ed by one hundred free people
from any part of England or Scotland, than had at any time been derived
from three hundred of these (convicts), with all the attention that
could be paid to them."--COLLINS' _Account of the Colony of New South
Wales_, p. 415.

[113] BARRINGTON'S _History of New South Wales_, p. 376.

The six years during which Captain King held the office of governor
of New South Wales, under the crown of Great Britain and Ireland,
were rendered remarkable, as has been already stated, by the partial
abandonment of the colony of Norfolk Island; and, it may be added, yet
more remarkable by the commencement of another settlement, the first
ever attempted in Van Diemen's Land.

Norfolk Island, which is situated about 1000 miles from the eastern
shore of New Holland, was settled almost immediately after the first
foundations of Sydney had been laid; and although but a speck in the
ocean, and without any safe or convenient landing-place, the first-named
colony was altogether more flourishing in its early days than the other.
The natural fertility of the land, the abundance of food supplied by the
birds of providence,[114] the number of free settlers, and the wise
arrangements of Lieutenant-governor King, may all be recollected among
the reasons of the superior prosperity of Norfolk Island. However, its
career of prosperity was doomed to be but a very short one. Partly upon
the plea of its having no convenient harbour, and partly because of its
very limited extent, it was decided by the home government that it
should be abandoned, and this decision was acted upon in 1805 and 1807,
when the free settlers were compelled to leave the island, which
remained unoccupied for about twenty years, and at the end of this
time it was made a penal settlement for the punishment of refractory
convicts, which it still continues to be,--one of the finest spots upon
earth degraded into the abode of the vilest of human beings,--the scum
of the outcast population of a great and civilized nation. And, to
heighten the horror of the contrast between things natural and things
spiritual in Norfolk Island, there was not, until recently, a single
minister of Christ's Church resident within its bounds; so that where
Nature's sun was shining most beauteously, and Nature's sights and
sounds were most lovely and enchanting, there the outcast souls[115] of
a rich and _christian_ population were left to perish, without being
able to