Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 2.djvu/215

 THE THIKD PLEET. 177 Phillip, on loth March, 1792, wrote to Dundas :— 1792 " I am very sorry to say that most of the convicts who were received by the last ships still continue in the same debilitated state in which they were landed, and of whom, in less than seven months, two hundred and eighty-eight men have died. In the seven months prior to the arrival of those ships the deaths were nineteen. The returns of sick this day is — civil and military, eighteen; male convicts, three hundred and ninety-four; and females, seventeen."* Even then the extent of the mischief had not been realised. The sick convicts continued to droop and die, and by the end of the year, according to Collins, the death-roll had risen to increase of four hundred and thirty-six, most of whom arrived by the ^ Third Fleet. It is apparent, therefore, that of those who landed sick from the transports comparatively few recovered. Phillip's despatch shows that most of the sick convicts referred to in the return of 19th March were those who arrived in the vessels of the Third Fleet, but the number cannot be stated with exactness. The mortality which took place among these people is the more conspicuous from the fact that the losses by death in the other classes of the community were small. Nearly Not due to everyone who wrote about the colony at that time, from cKoaat, the Governor downwards, spoke well of the climate ; and although they had to live upon food that was generally insuflBcient in quantity and inferior in quality, there was little sickness or death among the free population. One feature of the case, regarded by Collins as peculiar, is not perhaps so strange as it appeared to him. He noticed a medical that many of the sick convicts, instead of gaining health p'**^^®"^ and strength after exchanging the pestiferous atmosphere of the transports for the pure air of Sydney and Parramatta, were attacked by complaints of a dysenteric character, which caused the death of the weak, and from which the stronger recovered with difficulty.f He was disposed to attribute • Historical Beoords^ toI. i, part 2, p. 696. t " There were at this time not less than seyenty persons from the Matilda and Atlantic under medical treatment^ being yfeikg emaciated, and imfit for V0I«. II.— M