Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/430

316 CULTIVATION OF THE LAND. 1788 and has been brought up a farmer, but several of the convicts (tluee) jui>-. having been lately killed by the natives, I am obliged to defer it until a detachment can be made. His Majesty's injunction that " you do, immediately upon your landing, proceed to the cultivation of the land," was painfully present to Phillip's mind from the day lie landed at Sutherland Point and looked anxiously about him for the meadows he expected to find there. But in his Cultivation efEoits to Carry out his instructions, day by day served to diiBcuiticg. pcvcal somc ucw difficulty. In the first place, he could not find any land that was fit to cultivate, for some months after his arrival ; in the second, he had no persons at his dispoeal who understood the work of cultivation ; in the third, the farming implements with which he was supplied were of the least serviceable kind ; and in the fourth, nearly aU the seed he had brought with him had gone bad. Under such circumstances, his agricultural prospects could not have been a subject for rejoicing. The most discouraging of all his difficulties was the Sydney's worthlcss character of the men whom he had to depend ploughmen. ,,.-. rni upon in his larnung operations. They neither understood the work itself, nor would they make the least effort to learn it ; in his own words, " the dread of work was greater in their eyes than the fear of punishment." They would not have been so difficult to deal with had there been a Overseers. Sufficient number of properly qualified overseers to look after them ; but when those officials had to be chosen from among themselves, it soon became clear that men so selected either had not any influence over the others, or they had no wish to exercise the authority entrusted to them. It was not less clear that they had very little interest in making their former companions work against their will. After much painful experience, the conclusion was at last forced upon Phillip that, in the hands of such men, the cultivation of Free the soil was a systematic deception ; and that the only means by which the colony could be made self-supporting was by settling farmers on the land, supplying them with a certain settlers. Digitized by Google