In one of the ships a malignant fever had prevailed during the latter part of the voyage, to which the captain, with his first and second officers, had succumbed; while in another, the usual plot to take the ship was discovered, and had to be checked with severe repressive measures, which increased the tribulation of these hapless wretches. Colonel Collins, in his "Account of New South Wales," gives but a sorry picture of the condition in which these ill-fated exiles of the second fleet arrived at New South Wales. "By noon," he says, "the following day the two hundred sick had been landed from the different transports. The west side afforded a scene truly distressing and miserable: upwards of thirty tents were pitched in front of the hospital, the portable one not yet being put up, all of which, as well as the hospital and the adjoining huts, were filled with people, many of whom were labouring under the complicated diseases of scurvy and dysentery, and others in the last stages of either of those terrible disorders, or yielding to the attacks of an infectious fever. The appearance of those who did not require medical assistance was lean and emaciated. Several of these people died in the boats as they were rowing on shore, or on the wharf as they were lifted out of the boats; both the living and the dead exhibiting more horrid spectacles than had ever been witnessed in this country. All this was to be attributed to confinement of the worst species, confinement in a small space and in irons--not put on singly, but many of them chained together." The years immediately subsequent witnessed a repetition of what had already occurred. The colony found itself again and again brought to the lowest ebb; and then, when in the last stage, starvation stared it in the face, there came more convicts and more salt meat. All through, the health of the inhabitants continued indifferent, in spite of the natural salubrity of the climate. This was partly due to the voyage out; also to the diet, insufficient and always salt; and not a little to the gloomy outlook for all concerned in this far-off miserable settlement. Yet, through all vicissitudes, the governors who in turn assumed the reins bore up bravely, and governed with admirable energy and pluck. They were all--at least for the first twenty years--captains of the Royal Navy, trained in a rough school, but eminently practical men. Their policy was much the same. They had to bring land into cultivation, develop the resources of the colony, coerce the ill-conditioned, and lend a helping hand to any that gave earnest of a reform in character.