232 THE FOUNDING OF HOBART. 



Port Phillip with Lieut. Sladden ; but still the number 

 available was small. 

 Gen. Orders, No idle time Avas allowed in the settlement. The bell 

 VH^ f ®^.*, rang at five in the morning, and the convicts turned out, 

 ^^^ ' clad in blue kersey jackets and trousers, and proceeded 

 at once under their overseers to their various employ- 

 ments. Work was continued, with intervals of an hour 

 for breakfast and an hour and a half for dinner, until six 

 o'clock in the evening, when the bell gave the signal for 

 the close of the day's labour. On Tuesday an extra 

 hour was allowed for the issue of rations ; Saturday was 

 a half holiday after 11 a.m.; and it was only under 

 exceptional circumstances that any labour was required 

 on Sunday. 



There was ample work for all hands. A large pro- 

 portion of the people had to be employed clearing away 

 and burning the scrub, grubbing stumps, trenching, 

 digging and preparing garden ground. Building opera- 

 tions were necessarily slow. A quarry had to be opened 

 on the sandstone Point near the mouth of the creek to 

 supply stone for foundations. Oyster shells were gathered 

 from the beaches and burnt for lime. Governor King 

 had sent a quantity of bricks from Port Jackson, and 

 these were utilised for chimneys. The fine gums on the 

 banks of the creek furnished an abundant supply of good 

 Gen. Order, timber. Stringent regulations were enforced against the 

 27th Feb. useless destruction of the timber, and no trees might be 

 felled without the permission of the Superintendent of 

 Carpenters, to which office the Governor had appointed 

 Mr. Wm. Nicholls, who had come out in the Ocean as 

 a free settler. With the inferior axes supplied by the 

 Government contractors, and which had their edges 

 turned by the hard gum wood, felling was a tedious 

 operation ; and when the trees were felled and sawn into 

 lengths, the logs had to be dragged to the sawpits by 

 hand labour, and the sawn timber carried thence by the 

 same means, for as yet there were neither horses nor 

 oxen in the colony. The sawyers, of whom it appears 

 there were nine, were constantly employed at the saw- 

 pits cutting the logs into posts and planks — two men at 

 each log with a ripping saw— in the slow and laborious 

 method so familiar to those whose memory goes back to 

 the days when steam saw-mills were not. The progress 

 Gen. Order, at the sawpiis was so slow that the Governor, notwith- 

 27th July. standing his preference for day work, found it necessary 

 at a later period to put the sawyers on task work ; and 

 no sawyer was allowed to work for his own profit unless 



