The employment of the male convicts here, as at Rose Hill, was the public labour.  Of the women, the majority were compelled to make shirts, trousers and other necessary parts of dress for the men, from materials delivered to them from the stores, into which they returned every Saturday night the produce of their labour, a stipulated weekly task being assigned to them.  In a more early stage, government sent out all articles of clothing ready made; but, by adopting the present judicious plan, not only a public saving is effected, but employment of a suitable nature created for those who would otherwise consume leisure in idle pursuits only.

On the 26th of November 1791, the number of persons, of all descriptions, at Sydney, was 1259, to which, if 1628 at Rose Hill and 1172 at Norfolk Island be added, the total number of persons in New South Wales and its dependency will be found to amount to 4059.*

[A very considerable addition to this number has been made since I quitted the settlement, by fresh troops and convicts sent thither from England.]

On the 13th of December 1791, the marine battalion embarked on board His Majesty’s ship Gorgon, and on the 18th sailed for England.

CHAPTER XVII.

Miscellaneous Remarks on the country.  On its vegetable productions.  On its climate.  On its animal productions.  On its natives, etc.

The journals contained in the body of this publication, illustrated by the map which accompanies it (unfortunately, there is no map accompanying this etext), are, I conceive, so descriptive of every part of the country known to us, that little remains to be added beyond a few general observations.

The first impression made on a stranger is certainly favourable.  He sees gently swelling hills connected by vales which possess every beauty that verdure of trees, and form, simply considered in itself, can produce; but he looks in vain for those murmuring rills and refreshing springs which fructify and embellish more happy lands.  Nothing like those tributary streams which feed rivers in other countries are here seen; for when I speak of the stream at Sydney, I mean only the drain of a morass; and the river at Rose Hill is a creek of the harbour, which above high water mark would not in England be called even a brook.  Whence the Hawkesbury, the only fresh water river known to exist in the country, derives its supplies, would puzzle a transient observer.  He sees nothing but torpid unmeaning ponds (often stagnant and always still, unless agitated by heavy rains) which communicate with it.  Doubtless the springs which arise in Carmarthen mountains may be said to constitute its source.  To cultivate its banks within many miles of the bed of the stream (except on some elevated detached spots) will be found impracticable, unless some method be devised of erecting a mound, sufficient to repel the encroachments of a torrent which sometimes rises fifty feet above its ordinary level, inundating the surrounding country in every direction.