ATTER THE AKBXVAL OP THE SECOND FLEET. 139 of his time and the Panvunatta of to-day there is no resem- 1791 blance. The widely-separated hnts have disappeared, and ^™j^*** in their places are houses closely packed together; theP'^^^*- desolate-looking street two hundred feet in width has become a business thoroughfare sixty-six feet wide.* Phillip saw that '^some little inconveniences" might be felt from the convicts being ^^ so much dispersed," but he pointed out that to give these people their own gardens was a spur to industry, which they would not have if employed in a publick garden, the' intirely for their own benefit." In this sentence Phillip describes in a few words one of the peculiar disadvantages under which the settle- ment laboured. It depended mainly upon the labour of the convicts, by whom work was regarded as a part of the punishment to which they had been sentenced, and they ^^^ ^^ shirked it whenever they could. To agricultural labour they seem to have had a particular aversion. Phillip tried to make them understand that when they plied the hoe and the spade they were working for their own benefit, but he failed signally. He was right, nevertheless. The com- alluded to might be cited in ereat numbers. The spot on which Newcastle now stands was called by the natives **Mulnbinba," from an indigenoos fern named **Malabin. which was found there. The island at the entrance of Lake Macquarie they called *'Niritiba"; it being a favourite resort of the "Niriti or " mutton-bird."— Eraser's Edition of Threlkeld's Aus- tralian Language, pp. 51, 52.
- Collins, in his Account of New South Wales (vol. i, pp. 125, 126), nves
a fuller description of the plan than that contained in Phillip's despatch : — '* There also [Rose Hill] the Governor, in the course of the month, laid down the lines of a regular town. The principal street was marked out to extend one mile, commencing near the landing-place, and running in a direction west, to the toot of the rising ground named Rose Hill, and in which his Excellency purposed to erect a small house for his own residence whenever he should visit that settlement. On each side of this street, whose width was to be two hundred and five feet, huts were to be erected capable of containing ten persons each, and at the distance of sixty feet one from the other; and garden-ground for each hut was allotted in the rear. As the huts were to be built of such combustible materials as wattles and plaster, and to be covered with thatch, the width of the street, and the distance they were placed from each other, operated as an useful precau- tion against fire; and by beginning on so wide a scale the inhabitants of the town at some future day would possess their own accommodations and comforts more readily, each upon his own allotment, than if crowded into a small space."
