Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 2.djvu/302

 258 GBOSE AND THE XAND. ^'^^^ sixty acres of Government ground were cleared of timber, twenty of which were sown with Indian corn.* In Decem- ber, 1793, a settlement was made on the Parramatta River, not far from the spot where the Northern Railway bridge now spans it. The place was named Concord, presamably because it was occupied by settlers from the civil and the military classes.t Little information with regard to these reSoenoe. Settlements is to be obtained from Grose's despatches, which give only an outline of events occurring during his term of office. Unlike Phillip, who took a keen interest in everything that pertained to the settlement, and kept the Home Department well informed even as to matters of detail, Grose seems to have given only a general view of afEairs, and reduced his despatches to the smallest possible compass. His communications to the Home Department, which are brevity itself compared with the letters of Phillip, present a striking contrast to those of the Governors who administered afEairs during the decade 1795-1805. Hunter and King were inclined to err on the side of prolixity; Grose erred in the opposite direction. Farma In January, 1794, shortly after the allotment of farms Hawkes- at Coucord, a settlement was formed on the banks of the burj'. ' Hawkesbury. Phillip, it will be remembered, had contem- plated the establishment of a convict settlement at this place, but had postponed the design because there was no com- petent superintendent whom he could put in charge. For the same reason, possibly, Grose did not send convicts to the Hawkesbury in the first instance. J • CoUim, vol. i, p. 817. f " On the 24th [December, 1793] ten grants of land passed the seal of the territory, and received the Lieutenant-Governor's signature. Five allotments of tweutj-five acres each, and one of thirty, ^ere given to six non-commissioned officers of the Kew South Wales Corps, who had cho.-en an eligible situation nearly midway between Sydney and Parramatta ; and wbo, in conjunction with four other settlers, occupied a district to be distinguished in future by the name of Concord. These allotments extended inland Irom the water's side, within two miles of the district named Liberty Plains."-, lb., p. 330. X " Another division of settlers was this month added to the list of those
 * already established. Williams and Jtuse, having got rid of the money which

they had respectively received for their farms, were permitted, with some