1795-3 0F SOUTH WALES. 307 



approaching ; ground was planting with Indian corn ; not a man was 

 unemployed ; but he faw and explained that a reduction mud take 

 place ; that Government could not be fuppofed much longer to feed, 

 maintain, and clothe the hands that wrought the ground, and at the 

 fame time pay for the produce of their labour, particularly when every 

 public work was likely to ftand ftill for want of labourers. He was 

 fenfible that the affiftance which had been given had not been thrown 

 away, and that the fmall number allowed by Government could never 

 have produced fuch rapid approaches toward that independence which 

 he thought, from what he had already feen of the cultivation of the 

 country, was at that time much nearer than (at his leaving it in 1 79 1 ) 

 he could have conceived poffible. To the fettlers who came in the 

 Surprife he allowed five male convi&s ; to the fuperintendants, con- 

 ftables, and ftore-keepers, four j to fettlers from free people, two ; to 

 fettlers from prifoners, one ; and to ferjeants of the New South Wales 

 corps, one. 



It appeared likewife by this mufrer, that one hundred and feventy- 

 nine people fubfifted themfelves independent of the public ftores, and 

 refided in the town of Sydney. To many of thefe, as well as to the 

 fervants of fettlers, were to be attributed the offences that were daily 

 heard of ; thefe people were indeed very great nuifances* 



Jivery effort was made to collecl: together a fufficient number of 

 working people to get in the enfuing harveft ; and the mufter and 

 regulation refpecling the fervants fortunately produced fome. The 

 bricklayer and his gang were employed in repairing the column at 

 the fouth-head j to do which, for want of bricks at the kiln, the little 

 hut built for Ben-nil-long, being altogether forfaken by the natives, the 

 bricks of it were removed to the fouth-head. A perfon having under- 

 taken to collecl. (hells and burn them into lime, a quantity of that arti- 

 cle was fent down ; and the column, being finifhed with a thick coat 

 of platter, and whitened, w^as not only better guarded againft the wea- 

 ther, but became a more confpicuous objecl: at fea than it had ever 

 been, 



•o o The 



