DEPORTATION TO THE DERWENT. 



13 



of revenue ; up to that time 500,000 lbs. of pork had been 

 used or exported. 



With King's departure the settlement began to retrograde ; 

 but the story of its gradual decline and the final deportation of 

 its settlers to Tasmania must be left to be dealt with in a future 

 paper. 



II. — The Deportation to the Derwent. 



In the last paper which I read before the Society I 

 sketched the strange story of the first planting of a European 

 colony in an island of the South Sea, — the settlement of 

 Norfolk Island by Lieut. King in the year 1788, and its 

 fortunes during a period of eight years. I now propose to 

 trace the history of its failure and abandonment, and the 

 transfer of its settlers to our own island. 



From his first landing in February, 1788, Lieut. King had 

 formed the most sanguine expectations of the future. He was 

 charmed with the beauty of the island. With such a genial 

 climate and such a fertile soil it should grow into one of the 

 most flourishing and valuable of colonies. From this view he 

 never wavered. To secure this result he struggled bravely and 

 pertinaciously to overcome the difficulties of nature and the 

 perversity of man. Nature met him on the threshold with a 

 well nigh inaccessible coast and a dense and tangled forest, and 

 fought him with hurricanes and blighting winds, with drought 

 and caterpillars, which marred his labour. But to rule and 

 organise the unpromising human material with which he had 

 to work, and to turn it to account in the face of laziness and 

 disaffection, was a more trying task than to conquer nature. 

 Still, during those eight or nine years he had fought his way 

 through difficulty and not a few disasters to the attainment of 

 a very fair success. When in September, 1796, he resigned 

 his government, he left with the feeling that the settlement to 

 which he had given some of the best years ot his life had over- 

 come its first difficulties, and was firmly established with a 

 bright outlook for the future. The little island had a popula- 

 tion of nearly 900 people, who dotted its surface with clearings 

 and cottages. More than a third of its area (5247 acres) was 

 occupied, and 1528 acres cleared and cultivated. The 

 production of grain and pork not only sufficed for the wants of 

 the inhabitants, but left a large surplus for exportation to New 

 South Wales. And yet the resources of the island were, in his 

 view, only beginning to be developed. Instead of a population 

 of 1000, he considered it could easily support more than twice 

 that number, and could more than quadruple its products. By 

 ordinary methods it would be easy to produce a quarter of a, 

 million of bushels of grain; careful husbandry might even 

 double that quantity. In King's opinion it might become a 



