Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 2.djvu/161

 CROWN LANDS UNDER PHILLIP. 133 his liands lie would probably have taken the land just as it ^^^ came, and allotted it in the way most conducive to its profitable occupation. It is possible that the idea of the Government was that the blocks of land reserved for the ' Grown would be made valuable by settlement around them, and might therefore be disposed of afterwards to advantage. The plan was good in theory only; in practice it broke down completely. Phillip, who did his best to carry out the instructions he received, no matter how they conflicted with his own views, obeyed orders, and placed the first settlers on isolated patches of land. But he soon found that this arrangement was not only disadvantageous, but dangerous. The settlers, he explained in a letter to Grenville, were, by this disposition of the land, separated from each other by forests, and exposed to the attacks of hostile natives, and ^^5g[J£ as each allotment was- occupied by one man, '^or at i^iost^^^ a man and a woman,^' the settlers were liable to be cut off in detail. There were other disadvantages belonging to the system. The settlers, Phillip pointed out, could not so readily assist each other in moving heavy timber; the labour of fencing the ground was greatly increased; and every man was obliged to watch his own farm, which, from other dis- being surrounded with a wood, was peculiarly liable to ^*°*^*' depredation. Accordingly, Phillip gave to the settlers the land which had been reserved for the Crown ; they were thus placed in a position in which they could unite for the purposes of industry or defence. He explained to the Home Department that the force of circumstances had obliged him to deviate from the Instructions, and his action in this respect was not called in question. The plan broke down in Norfolk Island also, but for a different reason. There were no natives there, but the small area of available land rendered obedience to the Instruc- tions incompatible with the settlement of the island. On the 8th May, 1792, six months after he took charge as Lieutenant-Governor, King wrote to Dundas to explain that,