lmost
empty of provisions, and the boundless ocean presented no object
of relief to the aching and strained eyes of the sufferers; and
when the busy mind painted to itself the dangers, inseparable
from a voyage of such length, which might intervene to delay the
arrival of succours, until horror and wretchedness should have
been heightened to the utmost; no inclination to laborious
exertion existed, and no hand had the power to wield and employ
the implements of toil. The progress of the settlement towards
maturity was necessarily retarded; and the operations which
proceeded, at these periods of general debility, were compelled
to move with a slowness which afforded but a faint promise of
speedy perfection. Under this combination of disadvantages, it
affords proof of no common perseverance to find, that the
settlement had been scarcely established four years, before two
towns were formed, and the colony seemed rapidly advancing to the
appearance of maturity.

Governor Phillip sailed to England on the 11th of December,
1792, when Lieutenant-Governor Grose succeeded to the government;
and, during his period, the improvements in the settlement
assumed a more decisive and favourable aspect. The settlers were
now enabled to sell corn to the public stores, all of which the
commissary received directions to purchase at a given price:
passage-boats were licensed and established between the towns of
Sydney and Parramatta, and the number of settlers began to
increase in a rapid portion. On the 15th of December, 1794,
Lieutenant-Governor Grose left the colony for England, and
Captain Paterson, of the New South Wales corps, assumed the
government until the arrival of Governor Hunter, who came out in
the Reliance, on the 7th of September, 1795, and entered upon the
functions of his important office without delay.

One of the first acts of the new governor was the
establishment of a printing-press, the advantages of which soon
became obvious, in the more ready communication of all orders for
the regulation of the settlement.

The bulls and cows which had been originally brought over to
the new continent had, by the carelessness of their keeper, been
suffered to stray into the woods, and every subsequent search
after them had proved ineffectual until this period, when a fine
and numerous herd of wild cattle was discovered in the interior
of the country, which was evidently the progeny of the animals
which had been so long lost t