74 DB8PATGHSS 1780 bring out convicts should have at least two years' provisioiis on board to land with them, for the putting the canviots on board some ships and the provisions that were to support them in others, as was done, I beg leave to observe, much against my intimation [inclination], must have been fatal if the ships carrying the {pro- visions had been lost"* In the despatches which he subsequently vrrote Phillip pressed the point. Writing on the 10th July, one day later, Theriffht he explained that the people wanted in the colony were emigmate. ^' farmers, and people used to the cultivation of the lands . . . without which agriculture will make but a very slow progreas.^t A few sentences further on he said : — "The sending out settlers, who will be interested in the labour of the convicts and in the cultivation of the country, appears to me to be absolutely necessary/^ The request that settlers might be sent out was repeated in his despatches of the 28th September and the 30th October. On the latter date he wrote : — Slow « Your Lordship will see by my former letters the little pro- of agricui- gress we have been able to make in cultivating the lands, and I presume the necessity of a few proper persons being sent out to superintend the convicts, as well as settlors, who have been used to cultivation. "J The '^little progress" that was made in cultivation maybe, seen from the despatches which were before Grenville when he wrote to Phillip, telling him to prepare for the reception of a thousand more convicts. Writing on the 28th Septem- ber, 1788, Phillip reported that " the detachment is now in- ^i^mS' closing ground for their gardens, and we have about six acres of wheat, eight of barley, and six acres of other grain ";§ and on the 30th October he stated that he had sixteen acres under cultivation '^ at a small farm on the public account." The land that had been cleared was situated in the neigh- bourhood of Sydney Cove ; operations at Rose Hill were only about to commence. Altogether, only thirty-six acres
- Historical Heoords, vol. i, part 2, p. 147.
t lb., p. 177. t lb., p. 207. § lb., p. 189.
