had been about to sail for Norfolk Island in March, 1790,
an order was issued to prevent the further destruction of
live stock until some necessary regulations could be published, but the officers and people about to embark were
not included in the prohibition." The mention of future
regulations alarmed the convicts lest they should lose the
benefits of their ownership in some manner, and Collins
adds that, "under colour of its belonging to those who
were exempted in the late order, nearly all the stock in the
settlement was in the course of a few nights destroyed;
a wound being thereby given to the independence of
the colony that could not easily be salved, and whose
injurious effects time and much attention alone could remove."
Many an hour of anxious care Phillip bestowed on the lives of his dumb subjects, on whose increase so much depended; and many times his care was thwarted. In April, 1788, on returning from exploration, he learned that five ewes and a lamb had been destroyed at the government farm. In May, 1788, there were two bulls and five cows at the settlement. In the end of that month, "by some strange and unpardonable neglect" of the convict herdsman (who did not report the loss at once), two bulls and four cows wandered away, and no search party was successful in recovering them. In Oct., 1788, the sole remaining cow, becoming wild and dangerous, was condemned to be shot. And in March, 1790, the convicts madly destroyed the greater part of the sheep, pigs, and fowls, because they dreaded, perhaps without cause, that they might lose some rights of separate ownership.
Commanders of expeditions in Arctic regions have found that amusements have lightened the toils and foiled the hardships undergone by their companions. Phillip resorted to the same expedient. In June, 1789, on the King's birthday, he permitted the convicts to perform the "Recruiting Officer" in a hut fitted up to serve as a theatre.[1] But though he might temporarily cheer his motley subjects
- ↑ Though this fact is recorded by Collins (in his "New South Wales," 1798), who was on the spot, numerous writers have repeated a mistake which ascribes the first theatrical performance to a later period, 1796. In 1789 the performers modestly said their aim was "humbly to excite a
