Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 2.djvu/36

 20 THE FAMINE OF 1789-90. 1789-00 years a burden to the Government." '' Numbers of them,** he added^ '^ had been brought up from their infancy in such indolence that they would starve if left to themselves.'** If a staff of overseers accustomed to agricultural work could have been placed in charge, these disadvantages would have been reduced to a minimum. Under the circumstances it S^nsT'** is not surprising that the "harvest" of 1789, the first recorded, was anything but a plentiful one. Phillip makes this report of it : — " In December the com at Rose Hill was got in ; the com was exceeding good. About two hundred bushels of wheat and sixty of barley, with a small quantity of flax, Indian com, and oats, aU which is preserved for seed The officers have not raised sufficient to support the little stock they have. Some ground I have had in cultivation will return about forty not en- bushels of wheat into store, so that the produce of the labour of oouroging. ,, ^ the convicts employed in cultivation has been very short of what might have been expected, "t Phillip does not give the area of land in cultivation, nor the number of men employed, but information on the latter point is supplied by Collins : — Affricnitural public in cultivation it appeared that of all the members in the colony there were only two hundred and fifty so employed — a very small number indeed to procure the means of rendering the colony independent of the mother country for the necessaries of life."^ It will not escape attention that Phillip did not regard the product of the land he had in cultivation as his private property. A still more striking instance of disinterestedness on his part in sending into the Government store his private stock of flour has already been alluded to.§ o»2Se Phillip, it will be seen, made a point of the failure by the officers to raise even enough com to feed the few head of t lb., p. 299. X Collins, Tol. i, p. 51. § VoL i, p. 106.
 * Upon a calculation of the diflferent people employed for the
 * Historical Beoords, yoL i, part 2, p. 146.