THE EARLY CONVICT DAYS. 



153 



meanest convict; and when on state occasions he was obliged to invite the officei's of 

 the colony to dine with him at the Government House, he used to intimate to the 

 guests that " they must bring their bread along with them." At last, in June, 1790, 

 some stores arrived; and in the following year a second fleet of vessels came out from 

 England, one ship of the Royal Navy and ten transports; 1,763 convicts had left 

 England on board the latter, of whom nearly 200 died on the voyage, and many more 

 on arrival. The number of free settlers was then, and long afterwards, naturally very 

 small; they did not like to be so intimately and inevitably associated with convicted 

 criminals. In 1810 the total population of Australia was about 10,000. In 1836 it had 

 risen to 77,000, two-fifths of whom were convicts in actual bondage, while of the 

 remainder, a large proportion had at one time been in the same condition. Governor 

 King, one of the earlier officials of the colony, complained that "he could not make 

 farmers out of pickpockets ; " and Governor Macquarie later said that " there were only 

 two classes of individuals in New South Wales those who had been convicted, and those 

 who ought to have been." Under these discouraging circumstances, coupled with all kinds 

 of other difficulties, the colony made slow headway. Droughts and inundations, famine or 

 scarcity, and hostility on the part of the natives, helped seriously to retard its progress. 

 About the period of Sir Thomas Brisbane's administration, there was an influx of a better 

 class of colonists, owing to the inauguration of free emigration. In 1841, transportation 

 to New South Wales ceased. Ten years later the discovery of gold by Mr. E. H. Har- 

 greaves (on the 12th of February, 1851) caused the first great "rush" to the colony, 

 which influx has since continued, partly for better reasons than gold-finding the grand 

 chances offered for stock-raising, agricultural, horticultural, and vinicultural pursuits. 



LOOKING DOWN ON SINGAPORE. 



20 



