Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/246

 U2 PHILLIP 1788 had been daily making itself more and more felt, the land Navamber about Sydney Cove being found practically useless for the purpose. The first farm made in the colony was at Faim Cove— whence its name — and there nine acres were laid down pieflnt in com soon after the settlement was formed: but nine acres nurm. were obviously not enough to support over a thousand per- sons, and Phillip was consequently driven to explore the sur- rounding country in search of better soil. Hence his frequent journeys north, south, and west. The only available land which he succeeded in finding for some time was near the head of the harbour, at a place which he named Rose Hill — not knowing at the time that the native name was Parra- matta. Here, in November, 1788, he commenced opera- Bose HiiL tious ou a large scale, and with so much success that Rose Hill soon became an important establishment.* His own experience as a gentleman farmer while settled at Lyndhurst, in the New Forest, was probably turned to some practical account here; at any rate, it lent some little attraction to his labours.f When Captain Hunter visited the place in In the arid, barren, naked plains of the north, with not a shrub to shelter him from the heat, not a stick to bum for his fire (except what he carried with him), the native is found, and where, as far as I could ascertain, the whole country around appeared equally devoid of either animal or vegetable life. In other cases, the very regions which, in the eyes of the European, are most barren and worthless, are to the native the most valuable and pro- ductive. Such are dense brushes or sandy tracts of country covered with shrubs, for here the wallabie, the opossum, the kangaroo rat, the bandicoot, leipoa, snakes, lizards, iguanas, ana many other animals, reptiles, birds, &c., abound ; whilst the kangaroo, the emu, and the native dog are found upon their borders, or in the vicinity of those small grassy plains which are occasionally met with amidst the closest brushes." — Eyre, Journals, p. 351. settlement at the head of the harbour. On the 2nd, his excellency the Governor went up to the Crescent with the Surveyor-General, two officers, and a small party of marines, to choose the spot, and to mark out the ground for a redoubt and other necessary buildings ; and two days after a party of ten convicts, being chiefly people who understood the business of cultivation, were sent up to him, and a spot upon a rising ground, which his excellency named Ilose Hill, in compliment to G. Rose, Esq., one of the Secretaries of the Treasury, was orderea to be cleared for the first habita- tions. The soil at this spot was of a stiff clayey nature, free from that rock which everywhere covered the surface of Sydney Cove, well clothed with timber, and unobstructed by underwood. " — Collins, p. 45, t He had luckily brought out with him from England a man-servant who, according to Collins (p. 64), '* joined to much agricultural knowledge a per- i Digitized by Google
 * "The month of November commenced with the establishment of a