THE LIFE OF CONRAD MARTENS 



(and a good sketch, too) on that seventeenth day of April, 1835, 

 when he sailed into the Harbour whose pictorial quality he was 

 to be the first to discover. 



When he landed, Sydney had changed but little from the town 

 described by Judge Therry* in 1829. " Sydney," wrote the Judge, 

 " then contained about 1 5,000 inhabitants. The streets were 

 wide, well laid out, and clean. Two regiments the 39th and 

 57th the headquarters stationed in Sydney, were then on duty 

 in the Colony. This considerable regimental force, with a large 

 commissariat establishment, imparted quite a military aspect to 

 the place. The houses were, for the most part, built in the 

 English style, the shops well stocked, and the people one met in 

 the streets presented the comfortable appearance of a prosperous 

 community. The cages with parrots and cockatoos, that hung 

 from every shop-door, formed the first feature that reminded me 

 I was no longer in England .... Ground was not then 

 so valuable there as it soon afterwards became, and commodious 

 verandahed cottages, around which English roses clustered, with 

 large gardens, were scattered through the town. There was 

 scarcely a house without a flower-plat in front. A band of one 

 of the regiments, around which a well-dressed group had gathered, 

 was playing in the barrack-yard, and every object that presented 

 itself favoured the impression that one had come amongst a gay 



and prosperous community When, however, day 



dawned in Sydney, the delusion of the evening was dispelled. 

 Early in the morning the gates of the convict prison were thrown 

 open, and several hundred convicts were marched out in regi- 

 mental file and distributed amongst the several public works in 

 and about the town. As they passed along the chains clanking 

 at their heels the patchwork dress of coarse grey and yellow 

 cloth, marked with the Government brand, in which they were 

 paraded the downcast countenances and the whole appearance 

 of the men, exhibited a truly painful picture. Nor was it much 

 improved throughout the day, as one met bands of them in 

 detachments of twenty yoked to waggons laden with gravel and 

 stones, which they wheeled through the streets ; in this and in 

 * Therry, Reminiscences oj Thirty Yean in N.S.W. and Victoria, p. 39. 



