Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/89

 of public thanksgiving for His Majesty's recovery, when "the attendance on Divine service was very full."

On the 20th another sail was announced, and the Justinian, storeship, arrived, after a passage of only five months from England. On the next day the full ration was restored, and the settlement breathed freely. In the same month the Surprise, Neptune, and Scarborough, transports, arrived, and the harbour would have been gay but for the condition of the new-comers. Two hundred and sixty-one deaths of male convicts had occurred in the three ships, and sickness still raged among them. Phillip reported (13th July) "the scene of misery which the hospital and sick tents exhibited" when the convicts were landed. They were too crowded on board, and thereby afflicted; "488 were under medical treatment" on arrival.

Of two men, very different in character, who arrived in these plague-smitten ships, a word must be said. The sagacity, energy, and enterprise of John Macarthur, of the New South Wales Corps, were to mould the destinies of Australia, and hasten by decades her material progress. D'Arcy Wentworth was to become the father of her greatest orator and patriot. They embarked in the same vessel, the Neptune, and a prophet might have said to her, Cæsarem rehis et fortunas suas. There were disagreements on board, and at the equator Macarthur exchanged duties with an officer on board the Scarborough. In all the ships there was pestilence. More than one hundred and fifty convicts died on board of the Neptune.

The father of John Macarthur had, with several brothers, fought for the Pretender at Culloden. His brothers were slain, and the solitary survivor, after fleeing abroad, settled in Plymouth. Twenty years after the death of his uncles, John Macarthur was born. He entered the army, and at the close of the war in 1783, studied to complete his education, his regiment having been reduced, and he being on half-pay. The expedition which winged its way to the South attracted a mind eager in character, and large in its conceptions. He purchased a commission in the New South Wales Corps, and with his young wife sailed to Sydney.

D'Arcy Wentworth, a dissipated youth, who was a tax to his friends, but had some knowledge of surgery, had been