prepare
sugar. They found the raw rum destructive, and attributed its fatal
effects solely to the leaden worms![52]

In 1800, the population of Norfolk Island comprehended 960 souls:[53]
3,521 acres of land were granted; divided into farms of from ten to
thirty acres each. A station, where rather more refractory offenders
were sent, its government varied with the character of each officer. Of
the moral condition of the island nothing good could be expected, and
little favorable is remembered.

Always a place of banishment, even when a colony, Norfolk Island seemed
destined to exhibit the extremes of natural beauty and moral deformity.
The language of Holt, the Irish rebel, who spent several months there,
might be better suited to a latter period, but expressed the intensity
of his abhorrence, not wholly unfounded--"That barbarous island, the
dwelling place of devils in human shape; the refuse of Botany Bay--the
doubly damned!"[54]

On the determination of the government being announced, the settlers
manifested great repugnance: the elder people declared they would not
quit the country; it was, however, the decree of an irresistible will.
The inhabitants were offered a settlement in Van Diemen's Land or New
South Wales; mostly, they chose this country. They received from the
government whatever would contribute towards reconciling them to the
change. Vessels were provided for their removal, their possession in
land was doubled, and it was freed from all conditions and reservations.
They received cattle on loan, and they were rationed as new settlers
from the public stores. That the change was beneficial to the rising
generation can hardly be doubted; but the effect on the parents was
generally painful. Time was required to equal the cultivation of the
spot they had left, compared with which even Van Diemen's Land seemed
blank and barren. Years after, they spoke of the change with regret and
sadness.

The settlers, divided into three classes, according to their origin or
wealth, were located part in the neighbourhood of Hobart Town, at
Pittwater, and New Norfolk, and part at Norfolk Plains. Thirty, forty,
or fifty acres was the ordinary grant, until a later period: a large
extent was neither possessed nor desired. Many valued nothing but the
immediate benefits to which their character as immigrant farmers then
entitled them. They drew their rations from the royal stores, and
bartered away their homesteads for a few b