any intercourse, particularly during the night, with the towns in their neighbourhood; as most of the robberies which were committed were not unjustly laid to their account.

It appeared likewise by this muster, that one hundred and seventy-nine people subsisted themselves independent of the public stores, and resided in this town. To many of these, as well as to the servants of settlers, were to be attributed the offences that were daily heard of, they were the greatest nuisances we had to complain of; and there was not a doubt that they were concerned about this time in rolling two casks of meat from a pile at the store in a very hard storm of wind and rain. Enough to fill a cask was found concealed in different holes the following morning.

An indulgence had been allowed to some of the military and others, which was now found to have produced an evil. Having been permitted to build themselves huts on each side of and near the stream of water which supplied the town of Sydney, they had, for the convenience of procuring water, opened the paling, and made paths from each hut; by which, in rainy weather, a great quant.i.ty of filth ran into the stream, polluting the water of which every one drank. It therefore became an object of police; and the governor prohibited removing the paling, or keeping hogs in the neighbourhood of the stream, under penalty to the offender that his house should be pulled down.

On the 13th, the _Providence_ sailed for Nootka Sound. She was followed by the _Supply_, which sailed on the 16th for Norfolk Island, having on board three officers of the New South Wales corps, and a detachment of the regiment to relieve those now on duty there. On the 29th the _Young William_, having been expeditiously cleared of her cargo, sailed for Canton.

Clearing the store-ship, which was completed on the 19th, and stowing in the public store the provisions she brought out, was the princ.i.p.al labour of the month. Every effort was made to collect together a sufficient number of working people to get in the ensuing harvest; and the muster and regulation respecting the servants fortunately produced some. The bricklayer and his gang were employed in repairing the column at the South Head; to do which, for want of bricks at the kiln, the little hut built formerly for Bennillong, being altogether forsaken by the natives, and tumbling down, the bricks of it were removed to the South Head. A person having undertaken to collect sh.e.l.ls and burn them into lime, a quant.i.ty of that article was sent down; and the column, being finished with a thick coat of plaster, and whitened, was not only better guarded against the weather, but became a more conspicuous object at sea than it ever had been before.

November.] On the 5th of November, the _Sovereign_ store-ship arrived from England; her cargo a welcome one, being provisions. Like the _Young William_, she touched at Rio de Janeiro, and like her also had met with very bad weather after she had left that port until her arrival; from making the south cape of this country to her anchoring she had a pa.s.sage of three weeks. In this ship arrived Mr. Thomas Hibbins, the deputy judge-advocate for Norfolk Island; but unfortunately without the patent under the great seal for holding the court. One settler also arrived, a Mr. Kennedy and his family (a sister and three nieces); and Mr. Joseph Gerald, a prisoner, whose present situation afforded another melancholy proof of how little profit and honor were the endowments of nature and education to him who perverted them. In this gentleman we saw, that not even elegant manners (evidently caught from good company), great abilities, and a happy mode of placing them in the best point of view, the gifts of nature matured by education, could (because he misapplied them) save him from landing an exile, to call him by no worse a name, on a barbarous sh.o.r.e, where the few who were civilized must pity, while they admired him. He arrived in a very weak and impaired state of health. We learned that two other ships with convicts, the _Marquis Cornwallis_ and the _Maria_, might be expected to arrive in the course of this summer.

On the 7th, a criminal court was a.s.sembled, when the following persons were tried; viz. Samuel Chinnery (a black) servant to Mr. Arndell*, the a.s.sistant surgeon, for robbing that gentleman; but he was acquitted.

---- Smith and Abraham Whitehouse, for breaking into the dwelling-house of William Potter, a settler at Prospect Hill, and after cruelly treating the only person in the house, William Thorn, a servant) stripping it of all the moveables they could find, and killing and taking away some valuable stock; these were found guilty, and condemned to die: and two settlers, and six convicts, for an a.s.sault on one Marianne Wilkinson (attended with like circ.u.mstances of infamy as that on Mary Hartley in April last) of which three were found guilty, and sentenced, ---- Merchant, alias Jones, the princ.i.p.al, to receive one thousand lashes; the others, Ladley and Everitt, eight hundred each.

[* This gentleman had, on the arrival of Mr. Leeds, been permitted to retire from the civil duties of the colony with a salary of fifty pounds per annum.]

These unmanly attacks of several men on a single woman had frequently happened, and had happened to some females who, through shame concealed the circ.u.mstance. To such a height indeed was this dissolute and abandoned practice carried, that it had obtained a cant name; and the poor unfortunate objects of this brutality were distinguished by a t.i.tle expressive of the insults they had received.

On the 16th the two prisoners Smith and Whitehouse were led out to execution. Smith suffered, after warning the crowd which attended him to guard against breaking the Sabbath. Whitehouse, being evidently the tool of Smith, and a much younger man, was pardoned by the governor. His excellency, after the execution, expressed in public orders, his hope that neither the example he had that day found himself compelled to make of one offender, nor the lenity which he had shown to another, would be without their effect: it would always be more grateful to him to spare than to punish; but he felt it necessary on that occasion to declare, that if neither the justice which had been done, nor the mercy which had been shown, tended to decrease the perpetration of offences, it was his determination in future to put in execution whatever sentence should be p.r.o.nounced on offenders by the court of criminal judicature.

A small printing-press, which had been brought into the settlement by Mr. Phillip, and had remained from that time unemployed, was now found very useful; a very decent young man, one George Hughes, of some abilities in the printing line, having been found equal to conducting the whole business of the press. All orders were now printed, and a number thrown off sufficient to ensure a more general publication of them than had hitherto been accomplished.

Some time after the arrival of the _Sovereign_ the full allowance of salt meat was issued, and the hours of public labour regulated, more to the advantage of government than had for a considerable time, owing to the shortness of the ration, been the case. Instead of completing in a few hours the whole labour which was required of a man for the day, the convicts were now to work the whole day, with the intermission of two hours and a half of rest. Many advantages were gained by this regulation; among which not the least was, the diminution of idle time which the prisoners before had, and which, emphatically terming _their own time_, they applied as they chose, some industriously, but by far the greater part in improper pursuits, as gaming, drinking, and stealing.

The full ration of flour was issued to the Military, on account of the 'hard duty which had lately fallen upon the regiment;' but they were informed, that the quant.i.ty of flour in the public store would not admit of their receiving such allowance for any length of time. Four pounds were issued to the prisoners, and some other grain given to them to make up the difference.

On the 20th his Majesty's ship _Supply_ returned from Norfolk Island, having been absent four weeks and four days. She had a long pa.s.sage back of seventeen days. When Mr. Kent left the island, the lieutenant-governor was dangerously ill with the gout in his stomach. We understood that cultivation was nearly at a stand there. The grounds were so over-run with two great enemies to agriculture, rats, and a pernicious weed called cow-itch*, that the settlers despaired of ever being able to get rid of either.

[* The Pruriens, a species of the Dolichos.]

A circ.u.mstance happened this month not less extraordinary and unexpected than the discovery of the four convicts at Port Stephens.

The contests which had lately taken place very frequently in this town, and the neighbourhood of it, among the natives, had been attended by many of those people who inhabited the woods, and came from a great distance inland. Some of the prisoners gathering from time to time rumours and imperfect accounts of the existence of the cattle lost in 1788, two of them, who were employed by some officers in shooting, resolved on ascertaining the truth of these reports, and trying by different excursions to discover the place of their retreat. On their return from the first outset they made, which was subsequent to the governor's arrival, they reported, that they had seen them. Being, however, at that moment too much engaged in perfecting the civil regulations he had in view for the settlement, the governor could not himself go to that part of the country where they were said to have been found; but he detached Henry Hacking, a man on whom he could depend. His report was so satisfactory, that on the 18th the governor set off from Parramatta, attended by a small party, when after travelling two days, in a direction SSW from the settlement at Prospect Hill, he crossed the river named by Mr. Phillip the Nepean; and, to his great surprise and satisfaction, fell in with a very fine herd of cattle, upwards of forty in number, grazing in a pleasant and apparently fertile pasturage. The day being far advanced when he saw them, he rested for the night in their neighbourhood, hoping in the morning to be gratified with a sight of the whole herd. A doubt had been started of their being cattle produced from what we had brought into the country from the Cape; and it was suggested that they might be of longer standing. The governor thought this a circ.u.mstance worth determining, and directed the attendants who were with him (Hacking and the two men who had first found them) to endeavour in the morning to get near enough to kill a calf. This they were not able to effect; for, while lying in wait for the whole herd to pa.s.s (which now consisted of upwards of sixty young and old) they were furiously set upon by a bull, which brought up the rear, and which in their own defence they were compelled to kill. This however answered the purpose better perhaps than a calf might have done; for he had all the marks of the Cape cattle when full grown, such as wide-spreading horns, a moderate rising or hump between his shoulders, and a short thin tail. Being at this time seven or eight and thirty miles from Parramatta, a very small quant.i.ty of the meat only could be sent in; the remainder was left to the crows and dogs of the woods, much to the regret of the governor and his party*, who considered that the prisoners, particularly the sick at the hospital, had not lately received any meat either salt or fresh.

[* Captain Waterhouse and Mr. Ba.s.s (surgeon) of the _Reliance_, and the writer of this Narrative.]

The country where they were found grazing was remarkably pleasant to the eye; every where the foot trod on thick and luxuriant gra.s.s; the trees were thinly scattered, and free from underwood, except in particular spots; several beautiful flats presented large ponds, covered with ducks and the black swan, the margins of which were fringed with shrubs of the most delightful tints, and the ground rose from these levels into hills of easy ascent.

The question how these cattle came hither appeared easy of solution. The few that were lost in 1788, two bulls and five cows, travelled without interruption in a western direction until they came to the banks of the Nepean. Arrived there, and finding the crossing as easy as when the governor forded it, they came at once into a well-watered country, and amply stored with gra.s.s. From this place why should they move? They found themselves in possession of a country equal to their support, and in which they remained undisturbed. We had not yet travelled quite so far westward; and but few natives were to be found thereabouts; they were likely therefore to remain for years unmolested, and securely to propagate their species.

It was a pleasing circ.u.mstance to have in the woods of New Holland a thriving herd of wild cattle. Many proposals were made to bring them into the settlement; but in the day of want, if these should be sacrificed, in what better condition would the colony be for having possessed _a herd of cattle in the woods_?--a herd which, if suffered to remain undisturbed for some years, would, like the cattle of South America, always prove a market sufficient for the inhabitants of the country; and, perhaps, not only for their own consumption, but for exportation. The governor saw it in this light, and determined to guard, as much as was in his power, against any attempts to destroy them.

On his return he found some very fine ground at the back of Prospect Hill. The weather during this excursion was so intensely hot, that one day as the party pa.s.sed through a part of the country which was on fire, a terrier dog died by the way.

Discharging the store-ship, some part of the cargo of which appeared to be injured by the weather she had met with, formed the princ.i.p.al labour of the month. On account of the small number of working men which could be got together, the governor required two able men to be sent in for this purpose from each farm having ten, to be returned as soon as the provisions were stowed in the public store.

It having been the practice for some time past to shoot such hogs (pursuant to an order which their destructive qualities had rendered necessary in the lieutenant-governor's time) as were found trespa.s.sing in gardens or cultivated grounds, and the loss of the animals being greatly felt by the owners, as well as detrimental to the increase of that kind of stock, the governor directed, that instead of firing at them when found trespa.s.sing, they should be taken to the provost-marshal, by whom (if the damage done, which was to be ascertained before a magistrate, was not paid for within twenty-four hours) they were to be delivered to the commissary as public property, and the damages paid as far as the value of the animal would admit.

A combination appearing among the labouring people to raise the price of reaping for a day, the governor, being as desirous to encourage industry as to check every attempt at imposition, thought it necessary, on comparing our's with the price usually paid in England, to direct that ten shillings, and no more, should be demanded of, or given by any settler, under pain of losing the a.s.sistance of government, for reaping an acre of wheat. It was much feared that this order would be but little attended to; and that some means would be devised on both sides to evade the letter of it.

We heard nothing of the natives at the river; all was quiet there. About this settlement their attention had been for some time engrossed by Bennillong, who arrived with the governor. On his first appearance, he conducted himself with a polished familiarity toward his sisters and other relations; but to his acquaintance he was distant, and quite the man of consequence. He declared, in a tone and with an air that seemed to expect compliance, that he should no longer suffer them to fight and cut each other's throats, as they had done; that he should introduce peace among them, and make them love each other. He expressed his wish that when they visited him at Government-house they would contrive to be somewhat more cleanly in their persons, and less coa.r.s.e in their manners; and he seemed absolutely offended at some little indelicacies which he observed in his sister Car-rang-ar-ang, who came in such haste from Botany Bay, with a little nephew on her back, to visit him, that she left all her habiliments behind her.

Bennillong had certainly not been an inattentive observer of the manners of the people among whom he had lived; he conducted himself with the greatest propriety at table, particularly in the observance of those attentions which are chiefly requisite in the presence of women. His dress appeared to be an object of no small concern with him; and every one who knew him before he left the country, and who saw him now, p.r.o.nounced without hesitation that Bennillong had not any desire to renounce the habits and comforts of the civilized life which he appeared so readily and so successfully to adopt.

His inquiries were directed, immediately on his arrival, after his wife Go-roo-bar-roo-bool-lo; and her he found with Caruey. On producing a very fashionable rose-coloured petticoat and jacket made of a coa.r.s.e stuff, accompanied with a gypsy bonnet of the same colour, she deserted her lover, and followed her former husband. In a few days however, to the surprise of every one, we saw the lady walking unenc.u.mbered with clothing of any kind, and Bennillong was missing. Caruey was sought for, and we heard that he had been severely beaten by Bennillong at Rose Bay, who retained so much of our customs, that he made use of his fists instead of the weapons of his country, to the great annoyance of Caruey, who would have preferred meeting his rival fairly in the field armed with the spear and the club. Caruey being much the younger man, the lady, every inch a woman, followed her inclination, and Bennillong was compelled to yield her without any further opposition. He seemed to have been satisfied with the beating he had given Caruey, and hinted, that resting for the present without a wife, he should look about him, and at some future period make a better choice.

His absences from the governor's house now became frequent, and little attended to. When he went out he usually left his clothes behind, resuming them carefully on his return before he made his visit to the governor.

During this month one man and a woman, attempting to cross one of the creeks at the Hawkesbury by a tree which had been thrown over, fell in, and were drowned; and one man had died there of the bite of a snake.

Three male convicts* died at Sydney.

[* One of them, William Locker, from the extraordinary deformity of his left leg, had been offered 100 for it in England.]

December.] The court of civil judicature had hitherto been but rarely a.s.sembled. The few debts which had been contracted were not of sufficient moment, and had seldom remained long enough in doubt, to require an action to recover them. But now the possibility having been discovered of acquiring in this country a property worth preserving, it was probable, when the talents and disposition of the men of landed property (the settlers) in New South Wales were considered, that many disputes would occur among them which the civil court alone could decide.

A court of civil judicature was a.s.sembled this month. Some debts were sworn to, and writs granted. An action for an a.s.sault was also tried.

About the latter end of the month of October, a large sow, the property of Mr. J. Boston, having trespa.s.sed with two or three other hogs on a close belonging to an officer of the New South Wales corps, was shot by a soldier of the regiment (the officer's servant). The owner, Mr. Boston, repairing immediately to the spot, on seeing the sow, then near farrowing, lying dead on the ground, made use of some intemperate expressions; which being uttered in the hearing of two of the officers and some other soldiers of the corps, the officers were said by Mr. Boston to have encouraged and urged the soldiers to beat him. Mr. Boston had been struck, and, as it appeared on the trial, with a musket, which at the time was loaded. Mr. Boston laid his damage at five hundred pounds. The court however, after several days very attentive examination of the business, gave him a verdict against two of the defendants, with twenty shillings damages from each. One of these defendants, a soldier, was advised to appeal from the decision of the court to the governor, who, after hearing the appeal, confirmed the verdict of the civil court.

On the 6th the _Francis_ schooner sailed for Norfolk Island. The governor, being anxious to learn the situation of the lieutenant-governor, sent her merely with a letter, that if unhappily any accident should have happened to him, a proper person might be sent in the _Reliance_ to command the settlement, until a successor could arrive from England.

Having nothing to deliver or receive that could detain him, the master determined to try in what time his vessel could run thither and back again.

The harvest was begun in this month. The Cape wheat (a bearded grain differing much from the English) was found universally to have failed. An officer who had sown seven acres with this seed at a farm in the district of Petersham Hill, on cutting it down, found it was not worth the reaping. This was owing to a blight; but every where the Cape wheat was p.r.o.nounced not worth the labour of sowing.

A quant.i.ty of useful timber having been for some time past indiscriminately cut down upon the banks of the River Hawkesbury, and the creeks running from it, which had been wasted or applied to purposes for which timber of less value might have answered, the governor, among other colonial regulations, thought it necessary to direct, that no timber whatever should be cut down on any ground which was not marked out on either the banks or creeks of that river: and, in order to preserve as much as possible such timber as might be of use either for building or for naval purposes, he ordered the king's mark to be immediately put on all such timber, after which any persons offending against the order were to be prosecuted. This order extended only to _grounds not granted to individuals_, there being a clause in all grants from the crown, expressly reserving, under pain of forfeiture, for the use thereof, 'such timber as might be growing or to grow hereafter upon the land so granted, which should be deemed fit for naval purposes.'

It was feared, that the certainty of the existence of our cattle to the southward being incontrovertibly established, some of our vagabonds might be tempted to find them out, and satisfy their hunger on them from time to time, as they might find opportunity. We were therefore not surprised to hear that two of them had been killed. A very strict inquiry into the report, however, convinced us that it had been raised only for the purpose of trying how such a circ.u.mstance would be regarded. The governor thought it necessary therefore to state in public orders, that,

Having heard it reported, that some person or persons, who had been permitted to carry arms for the protection of themselves and property, had lately employed that indulgence in an attempt to destroy the cattle belonging to government, which were at large in the woods; and as the preservation of that stock was of the utmost importance to the colony at large, he declared, that if it should be discovered that any person whatever should use any measure to destroy or otherwise annoy them, they would be prosecuted with the utmost severity of the law.

A reward was also held out to any person giving information, and the order was made as public as possible that no one might plead ignorance of it.

The harvest having commenced, the governor on the 22nd signified to the settlers, that

although it had hitherto been the intention and the practice of government to give them every possible encouragement, as well as others who had employed themselves in growing corn, by taking off their hands all their surplus grain at such prices as had from time to time been thought fair and reasonable, it was not, however, to be expected, as the colony advanced in the means of supplying itself with bread, that such heavy expences could be continued. He therefore recommended to them to consider what reduction in the price of wheat and Indian corn they could at present submit to, as their offers in that respect would determine him how far it might be necessary in future to cultivate on the part of government, instead of taking or purchasing a quant.i.ty from individuals at so great a price.

This proposal, he thought, could not be considered otherwise than as fair and reasonable, when they recollected that the means by which individuals had so far improved their farms had arisen from the very liberal manner in which government had given up the labour of so great a number of its own servants, to a.s.sist the industry of others. If this representation should not have the effect which he hoped and expected, by a reduction of the present high price of grain, he thought it his duty to propose, that those who were a.s.sisted with servants from government, should at least undertake to furnish those servants with bread.

To those who had farms on the banks of the Hawkesbury he thought it necessary to observe, that, there not being any granaries in that district belonging to government, the expense of conveying their grain from thence to this part of the settlement rendered it absolutely necessary that they should lower their prices; otherwise they must be at that expence themselves, and bring their surplus corn to market either at Sydney or Parramatta, where government had stores where in to deposit it, and where only the commissary could be permitted to receive it.

A report from the river was current about this time, that the natives had a.s.sembled in a large body, and attacked a few settlers who had chosen farms low down the river, and without the reach of protection from the other settlers, stripping them of every article they could find in their huts. An armed party was directly sent out, who, coming up with them, killed four men and one woman, badly wounded a child, and took four men prisoners. It might have been supposed that these punishments, following the enormities so immediately, would have taught the natives to keep at a greater distance; but nothing seemed to deter them from prosecuting the revenge they had vowed against the settlers for the injuries they had received at their hands.

A savage of a darker hue, and full as far removed from civilisation, black Caesar, once more fled from honest labour to the woods, there to subsist by robbing the settlers. It was however reported, that he had done one meritorious action, killing Pe-mul-wy, who had just before wounded Collins (the native) so dangerously, that his recovery was a matter of very great doubt with the surgeons at our hospital, whose a.s.sistance Collins had requested as soon as he was brought into town by his friends. A barbed spear had been driven into his loins close by the vertebrae of the back, and was so completely fixed, that all the efforts of the surgeons to remove it with their instruments were ineffectual.