While I was looking at it, Clarke came up.  I told him I thought he would reap fifteen or sixteen bushels an acre; he seemed to think seventeen or eighteen.  I have now inspected all the European corn.  A man of so little experience of these matters as myself cannot speak with much confidence.  Perhaps the produce may average ten bushels an acre, or twelve at the outside.  Allowance should, however, be made in estimating the quality of the soil, for the space occupied by roots of trees, for inadequate culture, and in some measure to want of rain.  Less has fallen than was wished, but this spring was by no means so dry as the last.  I find that the wheat grown at Rose Hill last year weighed fifty-seven pounds and a half per bushel.  My next visit was to the cattle, which consists of two stallions, six mares, and two colts; besides sixteen cows, two cow-calves, and one bull-calf, which were brought out by the Gorgon.  Two bulls which were on board died on the passage, so that on the young gentleman just mentioned depends the stocking of the colony.

The period of the inhabitants of New South Wales being supplied with animal food of their own raising is too remote for a prudent man to calculate.  The cattle look in good condition, and I was surprised to hear that neither corn nor fodder is given to them.  The enclosures in which they are confined furnish hardly a blade of grass at present.  There are people appointed to tend them who have been used to this way of life, and who seem to execute it very well.

Sunday, December 4th, 1791.  Divine service is now performed here every Sunday, either by the chaplain of the settlement or the chaplain of the regiment.  I went to church today.  Several hundred convicts were present, the majority of whom I thought looked the most miserable beings in the shape of humanity I ever beheld.  They appeared to be worn down with fatigue.

December, 5th.  Made excursions this day to view the public settlements.  Reached the first, which is about a mile in a north-west direction from the governor’s house.  This settlement contains, by admeasurement, 134 acres, a part of which is planted with maize, very backward, but in general tolerably good, and beautifully green.  Thirteen large huts, built in the form of a tent, are erected for the convicts who work here; but I could not learn the number of these last, being unable to find a superintendant or any person who could give me information.  Ponds of water here sufficient to supply a thousand persons.

Walked on to the second settlement, about two miles farther, through an uncleared country.  Here met Daveney, the person who planned and now superintends all the operations carried on here.  He told me that he estimated the quantity of cleared ground here at 300 acres.  He certainly over-rates it one-third, by the judgment of every other person.  Six weeks ago this was a forest.  It has been cleared, and the wood nearly burnt off the ground by 500 men, in