g one hundred feet of
timber, in their own time, for individuals, a pair of sawyers demanded
seven shillings; a carpenter for his day's work charged three shillings;
and for splitting paling for fences, and bringing it in from the woods,
they charged from one shilling and six-pence to two shillings and
six-pence per hundred. An officer who had an allotment of one hundred
acres of land near the town of Sydney having occasion for a hundred
thousand bricks to build a dwelling-house, contracted with a brickmaker
and his gang, and for that number of bricks paid him the sum of forty-two
pounds ten shillings. In the fields, for cutting down the timber of an
acre of ground, burning it off, and afterwards hoeing it for corn, the
price was four pounds. Five-and-twenty shillings were demanded and paid
for hoeing an acre of ground already cleared.

For all this labour, where money was paid, it was taken at its reputed
value; but where articles were given in lieu of labour, they were charged
according to the prices stated.

The masters of merchantmen, who generally made it their business
immediately on their arrival to learn the prices of commodities in the
colony, finding them so extravagantly high as before related, thought it
not their concern to reduce them to anything like a fair equitable value;
but, by asking themselves what must be considered a high price, after
every proper allowance for risk, insurance, and loss, kept up the
extravagant nominal value which every thing bore in the colony.

CHAPTER XXIV

A murder committed near Parramatta
The _Francis_ sails for Norfolk Island
Provisions
Storm of wind at Parramatta
Crops
A Settlement fixed at the Hawkesbury
Natives
A burglary committed
Samuel Burt emancipated
Death of William Crozier Cook
The watches recovered
The _Francis_ returns from Norfolk Island
Information
The New Zealand natives sent to their own country
Disturbance at Norfolk Island
Court of inquiry at Sydney
The _Francis_ returns to Norfolk Island
Natives troublesome
State of provisions

1794.]

January.] The report that was spread in April last, of a murder having
been committed on a watchman belonging to the township of Parramatta,
never having been confirmed, either by finding the body among the stalks
of Indian corn as was expected, or by any one subsequent circumstance, it
was hoped that the story had been fabricated, and that murder was a crime
which for many years to come would