Norfolk Island, which is situated about 1000 miles from the eastern shore of New Holland, was settled almost immediately after the first foundations of Sydney had been laid; and although but a speck in the ocean, and without any safe or convenient landing-place, the first-named colony was altogether more flourishing in its early days than the other. The natural fertility of the land, the abundance of food supplied by the birds of providence,[114] the number of free settlers, and the wise arrangements of Lieutenant-governor King, may all be recollected among the reasons of the superior prosperity of Norfolk Island. However, its career of prosperity was doomed to be but a very short one. Partly upon the plea of its having no convenient harbour, and partly because of its very limited extent, it was decided by the home government that it should be abandoned, and this decision was acted upon in 1805 and 1807, when the free settlers were compelled to leave the island, which remained unoccupied for about twenty years, and at the end of this time it was made a penal settlement for the punishment of refractory convicts, which it still continues to be,--one of the finest spots upon earth degraded into the abode of the vilest of human beings,--the scum of the outcast population of a great and civilized nation. And, to heighten the horror of the contrast between things natural and things spiritual in Norfolk Island, there was not, until recently, a single minister of Christ's Church resident within its bounds; so that where Nature's sun was shining most beauteously, and Nature's sights and sounds were most lovely and enchanting, there the outcast souls[115] of a rich and _christian_ population were left to perish, without being able to catch a ray of the Sun of Righteousness, without a chance (so to speak) of hearing the sound of the gospel of Christ: they might there listen in their lonely wretchedness to the rise and fall of the tide of that ocean by which their little island is surrounded, but they were shut out for ever, it would seem, from the voice of the great multitude of the faithful, "as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!"