History of Australia and New Zealand. Sutherland George
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wet sands, so many shipwrecks and weeks of semi-starvation, together with his long and unjust imprisonment, had utterly destroyed his constitution; and on the very day when his book was being published, the wife and daughter of Flinders were tending his last painful hours. He was, perhaps, our greatest maritime discoverer: a man who worked because his heart was in his work; who sought no reward, and obtained none; who lived laboriously, and did honourable service to mankind; yet died, like his friend Bass, almost unknown to those of his own day, but leaving a name which the world is every year more and more disposed to honour.
CHAPTER IV.
NEW SOUTH WALES, 1800–1808.
1. Governor King.—Governor Hunter, who left Sydney in the year 1800, was succeeded by Captain King, the young officer who has been already mentioned as the founder of the settlement at Norfolk Island. He was a man of much ability, and was both active and industrious; yet so overwhelming at this time were the difficulties of Governorship in New South Wales, that his term of office was little more than a distressing failure. The colony consisted chiefly of convicts, who were—many of them—the most depraved and hardened villains to be met with in the history of crime. To keep these in check, and to maintain order, was no easy task; but to make them work, to convert them into industrious and well-behaved members of the community, was far beyond any Governor’s power. King made an effort, and did his very best; but after a time he grew disheartened, and, in his disappointment, complained of the folly which expected him to make farmers out of pickpockets. His chances of success would have been much increased had he been properly seconded by his subordinates. But, unfortunately, circumstances had arisen which caused the officers and soldiers not only to render him no assistance whatever, but even to thwart and frustrate his most careful plans.
2. The New South Wales Corps.—In 1790 a special corps had been organised in the British army for service in the colony; it was called the New South Wales Corps, and was intended to be permanently settled in Sydney. Very few high-class officers cared to enter this service, so far from home and in the midst of the lowest criminals. Those who joined it generally came out with the idea of quickly gathering a small fortune, then resigning their commissions and returning to England. The favourite method of making money was to import goods into the settlement and sell them at high rates of profit; and, in their haste to become rich, many resorted to unscrupulous devices for obtaining profits. A trade in which those who commanded were the sellers, whilst the convicts and settlers under their charge were the purchasers, could hardly fail to ruin discipline and introduce grave evils, more especially when ardent spirits began to be the chief article of traffic. It was found that nothing sold so well among the convicts as rum, their favourite liquor; and, rather than not make money, the officers began to import large quantities of that spirit, thus deliberately assisting to demoralise still further the degraded population which they had been sent to reform. So enormous were the profits made in this debasing trade that very few of the officers could refrain from joining it. Soon the New South Wales Corps became like one great firm of spirit merchants, engaged in the importing and retailing of rum. The most enterprising went so far as to introduce stills and commence the manufacture of spirits in the colony. By an order of the Governor in Council this was forbidden, but many continued to work their stills in secret. This system of traffic, demoralising to every one engaged in it, was shared even by the highest officials in the colony. In the year 1800 the chief constable was a publican, and the head gaoler sold rum and brandy opposite the prison gates.
3. State of the Colony.—Under these circumstances, drunkenness became fearfully prevalent; the freed convicts gave themselves up to unrestrained riot, and, when intoxicated, committed the most brutal atrocities; the soldiers also sank into the wildest dissipation; and many of the officers themselves led lives of open and shameless debauchery. This was the community Governor King had to rule. He made an effort to effect some change, but failed; and we can hardly wonder at the feeling of intense disgust which he entertained and freely expressed.
4. Mutiny of Convicts.—Most of the convicts, on their arrival in the colony, were “assigned”—that is, sent to work as shepherds or farm-labourers for the free settlers in the country; but prisoners of the worst class were chained in gangs and employed on the roads, or on the Government farms. One of these gangs, consisting of three or four hundred convicts, was stationed at Castlehill, a few miles north of Parramatta. The prisoners, emboldened by their numbers and inflamed by the oratory of a number of political exiles, broke out into open insurrection. They flung away their hoes and spades, removed their irons, seized about two hundred and fifty muskets, and marched towards the Hawkesbury, expecting to be there reinforced by so many additional convicts that they would be able to overpower the military. Major Johnstone, with twenty-four soldiers of the New South Wales Corps, pursued them; they halted and turned round to fight, but he charged with so much determination into their midst that they were quickly routed, and fled in all directions, leaving several of their number dead on the spot. Three or four of the ringleaders were caught and hanged; the remainder returned quickly to their duty.
5. Origin of Wool-growing.—During Governor King’s term of office a beginning was made in what is now an industry of momentous importance to Australia. In the New South Wales Corps there had been an officer named Macarthur, who had become so disgusted with the service that, shortly after his arrival in Sydney, he resigned his commission, and, having obtained a grant of land, became a settler in the country. He quickly perceived that wool-growing, if properly carried on, would be a source of much wealth, and obtained a number of sheep from the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope, with which to make a commencement. These were of a kind which did not suit the climate, and his first attempt failed; but in 1803, when he was in England on a visit, he spoke so highly of New South Wales as a country adapted for wool-growing, that King George III. was interested in the proposal, and offered his assistance. Now, the sheep most suitable for Macarthur’s purpose were the merino sheep of Spain; but these were not to be obtained, as the Spaniards, desirous of keeping the lucrative trade of wool-growing to themselves, had made it a capital crime to export sheep of this kind from Spain. But it so happened that, as a special favour, a few had been given to King George, who was an enthusiastic farmer; and when he heard of Macarthur’s idea, he sent him one or two from his own flock to be carried out to New South Wales. They were safely landed at Sydney, Governor King made a grant of ten thousand acres to Mr. Macarthur, at Camden, and the experiment was begun. It was not long before the most marked success crowned the effort, and in the course of a few years the meadows at Camden were covered with great flocks of sheep, whose wool yielded annually a handsome fortune to their enterprising owner.
6. Governor Bligh.—In 1806 Governor King was succeeded by Captain Bligh, whose previous adventures have made his name so well known. In his ship, the Bounty, he had been sent by the British Government to the South Sea Islands for a cargo of bread-fruit trees. But his conduct to his sailors was so tyrannical that they mutinied, put him, along with eighteen others, into an open boat, then sailed away, and left him in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Bligh was a skilful sailor, and the voyage he thereupon undertook is one of the most remarkable on record. In an open boat he carried his little party over 3,500 miles of unknown ocean to the island of Timor, where they found a vessel that took them home.
In appointing Captain Bligh to rule the colony, the English Government spoiled an excellent seaman to make a very inefficient Governor. It was true that New South Wales contained a large convict population, who required to be ruled with despotic rigour; yet there were many free settlers who declined to be treated like slaves and felons, and who soon came to have a thorough dislike to the new Governor. Not that he was without kindly feeling; his generous treatment of the Hawkesbury farmers, who were ruined by a flood in 1806, showed him to have been warm-hearted in his way; he exerted himself to the utmost, both with time and money, to alleviate their distress, and received the special thanks of the English Government for his humanity. And