Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/72

 Macquarie." The whole proceedings are related in a style which would leave nothing to be desired in the Little Pedlington Gazette. For instance:—"The subscribers' ball, on Tuesday and Thursday night, was honoured with the presence of his excellency the governor and his lady, his honour the lieutenant-governor and lady, the judge-advocate and lady, the magistrates and other officers, civil and military, and all the beauty and fashion of the colony. The business of the meeting could not fail of diffusing a glow of satisfaction the celebration of the first liberal amusement instituted in the colony in the presence of its patron and founder." A supper followed the ball:—"After the cloth was removed the rosy deity asserted his pre-eminence, and, with the zealous aid of Momus and Apollo, chased pale Cynthia down into the Western World; the blazing orb of day announced his near approach, and the god of the chariot reluctantly forsook his company: Bacchus drooped his head, Momus could no longer animate. The bons vivants, no longer relishing the tired deities, left them to themselves!"

In the first year of his government, Macquarie undertook a tour through all the known districts of the colony, and continued the practice annually during his reign. On his return, by a general order, he censured the settlers for the little attention they had paid to domestic comfort or good farming, in buildings for the residence of themselves and shelter of their cattle; offered cattle, sheep, and goats from the government herds, to be paid for in grain, with eighteen months' credit; and announced that he had marked out for settlement the five new townships of Richmond, Pitt, Wilberforce, and Castlereagh, out of reach of floods of the Hawkesbury and Nepean, in which grants would be awarded to deserving applicants, on condition that they erected dwellings according to plans supplied, and other measures of a similar practical character.

In the December of the same year, the first brick church, St. Philip's, was consecrated (on Christmas-day) by the Heverend Samuel Marsden,—a name from that time forward constantly occupying a conspicuous place in the annals of the colony, as clergyman, magistrate, landowner, and stockbreeder. For instance, his next appearance in the Sydney Gazette is, in conjunction with two other gentlemen, advertising a reward of one pound sterling, or a gallon of spirits, for every skin of a native dog,—an animal which was then, and has been ever since, the scourge of flockowners.

In 1812 a Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to inquire into the state of the colony of New South Wales, after