and maintain labour at all hazards, and by all
sorts of expedients, the colony was long
dependent for subsistence on imported
provisions; which is not extraordinary, considering
that there was no one in the settlement
capable of directing agricultural operations.
At length a German was appointed, by the
home Government; but on his arrival, it was
found that he spoke no English; and as his
services were consequently useless, he received
a grant of land. With officials, who knew how
to command a ship or a regiment,—but who
knew nothing of gardening or farming,—and
with a country of which almost all the districts
explored were as barren as sea-sand, the
prisoner population, for ten or twelve years, lived
in a perpetual state of of semi-starvation. "We
never", said a prisoner who arrived in the
colony at fourteen years of age, and attained
wealth, and a respectable position, "had a full
ration, except when the store-ship was in
harbour. I have lived four months an four
ounces of flour a-week; we have gathered
grass and cooked it with a native dog (an
animal filthier than a fox); we would eat
anything. There were men who would commit
murder for a week's victuals;—aye, three
murders."—"There was not much care about
hanging a man then. A man stole a loaf
out of Governor Philip's kitchen: he was
tried the next day, and hanged at once. At
that time ther was a regular ration allowed
for the Governor's dog."

But although to hang a dozen men in a
morning was no uncommon event, these were
only men who had been marked down as
useless turbulent fellows. A good mechanic,
who happened to be at work for one of the
officers, could commit almost any crime with
impunity. A certain skilful fisherman, and a
black man who was an excellent shot, were
both spared, more than once, for very serious
offences; but, a useless boy, who had stolen
a fustian jacket out of a tent, was hanged
without mercy. Flogging was, of course,
more common than hanging. "The overseer
used to walk about, with the flogger behind
him." A man who complained of short
weight in his rations to the Governor, and
grumbled insolently, was ordered to have five
hundred lashes forthwith. Part of the work
was dragging brick carts; this killed scores.
"The women who misbehaved were put in
iron-spiked collars. Six hundred died out of
eight hundred in six months at Toongabbie,"
says our informant. The proportion of women
to men was one to twenty; and, for years,
one to ten. Of these, many were old,
decrepit, idiotic, when they were transported.
This settlement was, in fact, a population of
slaves and slave-drivers, who did not colonise,
but were encamped upon the land they
occupied. Years elapsed before enough grain
was grown to feed the population; and for
nearly fifteen years fresh meat was a luxury.
All this was going on for twenty years, in
the nineteenth century, in British dominions,
and not an echo of it reached England. The
echoer of such things would have been a low
Radical, and Rule Britannia would have
declared, "by its honor, that the echoer was
naught."

The Government fed all the population, and
purchased all the produce. No wonder that
officials grew rich, when they cultivated land
with white slaves fed and clothed by the
Government, and then sold to the Goverment
that purchased from them, crops and
live stock which were appropriated for the
cultivation of further produce. Surely, no
more profitable system was ever devised than
this swindling in a circle. This was the first
part of the history of Australia, then known
only as New South Wales.

The second era began soon after the "Cow
Pastures" were discovered. The abandonment
of the barren and costly colony was actually
under consideration, when a hunter, in pursuit
of the luxury of fresh meat of birds and
kangaroos, came upon a great herd of wild
cattle, feeding near large pools in an open
forest. These were the produce of four cows
and a bull, lost at the early settlement of the
colony, through the carelessness of a
pickpocket herdsman, a few weeks after the
first detachment landed. John McArthur, the
pastoral Arkwright of Australia, a man of
large views and unconquerable energy,
appreciated the discrimination of the cattle. He
calculated that that land must be good where
they had thriven; so, he took an early opportunity
of settling on the same district, and there
applying himself to the rearing of live stock.
He was thought mad to venture forty miles
away fro the settlement where there was no
road. But, he succeeded, and like all other
successful people, found imitators. Pastoral
pursuits became popular. Several officers,
who, like McArthur, had thrown up their
commissions in the New South Wales corps
to become settlers, found it more profitable
and less troublesome to have one long-legged
fellow looking after the herds, as they fed over
natural pastures, than to undertake the
difficult task, according to Governor King's
phrase, of "turning pickpockets into ploughmen."

McArthur foresaw that there was a limit to
selling beef at a shilling a pound, and wheat
at ten shillings a bushel, to Government stores.
He therefore considered what permanent
staple of export the peculiar soil and climate
of Australia could best produce. Remarking
great improvement in the coats of the hairy
Bengal and fat-tailed Cape sheep in the course
of a few years after their importation, the general
resemblance in soil and climate between
Spain and Australia occurred to him; and
he determined to import the famous Spanish
Merino, the fine wool of which was then
worth ten shillings a pound. When once
he had formed his plans, McArthur pursued
them with the untiring sagacity, unti he