Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/45

 prayers once on each Sunday, unless some reasonable excuse for absence should be assigned."

In 1791 (April) we find Mr. Schaffer, a German, arriving from England as a superintendent of convicts; but on discovery that as he spoke no English he was unable to discharge his duties, he retired, and accepted a grant of land of 140 acres at Rosehill. One cannot help feeling curious to know under whose patronage and for what services a German, not speaking English, was sent as superintendent of convicts at the antipodes. Is it possible that Miss Burney's friend, Madame Schwellenberg, could have had anything to do with this little appointment?

At the same time James Ruse received a grant of a similar quantity of land as a reward for being the first settler who declared he was able to support himself on a farm he had occupied fifteen months, and to dispense with an allowance from the government stores.

These incidents, with the arrival, in two detachments, of a regiment raised for the purpose of serving in the colony, under the title of the New South Wales Corps, are the most remarkable events during the latter years of the reign of Governor Phillip, who resigned his office to Lieutenant-Governor Grose, and returned to England on the 11th December, 1792.

At that date there were sixty-seven settlers, holding under grant three thousand four hundred and seventy acres, of which four hundred and seventeen acres were in cultivation, and a hundred more cleared. We have no means of ascertaining where all these grants were situated, but the greater part is now occupied as building land, and was miserably barren for agricultural purposes, although covered with gigantic gumtrees.

This summary of the cultivation by free or freedmen settlers is interesting, because it marks the first step towards rendering the colony self-supporting. These settlers were, if they required, victualled and clothed from the public store for eighteen months from the time of their going on their grants, furnished with tools and implements of husbandry, grain to sow their grounds, such stock as could be spared from the public, and, at the discretion of the governor, the use of as many convicts as they would undertake to clothe, feed, and employ. Every free or freed man had a hut erected on his farm at public expense.

On ground of ordinary fertility, with settlers of average industry, these terms would have insured early independence; but the greater part of the district was and is as barren as the sea-shore, and the majority of the settlers who were not idle were perfectly ignorant of agricul-