BY JAMES BACKHOUSE WALKER. 



229 



On tlie same day the first census was taken, and it 

 appeared that the population consisted of 262 souls, of 

 whom 15 were women and 21 children.* 



Of the group who lander) at Sullivan's Cove in Feb- 

 ruary, 1804, with our first Governor, the best remem- 

 bered, and, indeed, the only one of whom tradition has 

 anything to say, is the Chaplain, the Rev. Robert Knop- 

 wood. The survivor of all Colhns' officers, he lived to 

 times well within living memory, and many an old 

 settler still tells stories of his eccentricities. His spare 

 wiry little figure, on the well-known cream-colored pony, 

 is familiar to us from Mr. Gregson's painting, taken in his 

 later days wdien the camp had grown into a town, and he 

 had bachelor quarters at Cottage Green. Of his qualifi- 

 cations as the spiritual guide of the young colony not 

 much can be said, and of this he must have been fully 

 sensible if the tradition is correct which reports his 

 favourite saying to have been, " Do as I say, not I aa 

 do." The choice of Mr. Knopwood as chaplain was an 

 unfortunate one. There was a fine field in those early 

 who would have devoted himself — as 

 and others did in later years — with 

 to the elevation of the society in 

 lay. It is doubtful whether Mr. 

 Knopwood, clergyman though he was, ever made any 

 serious attempt to raise the moral or religious tone of the 

 community. He had been a chaplain in the navy, and, 

 like too many chaplains of those days, m^s content to 

 acquiesce easily and without uncomfortable protesta- 

 tions in the ways which were current. As a colonist, or 



days for a man 

 Bishop Willson 

 wise enthusiasm 

 which his work 



