Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/65

 merinos were bred and the first vineyards planted in New South Wales. To Camden, perhaps, future generations of grateful Australians will make pilgrimages. For not greater services the Greeks made of Jason a demi-god. No doubt the Golden Fleece was shorn from a merino ram.

Soon after Bligh landed, Captain King introduced him to M'Arthur, who invited the new governor to visit Camden and inspect his flocks, the result of the crosses from the King's merinos. The answer was a refusal in the language of the forecastle, expressive of Bligh's contempt for all such occupations. This was characteristic of the man. When the mother and uncle of young Hey wood (a boy midshipman on board the Bounty, who received a free pardon and afterwards rose to distinction in the navy) entreated his aid in obtaining mercy for one whose only crime had been not forcing his way through and springing into the overladen boat, he answered in a few lines: "I very much regret that so much baseness formed the character of a young man I had a real regard for, and I hope to hear that his friends can bear his loss without much concern."

It would be unnecessary to dwell upon Bligh's numerous acts of cruelty and tyranny, were it not that his government was one of the great epochs in the history of New South Wales. The results of his despotism turned the attention of the English public to the resources of the colony, and the defeat of his crowning act of oppression enabled M'Arthur to change the destinies of Australia, and make it, instead of a mere gaol, the finest emigration field in the world.

A little anecdote related by Wentworth, culled from hundreds floating in the colony at that period (1816), illustrates a form of government and a state of society strangely at variance with our notions of the rights of Englishmen. Governor Bligh, having heard from his cowkeeper that the servant of an officer of the staff had made some impertinent remarks because disappointed of the customary supply of milk for his master, on the following morning sent for the dissatisfied delinquent. Wondering and trembling, he was ushered into the presence of his excellency, was received with a condescending smile, and told that, as the chief constable's house was on his way home, the governor had merely sent for him to save a dragoon the trouble of going there with a letter. The poor fellow, his mind relieved, respectfully received the missive, delivered it, was immediately tied to the triangles, and rewarded with twenty-five lashes from the cat-o'-nine-tails.

After a career of two years, during which the person and property of every class of the community were at the mercy of his temper for the day, Governor Bligh proceeded with arbitrary illegality to summon,