ses--sixty-six lay in the little hospital which
had been set up, and many of them never recovered. Those who were well
enough to work began to clear the land for cultivation; but so soon as
everything was ready for the ploughing to begin, the amazing fact was
discovered that no one knew anything of agriculture; and had it not been
that Governor Phillip had with him a servant who had been for a time on
a farm, their labour would have been of little avail. As it was, the
cultivation was of the rudest kind; one man, even if he had been a
highly experienced person, could do very little to instruct so many. The
officers and soldiers were smart enough on parade, but they were useless
on a farm; the convicts, instead of trying to learn, expended all their
ingenuity in picking each other's pockets, or in robbing the stores.
They would do no work unless an armed soldier was standing behind them,
and if he turned away for a moment, they would deliberately destroy the
farm implements in their charge, hide them in the sand or throw them
into the water. Thus, only a trifling amount of food was obtained from
the soil; the provisions they had brought with them were nearly
finished, and when the news came that the _Guardian_ transport, on which
they were depending for fresh supplies, had struck on an iceberg and had
been lost, the little community was filled with the deepest dismay. Soon
after, a ship arrived with a number of fresh convicts, but no
provisions; in great haste the _Sirius_ was sent to the Cape of Good
Hope, and the _Supply_ to Batavia; these vessels brought back as much as
they could get, but it was all used in a month or two. Starvation now
lay before the settlement; every one, including the officers and the
Governor himself, was put on the lowest rations which could keep the
life in a man's body, and yet there was not enough of food, even at
this miserable rate, to last for any length of time. Numbers died of
starvation; the Governor stopped all the works, as the men were too weak
to continue them. The sheep and cattle which they had brought with so
much trouble to become the origin of flocks and herds were all killed
for food, with the exception of two or three which had escaped to the
woods and had been lost from sight.

#4. Norfolk Island.#--Under these circumstances, Governor Phillip sent two
hundred convicts, with about seventy soldiers, to Norfolk Island, where
there was a moderate chance of their being able to