190 PHILLIP Sailor farming. Difficulties overcome. Successful settlement. 1787-W King's work was evidently cut out for him when he was required to commence farming in country of that description, without any assistance in the shape of skilled labour. Haying been at sea since he was twelve years of age, he could hardly tell the difEerence between one plant and another; he did not even know the flax-plant when he saw it ;* while the men sent with him, unskilled as they were, were too few to enable him to make much progress in clearing and culti- vating. But difficulties gradually gave way before his energy and perseverance ; so that when he left the island in March, 1790, he was in a position to describe the result of his farming operations with no little satisfaction, and to discourse on crops and soils as if he had been a fanner all his life. Thirty acres of public land were under cultivation when he left, while eighteen were covered with private gardens; the population numbering four hundred and eighteen, exclusive of eighty men belonging to the Sirius. His management, therefore, had proved a success, and fully justified the confidence which Phillip placed in him. But King had other work to do on the island besides studying seed-time and harvest. No chaplain had been sent with his little company, for there was none to send; and consequently the duty of giving religious instruction fell upon him. Every Sunday morning at eleven the con- gregation were summoned to his cottage by the church-bell, " which was a man beating on the head of an empty cask " ; when every one was required by general orders to " come clean and orderly and behave themselves devoutly. He was a Justice of the Peace, too, as well as a minister of religion, and soon found himself called upon to exercise hi^ magisterial functions. He was, in fact, a complete Court of Criminal and Civil Judicature in himself, although no com- mission had been issued to him for that purpose beyond his
- ** The surgeon, in walking about the islaod, found out the flax-pUnt.
which proved to be what we had hitherto called the iris ; not having any description of the plant, I had no idea of its being what Captain Cook called the flax-plant of New Zeaknd.*'— Hunter, p. 304. A church beU. Digitized by Google
