Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/46

. The difficulties of cutting down and removing the forest were so great that, without the use of compulsory convict labour for a quarter of a century, the Sydney district never could have been cleared.

During this period the government was obliged to carry on cultivation as well as it could on public account, although with indifferent success. A principle as old as the first step the first tribes made toward civilisation—which, however, many statesmen and economists even now appear not to understand—was forcibly illustrated in the answer of a settler, reproached with not having worked so well for the joint-stock account as he did on his own grant of land—"We are working for ourselves now."

The following were the prices of agricultural stock and produce at the close of 1792: Flour, 9d. per lb.; potatoes, 3d. per lb.; sheep (the Cape breed), £10 10s. each; milk goats, £8 8s.; breeding sows, £7 7s. to £10 10s.; laying fowls, 10s.; tea, 8s. to 16s. per lb.; sugar, 1s. 6d. per lb.; spirits, 12s. to 20s. per gallon; porter, 1s. per quart.

At these famine prices the mortality among the convict population was fearful. Between the 1st January and the 31st December, 1792, there died two persons of the civil department, six soldiers, four hundred and eighteen male convicts, eighteen female convicts, and seventy-nine children.

Governor Phillip took with him to England two of the aborigines, with whom, throughout the period of his government, he had endeavoured to promote a good understanding—a task involving great difficulties, arising from the brutality of the convicts and the untameable nature of the savages. The tribes that swarmed round Port Jackson and Botany Bay have, with one exception, all died out; the character and customs of those who survive in less settled districts remain unchanged, or at any rate not more changed than the fox chained in a courtyard, or a pheasant reared in an aviary.

In September, 1795, Governor Hunter arrived, superseded Lieutenant- Governor Grose, and remained the usual term of five years. His difficulties were less formidable than those of Governor Phillip, which were not extravagantly rewarded by a retiring pension of £500. His office was no sinecure. He had had a large body of convict colonists under his command who would not work, who would drink, and who were therefore dependent for subsistence on supplies imported from England and India. By every ship that left the harbour there was an attempt, generally successful, to escape, on the part of convicts; fifty were taken from one ship at a time "when the loss of the labour of one man was important." It was no wonder that all who could,