rials, arising from want of provisions, were afterwards, at
intervals, the lot of the colony. In 1794, on the very day when the
doors of the provision-store were closed, and the convicts had received
their last allowance which remained, the signal for a sail was made;
and it was the third day before the two vessels then in sight could be
got into the harbour, but their arrival brought comparative abundance to
the starving population of 3,000 people, who were beginning seriously to
reckon up how far their live stock would go towards the supply of their
necessities. Several other similar seasons of famine have been recorded,
and it is curious and instructive to look back upon the day of small
things in a country abundant as New South Wales at present is in the
necessaries, comforts, and even luxuries, of life.

The state of health in which many of the convicts reached their place
of exile, and the numbers of them which never reached it at all, were
deplorable facts, proving too truly that men may be found capable of
doing any thing for the hope of profit. A certain sum per head was paid
by the government for each convict, and thus the dead became more
profitable to the contractors than the living were; for the expenses of
the former were less, while the stipulated payments were the same in
both cases. Out of three ships 274 convicts died on the voyage,[95]
and when they had landed, there were no less than 488 persons in the
hospital. Neglect like this of the miserable creatures who had broken
their country's laws, most justly awakens our feelings of indignation;
and these are righteous feelings, but let them not be confined to the
_bodily_ neglect to which, in a comparatively few instances at first,
the convicts were exposed. Let us recollect, with sorrow rather than
indignation, how many thousands of these unhappy creatures have, down to
the present time, been left to perish, in a spiritual sense, and that,
likewise, from motives of profit, for fear of the outcry of want of
economy being excited in a wealthy nation, if sufficient means of
spiritual instruction were provided for our banished fellow-countrymen!

[95] Things are now, happily, better ordered. "There are frequent
instances of vessels arriving from England without having had a
single death during the voyage" to Sydney.--LANG'S _New South Wales_,
vol. i. p. 58.

Soon after the arrival of the three transports, those of the convicts
that were in tolerab