238 THE FOUNDING OF HOBART. 



only really idle man in the camp. His professional duties 

 were not heavy, consisting of one service and a sermon 

 on Sundays, when the weather was fine, for there was 

 no building large enough for the people to assemble in. 

 Occasionally there was a burial or a marriage. During 

 Knopwood, the first six months there were three Aveddings. On Sun- 

 day, the 18th March, Corporal Gangell of the Royal 

 Marines was married to Mrs. Ann Skelthorn, the widow 

 of a settler, at Governor Collins' house. On the 1st July, 

 at the same place, Mr. Superintendent Ingle was married 

 to Miss Rebecca Hobbs, and on the 23rd July, Mr. 

 Gunn to Miss Patterson. But the Chaplain had plenty 

 of idle time. His poultry yard occupied a good deal of 

 his attention, and he chronicles his successes with sittings 

 of eggs, and the raids made upon his hens by spotted 

 cats, which he occasionally captured. His chief resource 

 was his gun. During the first fortnight he shot quail in 

 the camp, on one occasion putting up three by Mr. Bow- 

 den's marquee and bagging them. Bronzewing pigeons 

 he sometimes shot. On tlie 13th March he killed his 

 first kangaroo, adding — " the first kangaroo that had been 

 killed by any of the gentlemen in the camp." Many a 

 walk through the adjoining bush he took, gun in hand, 

 and accompanied by his dog " Nettle." Sometimes 

 he went by himselfj sometimes with his man Salmon, 

 who was a better sportsman than his master, and shot 

 the largest kangaroo recorded as being killed on the 

 present site of Hobart, Mi'. Knopwood has preserved 

 the weight and measurements. It weighed 150 lbs., and 

 measured 3 feet 10 from the tip of the nose to the root 

 of the tail, the tail being 3 feet 4 long, and 16 inches in 

 girth at the root. Sometimes Lieut. Bowen, or some 

 of the officers from Risdon joined the Chaplain in 

 * his shooting expeditions, more rarely Surveyor-General 



Harris, or Mr. Humphreys, the mineralogist. The 

 parson's skill was scarcely equal to his zeal, for though 

 he extended his walks as far as the Government farm 

 and the settler's locations at Stainforth's Cove, and 

 game was fairly plentiful, the diary often contains the 

 entry "no success." It was not altogether the love of 

 sport that spurred the Chaplain to these excursions — he 

 went to shoot something for dinner. T^^elve or fifteen 

 months of salt beef and salt pork, without even vege- 

 tables, would have made a man less fond of good things 

 than the parson long for a change, and kangaroo was 

 greatly appreciated. Of the first kangaroo he tasted at 



