Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/135

 FOR THE EXPEDITION. 37 judicial position. The Governor was thus left without any 1787 legal advice on which he could rely, and law was admin- istered on strictly military principles. These were some of the difficulties which Phillip had to encounter day by day, and which were, no doubt, doubly trying to him from the fact that they might have been so easily avoided by proper attention in the first instance. But serious as they were, they were greatly aggravated by the subsequent despatch of convict ships, one after another. The second at a time when the settlement was suffering from want of the actual necessaries of life ; ships, too, sent out with so little regard for human life that pestilential fevers broke out among their wretched passengers, carrying off large num- bers of them at sea, and leaving the rest in so disabled a state that on their arrival they had to be kept in hospital among a starving population. From the time of his appointment to that of his departure on the 13th May, 1787, Phillip — ^judging from his corre- spondence — ^appears to have been energetically employed in supervising the arrangements made for the expedition, in- quiring into various details connected with it, and otherwise preparing for his new sphere of action. How minutely he phiiiip»g examined every point that presented itself to his mind at SetaV*" ^ this time may be seen from a " memo." preserved in the Record Office, bearing no date, but evidently written soon after he had received his appointment. It contains a striking passage, in which, as on other occasions, he expressed his opinion of the great future which lay before the colony : — By arriving at the settlement two or three months before the transports, many and very great advantages would be gained. Prepar&tioiiB Huts would be ready to receive the convicts who are sick, and tnnsporta. they would find vegetables, of which it may naturally be supposed they will stand in great need, as the scurvy must make a great ravage amongst people naturally indolent and not cleanly. Huts would be ready for the women ; the stores would be pro- perly lodged and defended from the convicts, in such manner as Digitized by Google