and the diseases often incident to such latitudes, are unknown; but no ships can anchor: it is a land unsuited to commerce.
Thus it presented no incitement to exertion: it gave the indolent abundance without labor; it afforded a leisure, in which man is prone to degenerate and sink into the savage. Distillation from the cane produced spirits, more than usually deleterious: unacquainted with the process by which saccharine is crystalised, the settlers were unable to prepare sugar. They found the raw rum destructive, and attributed its fatal effects solely to the leaden worms![52]
In 1800, the population of Norfolk Island comprehended 960 souls:[53] 3,521 acres of land were granted; divided into farms of from ten to thirty acres each. A station, where rather more refractory offenders were sent, its government varied with the character of each officer. Of the moral condition of the island nothing good could be expected, and little favorable is remembered.
Always a place of banishment, even when a colony, Norfolk Island seemed destined to exhibit the extremes of natural beauty and moral deformity. The language of Holt, the Irish rebel, who spent several months there, might be better suited to a latter period, but expressed the intensity of his abhorrence, not wholly unfounded—"That barbarous island, the dwelling place of devils in human shape; the refuse of Botany Bay—the doubly damned!"[54]
On the determination of the government being announced, the settlers manifested great repugnance: the elder people declared they would not quit the country; it was, however, the decree of an irresistible will. The inhabitants were offered a settlement in Van Diemen's Land or New South Wales; mostly, they chose this country. They received from the government whatever would contribute towards reconciling them to the change. Vessels were provided for their removal, their possession in land was doubled, and it was freed from all conditions and reservations. They received cattle on loan, and they were rationed as new settlers from the public stores. That the change was beneficial to the rising generation can hardly be doubted; but the effect on the parents was generally painful. Time was required to equal the cultivation of the spot they had left, compared with which even Van Diemen's Land seemed blank and barren. Years after, they spoke of the change with regret and sadness.
The settlers, divided into three classes, according to their origin or wealth, were located part in the neighbourhood of Hobart Town, at Pittwater, and New Norfolk, and part at Norfolk Plains. Thirty, forty, or fifty acres was the ordinary grant, until a later period: a large extent was neither possessed nor desired. Many valued nothing but the immediate benefits to which their character as immigrant farmers then entitled them. They drew their rations from the royal stores, and bartered away their homesteads for a few bottles of spirit; and it was no idle boast, that a keg of rum was then worth more than a common farm. Their hopeless and dissipated state is remarked in every document of the times: their frail dwellings soon exhibited all the signs of decay, and their ground was exhausted by continual cropping. Thus the exhilarating influences of youth and vigour, usual in the first steps of colonisation, were here unknown, and a civilising agency rarely counteracted the social evils which prevailed. The transactions of those early days are scarcely colonial: charged with debauch and outrage, they denote a time of social disorganisation—the dark ages found in the history of every country, where men have been their own masters, and remote from a public opinion, which cannot be corrupted or controlled.
There were, however, a few settlers from Norfolk Island, distinguished from the rest by their enterprise and diligence, and who rose to wealth; but in glancing down the list, a colonist observes how few have retained their heritage.
During the administration of Colonel Collins, the progress of the colony was barely perceptible. There were no roads in the interior; no public buildings: the house of the governor was a mere cottage, too mean for the accommodation of a modern mechanic.
The transfer commenced at the close of 1805. The Sydney, Captain Forrest, was employed to convey to the Derwent a party of the settlers, and the stock belonging to the governor-in-chief: this was purchased by Mr. George Guest, who sold the sheep at £5 per head, and was repaid in cattle. In the Sydney, Joseph Holt, now discharged from restraint, visited Van Diemen's Land, and contributed to its welfare by his agricultural and pastoral experience. He found Collins still living in a tent. A few acres of land had been cultivated at New Town by convicts, in charge of Clarke, the superintendent: cattle had arrived from Bengal, and sheep from Port Jackson; but the progress of the settlement had hitherto been slow.
In New South Wales,[55] gangs of men, stripped to the waist, labored together, and were exposed to rigorous discipline, common to slaves. These methods of tillage were introduced into Van Diemen's Land, where as yet there were no fields prepared for the plough, nor beast of draught to facilitate human toil. The chief overseers were not skilled in cultivation: one had been a shoemaker, the other a tailor; and while they were expecting large returns, they were ignorant that the full ears which promised an abundant yield, were smut, not grain. This early failure was attended with disastrous results.
On the arrival of the Sydney, Collins looked narrowly into the probable resources at his disposal, and sent Joseph Holt to examine the land on the Derwent, with a view to future location. He proceeded along its shores, until a ledge of rocks obstructed the passage of his boat: then ascending an eminence, not less in apparent height than the Dromedary Mountain, "I sat down," he writes, "on its top, and saw the finest country eyes ever beheld." This was that extensive district which, from the previous residence of its occupiers, was named New Norfolk. The spot whence he surveyed the subjacent land he called Mount Casha.
Joseph Holt, general of the rebel army of Wexford in 1798, at one time commanded 1,300 men. Memoirs, written by himself, were purchased by the keeper of the Irish records, and were edited by Thomas Crofton Croker. The result of that sanguinary struggle added considerable numbers to the population of these colonies, but on various terms. Holt was an exile, though often treated as a convict. As a commander he displayed great natural talents, courage, and fidelity. He ascribed his position as a rebel, solely to necessity of choosing between immediate death or insurrection. A neighbour wrecked his property, and denounced him a traitor in revenge: then loyal men were privileged to condemn without trial, and slaughter on the spot. In New South Wales, Holt was often suspected of sedition: he was imprisoned, and was forwarded to Norfolk Island without trial; on returning to Port Jackson, he visited the Derwent. Of Collins, Holt speaks with great enthusiasm, as the most lenient of the governors, and the finest of gentlemen: when he entered the forests, absconders would fall down on their knees before him, and obtain his forgiveness.[56]
Holt's notices of this place are scanty, and of the people more so; but he observes that the daughter of Mrs. Hayes was a "beautiful girl: the prettiest violet I saw growing on the Derwent." Of such charms he was no mean judge.[57] Collins was desirous that Holt should settle on the Derwent, and wrote to Governor King for his consent: the knowledge he possessed of the treatment of stock, it was thought, would have been useful; but he resolved not to move farther from the port of embarkation. He at length returned to Ireland, with £2,000—a step he lived to deplore.
The settlement was early involved in great difficulties. The hoe, the usual implement of husbandry, effected but a slow and discouraging progress: supplies from Port Jackson were forwarded in small quantities, and were soon altogether interrupted. In 1806 a disaster occurred, which reduced the elder colony to severe privation. The tempting fertility of of the land bordering on the Hawkesbury, the Nile of this hemisphere, induced the petty farmers, whose homesteads dotted its margin, to overlook its dangers. An inundation, remembered as the great flood, exceeded all former devastations: vast torrents, of which the origin was unknown, descended from the mountains, and pouring down with prodigious violence, suddenly filled and overflowed the channels of the river; and rising to the height of sixty and eighty feet in