Page:Admiral Phillip.djvu/219

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ADMIRAL PHILLIP
193

knew for an uncertainty. His live stock consists of four breeding sows, and thirty fowls.'

'Of my Sydney journal, I find no part sufficiently interesting to be worth extraction. This place had long been considered only as a depot for stores; it exhibited nothing but a few old scattered huts and some sterile gardens; cultivation of the ground was abandoned, and all our strength transferred to Rose Hill. Sydney, nevertheless, continued to be the place of the Governor's residence, and consequently the headquarters of the colony. No public building of note, except a storehouse, had been erected since my last statement. The barracks, so long talked of, so long promised, for the accommodation and discipline of the troops were not even begun when I left the country; and instead of a new hospital, the old one was patched up, and with the assistance of one brought ready framed from England, served to contain the sick. The employment of the male convicts here, as at Rose Hill, was the public labour. Of the women, the majority were compelled to make shirts, trowsers and other necessary parts of dress, for the men, from materials delivered to them from the stores, into which they returned every Saturday night the produce of their labour, a stipulated weekly task being assigned to them. In a more early stage. Government sent out all articles of cloathing ready made; but by adopting the present judicious plan not only a public saving is effected,