Another difficulty of paramount importance soon stared the whole settlement in the face. So far "the king's store" found all in food, but the supply was not inexhaustible, and might in the long run, by a concurrence of adverse circumstances, be almost emptied, as indeed happened at no remote date. Famine was therefore both possible and probable, unless in the interval the colony were made capable of catering for its own needs. To accomplish this most desirable end it was necessary to bring ground at once into cultivation, breed stock, and raise crops for home consumption. The first farm was established at Paramatta, fourteen miles from Sydney, and at the same time a detachment under Lieut. King, R. N., of the _Sirius_, was sent to colonise Norfolk Island, a place highly commended by Captain Cook for its genial climate and fertile soil. "Here," says Laing, "notwithstanding the various discouragements arising from droughts and blighting winds, the depredations of birds, rats, grubs, and thieves to which the settlement was at first exposed, a large extent of ground was gradually cleared and cultivated, and the prospect of raising subsistence for a considerable proportion appeared in every respect more favourable than at Port Jackson." At the headquarters settlement in these earlier years prospects were poor enough. The land being less fertile needed more skill, and this was altogether absent. The convicts knew nothing of farming--how could they?--and there was no one to teach them. One or two instructors expressly sent out were found quite useless. The only person in the colony competent to manage convicts, or give them a practical knowledge of agriculture, was the governor's valet, and he died in 1791. To add to these troubles a lengthened drought afflicted the country during the first year of the settlement, under which the soil, ungenerous before, grew absolutely barren and unproductive. A man less resolute and able than Captain Phillip might well have recoiled at the task before him. The dangers ahead threatened the very existence of his colony. Hostile natives surrounded him. Within the limits of his settlement he had to face imminent starvation, and to cope with the innate lawlessness of a population for the most part idle, ignorant, and vicious. For it soon became plain that to look for the growth of a virtuous community, except at some remote period, from the strange elements gathered together in New South Wales, was but a visionary's dream.