Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/348

remove them, and would have sacrificed their holdings if King had not ordered Foveaux to discourage such "unwarrantable transfers."

The removal was postponed in order that the crops might be secured, and the hardships which ensued at Hobart Town and Port Dalrymple were not aggravated by dragging the settlers from Norfolk Island, where animal food was abundant, to places in which it was scarce. The little island supplied food to both of the new settlements in time of sore distress. In Aug. 1805 the Buffalo carried to them some live stock, nearly 30,000 lbs. of flour, a greater weight of pork, and some hundreds of bushels of maize; and in Nov. 1805 the Sydney was freighted with similar articles. Opposed as the Governor was to the total abandonment of the settlement founded by himself in 1788, he pleaded in 1806 the benefits it thus conferred. In obedience to Lord Hobart, he had removed most of the soldiers and the convicts, but "used no compulsory measures towards" removing the settlers, only eight of whom had consented to abandon their homes. There were then on the island more than three hundred children. There were only forty of the civil and military class left, and the male convicts had been reduced to about one hundred. After summing up how much good the island had done and was capable of doing, he added: "I am far from wishing to urge the necessity of its being put on its former establishment, but I respectfully conceive the present small establishment would be necessary for the government of the settlers, who I learn are determined not to remove without compulsion."^[1]

Lt.-Gov. Collins, with a vivid remembrance of the days of starvation in Sydney in 1789 and 1790, earnestly implored King to send food to Hobart town. In Nov. 1805 the latter, sending 13,000 lbs. of meal, said—

"which, indeed, is what we can ill spare from our present necessities, as our harvest is now getting in, and we are obliged to thrash for our weekly