PROLOGUE 3 



colony, and, so long as the original policy was main- 

 tained, it could never have become a free community. 

 For these free settlers were but a handful — a few hun- 

 dreds in the midst of many thousands of unfree, and as 

 fresh convicts were being constantly poured in, the free 

 would ever have been swamped by the unfree. This 

 predestined unfree settlement was, then, the base of the 

 free community that has been reared on it. But it 

 was never the root of that community. That we must 

 seek for elsewhere. 



Within the somewhat restricted limits of the settle- 

 ment — necessarily restricted in order to keep the com- 

 munity well in hand — there was but little scope for 

 immigrant settlers. Yet these kept coming in in- 

 creasing numbers. Many an escaped or released convict 

 was doubtless among the numbers who gradually spread 

 beyond the legitimate boundaries of the Colony. But 

 these were not the majority. All who were attracted 

 by a life spiced with adventure — all who were moved by 

 the nomad instinct — all who were attracted by the wide 

 free spaces of the new colony and its wild free life — 

 flocked to the country when its character had been 

 made known in England and the failure of the convict 

 experiment was threatening to prove a reality. Most 

 of these, many of them English pastoralists, set pastoral 

 pursuits before themselves as their chief object. Such 

 individuals, finding themselves cramped within the 

 limits of a strictly governed settlement, pushed out 

 across the Blue Mountains to the Avest, down south 

 towards the future colony of Victoria, or away north 

 towards the Liverpool Plains. By every creek or 

 river these experienced or apprentice pastoralists sat 

 down, bringing with them flocks and herds. By degrees 

 the new industry became an independent interest, 

 expanding and thriving, self-supporting and a producer 

 of wealth. It gradually changed the character of the 

 community from a convict settlement into a pastoral 

 community, using the convict elements at hand, indeed, 

 but radically different in principle, and thus initiating 



