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
There arrived in this ship two chests, containing three thousand eight
hundred and seventy ounces of silver, in dollars, amounting to £1001.
This remittance was sent out for the purpose of paying such sums as were
due to the different artificers who had been employed in this country. It
was also applied to the payment of the wages due to the superintendants,
who had experienced much inconvenience from not receiving their salaries
here; and indeed the want of public money had been very much felt by
every one in the colony. When the marines, who became settlers before and
at the relief of the detachment, were discharged for that purpose, they
would have suffered great difficulties from the want of public money to
pay what was due to them, had not the commissary taken their respective
powers of attorney, and given them notes on himself, payable either in
cash, or in articles which might be the means of rendering them
comfortable, and of which he had procured a large supply from Calcutta.
These notes passed through various hands in traffic among the people of
the description they were intended to serve, and became a species of
currency which was found very convenient to them.
The female convicts who arrived in the _Kitty_, twenty-seven in number,
were immediately sent up to Parramatta.
Government had put on board the _Kitty_ a naval agent, Lieutenant Daniel
Woodriff, for the purpose of seeing that no unnecessary delays were made
in the voyage, and that the convicts on board were not oppressed by the
master or his people. This officer, on his arrival, stated to the
governor his opinion that the master had not made the best of his way,
and that he had remained longer in the port of Rio de Janeiro than there
could possibly be occasion for. He likewise stated several disagreements
which had occurred between him and the master, and in which the latter
seemed to think very lightly of the authority of a naval agent on board
his ship. There was also on board this ship, on the part of the crown, a
medical gentleman who was appointed for the express purpose of attending
to such convicts as might be ill during the voyage; so extremely
solicitous were the members of Administration to guard against the evils
which had befallen the convicts in former passages to this country.
At Parramatta a brick hospital, consisting of two wards, was finished
this month; and the sick were immediately removed into it. The spot
chosen for this building was at some distance from the principal street
of the town, and convenient to the water; and, to prevent any improper
communication with the other convicts, a space was to be inclosed and
paled in round the hospital, in which the sick would have every necessary
benefit from air and exercise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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