bugbear of the governor of the colony.

By the time Hunter arrived there were a number of time-expired prisoners
in the settlement, and these became an increasing and constant danger.
Retreating into the back country, and herding with the blacks, or
thieving from the farmers, they merged into what were known later on as
bushrangers. From these men and the ill-disciplined and gaol-bird soldiers
of the New South Wales Corps the peaceably disposed inhabitants were in
much greater danger than they ever were from the aborigines.

But although Hunter's despatches are full of complaints of the soldiers,
of the want of stores, and the need of honest, free men to cultivate the
soil by way of a leaven to the hundreds of convicts who were arriving
every year, he, like Phillip, believed that New South Wales would
ultimately become a prosperous colony. More than this, it was under Hunter
that Bass and Flinders did most of their surveying; that Shortland
discovered Newcastle; and to no governor more than to Hunter is credit due
for the interest he took in exploration.

Here is a picture of the colony in the time of Hunter's governorship,
painted by certain missionaries who had been driven by the natives of
Tahiti from their island, and who had taken refuge in New South Wales:--

"His Majesty's ship the _Buffalo_, Captain Kent, being on the eve
of sailing from the colony for the Cape of Good Hope, we embrace
the opportunity of confirming our letter to you of the 1st
September, 1798, by the _Barwell_. Here we have to contend with
the depravity and corruptions of the human heart heightened and
confirmed in all its vicious habits by long and repeated
indulgences of inbred corruption, each one following the bent of
his own corrupt mind, and countenancing his neighbour in the
pursuit of sensual gratifications. Here iniquity abounds, and
those outward gross sins which in Europe would render a person
contemptible in the public eye, and obnoxious to the civil law,
are become fashionable and familiar--adultery, fornication, theft,
drunkenness, extortion, violence, and uncleanness of every kind,
the natural concomitants of deism and infidelity, which have
boldly thrown off the mask, and stalk through the colony in the
open face of the sun, so that it is no uncommon thing to hear a
person say, 'When I was a Christian, I thought so and so.'"

This is strong, but it is true.