An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1: With Remarks on the Dispositions, Customs, Manners, Etc. of The; Native Inhabitants of That Country. to Which Are Added, Some; Particulars of New Zealand; Compiled, By Permission, From; The Mss. of Lieutenant-Governor King.Collins, David
History
An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1: With Remarks on the Dispositions, Customs, Manners, Etc. of The; Native Inhabitants of That Country. to Which Are Added, Some; Particulars of New Zealand; Compiled, By Permission, From; The Mss. of Lieutenant-Governor King.
Collins, David
New South Wales -- Description and travel
She brought out three hundred and nineteen male and forty-nine female
convicts, five children, and seven free women; with salt provisions
calculated to serve that number of people ten months, but which would
only furnish the colony with provisions for forty days. The supply of
provisions was confined to salt meat, under an idea that the colony was
not in immediate want of flour, and that a supply had been sent from
Calcutta, which, together with what had been procured from Batavia, that
which had been sent before from England, and the grain that might have
been raised in the settlements, would be adequate to our consumption for
the present. The dispatches, however, which had been forwarded from this
place by the _Justinian_ in July 1790 having been received by the
secretary of state, what appeared from those communications to be
necessary for the colony were to be sent in one or more ships to be
dispatched in the autumn of last year, with an additional number of
convicts, and the remaining company of the New South Wales corps. A sloop
in frame, of the burden of forty-one tons, was sent out in the _Pitt_; to
make room for which, several bales of clothing, and many very useful
articles, were obliged to be shut out.
By this conveyance information was received, that the _Daedalus_ hired
storeship, which was sent out to carry provisions to the Sandwich islands
for two ships employed in those parts on discovery, was directed to
repair to this settlement after performing that service, to be employed
as there should be occasion, and that she might be expected in the
beginning of the year 1793.
The _Pitt_ brought in many of her convicts sick; and several of her
seamen and fifteen soldiers of the New South Wales corps had died shortly
after her leaving St. Iago, owing to her having touched there during an
unhealthy season.
The whole of the New South Wales corps, except one company, being now
arrived, the numbers requisite for the different duties were settled; and
one company, consisting of a captain, two lieutenants, one ensign, three
sergeants, three corporals, two drummers, and seventy privates, was fixed
for the duty of Parramatta; a like number for Norfolk Island, and the
remainder were to do duty at Sydney, the head quarters of the corps.
Permission having been obtained, a shop was opened at a hut on shore for
the sale of various articles brought out in the _Pitt_; and
notwithstanding a fleet of transports had but lately sailed hence,
notwithstanding the different orders which had been sent to Bengal, and
the high price at which every thing was sold, the avidity with which all
descriptions of people grasped at what was to be purchased was
extraordinary, and could only be accounted for by the distance of our
situation from the mother country, the uncertainty of receiving supplies
thence, and the length of time which we had heretofore the mortification
to find elapse without our receiving any.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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