An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island Part 37

The current in the river was running down, and they set off at half past ten o'clock, to follow its windings, as it ran to the eastward. The person who was charged with counting his paces, and setting the objects to which they directed their march, had hitherto gone first; but the long sedge, the dead branches which had fallen from the trees, the nettles, and a weed resembling ivy which entangled the feet, made walking on, or near the banks of the river very fatiguing; he was therefore directed to follow the party, and to take the bearings of those who went before him from time to time, still counting his paces, that they might always know their situation in the woods, and the direction it would be necessary to take when they returned across the country.

They proceeded in an Indian file, the person who went first, always falling into the rear whenever he found himself fatigued.

Several good situations were seen on the opposite side of the river as our party went along, and the ground appeared to be good: they also pa.s.sed some good spots on their side of the river, and saw several places where the natives had slept on its banks. Ducks were seen in great numbers, but the party seldom got a shot.

In the afternoon, a creek obliged them to leave the banks of the river, and go round its head, as it was too deep to cross: having rounded the head of this creek, they found themselves on the borders of a river not more than eighty feet wide; the banks were low, and covered with a thick brush, which did not make walking less laborious to those who went first. Their view was now very contracted, the ground rising on the right so as to confine the prospect to fifty or one hundred yards; and what they could see was mostly a poor stony soil. In the afternoon, they fell in with one of the native's hunting-huts, which Colebe and Ballederry would have cut to pieces, had not Governor Phillip prevented them; they said it belonged to their enemies, and they were much displeased at not being permitted to destroy it.

The natives were known to eat a grub which is found in the small gum-tree, and when our party came to the creek already mentioned, a native fled on their approach, leaving his fire, and some decayed wood he had drawn out of the creek, for the purpose of procuring a large worm which is found in it, and which they eat. The smell of this wood is so strong, that few Europeans are able to bear it for any length of time; indeed, it cannot be distinguished from the foulest privy.

At four o'clock the party halted and made fires for the night, being all pretty well tired. Just before they stopped for the night, several natives were heard, and Colebe and Ballederry wanted to join them, but they went away in their canoes.

In the morning of the 13th, the party set off again, still following the creek, which was now little larger than a good ditch, and went through a very barren rocky country, until noon, when, being at the head of the creek they crossed it, and, after resting some time, they endeavoured to go to the north-west, in order to fall in with the river which they had lost by going round the creek in the afternoon of the preceding day; but they were soon stopped by a deep ravine; and the surgeon going to a rising ground on the left, saw the country open to the westward, and thought he could distinguish Richmond-Hill; this led them all to the spot, and, from the break in the mountain, and the trending of the land, Governor Phillip imagined it to be Richmond-Hill, which they saw, being the southern extremity of a range of hills. It bore west by south, and appeared to be from eleven to thirteen miles distant, as near as could be determined.

The place from whence our party had this prospect, was called -Tench's Prospect-Hill_, that officer being of the party, and having from thence seen Richmond-Hill for the first time.

The spot where they had made the river on the 12th, being little more than four miles distant, it was thought best to return there, and from thence to trace the river to the westward till they got opposite to Richmond-Hill. The Governor was well aware of the difficulties they would have to encounter on the banks of a river where walking was laborious, and every little creek they met with would oblige them to follow it up the country till they could cross it; but in a country like this, you may travel many miles through the woods and not get sight of very high land, though it may not be half a mile from you.

Our party set off, in order to get back to sleep near the head of the creek, which they had crossed at noon, and which they soon attained: it was flood-tide when they got there, and they found the tide to rise about eighteen inches, making high water at nine o'clock: this was on the night of the 13th. After crossing the creek at half past seven o'clock the next morning, they shaped a course that was likely to carry them to the river, without being embarra.s.sed with the bad walking on its banks, or the windings of the creek, until they got near the spot, from whence they proposed taking a fresh departure.

After crossing the creek, and some very rocky ground, they had good walking over a country, full of timber and pleasing to the eye; but the ground was poor, and the surface mostly covered with stones. Here some ants nests were seen, composed of an amazing number of small stones, which formed a circle of five or six feet diameter, rising regularly in the center to the height of twenty or thirty inches. An hour and a half s walking brought them to a swamp, where they stopped to fire at some ducks, and then crossing it, they continued their course nearly west 8 north till eleven o'clock, when they came to a pool of good water. The country was now sandy, and presently afterwards, they arrived on the borders of the river, and soon got to the place where they first stopped in the morning of the 12th.

Several canoes being seen, our two natives were very desirous of speaking to the persons in them, and the party were all desired to hide themselves in the gra.s.s until the canoes should come abreast of them; Colebe and Ballederry also concealed themselves, but the canoes stopping on the opposite sh.o.r.e before they came near, one of our natives was told to call to them, which he did, and was soon answered by an old man, who, after a short conversation, came over in his canoe, being known to Colebe.

This man joined the party without the least fear; and from the questions that were put to him respecting the river, Colebe and Ballederry concluded they had come this journey in order to procure stone hatchets, as the natives get the stones whereof they make their hatchets from that part of the river near Richmond-Hill, which the old man said was a great way off, and the road to it was very bad.

Colebe and Ballederry had at first supposed, that Governor Phillip and his party came from the settlement to kill ducks and patagorongs; but finding they did not stop at the places where those animals were seen in any numbers, they were at a loss to know why the journey was taken; and though they had hitherto behaved exceedingly well, yet, as they now began to be tired of a journey, which yielded them no sort of advantage, they endeavoured to persuade the governor to return, saying, it was a great way to the place where the stone hatchets were to be procured, and that they must come in a boat.

On the party leaving this place, the old native returned to his canoe, but he joined them soon afterwards, and gave Governor Phillip two stone hatchets, two spears, and a throwing-stick: this present was made in consequence of our two natives telling him who all the party were. In return for the old man's present, he had some bread, some fish-hooks, and a couple of small hatchets given him. The spears were well made; one of them had a single barb of wood fixed on with gum, the other had two large barbs cut out of the solid wood, and it was as finely brought to a point as if it had been made with the sharpest instrument. The throwing-stick had a piece of hard stone fixed in gum instead of the sh.e.l.l which is commonly used by the natives who live on the sea coast: it is with these stones, which they bring to a very sharp edge, that the natives make their spears.

The old native followed our party in his canoe as they kept along the banks of the river, and another canoe, with a woman and child, joined him: the old man observing that they did not keep near enough the water's edge to have the least fatigue in walking, came out of his canoe and took the lead, and he soon brought them to a path made by the natives, where it was very good walking, and which ran alongside the river. It was near four o'clock when they stopped for the night, and were joined by a young man and a lively little boy, who they soon found intended, as well as the old man, to take up their residence with them, though their families were on the opposite bank, and they had two fires lighted.

Though our natives appeared to be on very friendly terms with their new acquaintances, yet they certainly had no particular affection for them, and spoke of them very lightly when they were out of hearing; particularly Ballederry, who said the youngest man of the two was bad: his name was _Yal-lah-mien-di_; they supposed him to be the old man's son, and the child to be his grandson. The old man called himself _Go-me-bee-re_, and said the child's name was _Jim-bah_; they were of the tribe of _Bu-ru-be-rong-al_.

Colebe and Ballederry, in describing that tribe on the second day's journey, had called them _climbers of trees_, and men who lived by hunting; certainly, no persons can better deserve the appellation of climbers, if we may judge from what was seen of Go-me-bee-re, who, for a biscuit, in a very few minutes cut his notches in the bark of a tree and mounted it with surprising agility, though an old man. These notches are cut in the bark little more than an inch deep, which receives the ball of the great toe; the first and second notches are cut from the ground; the rest they cut as they ascend, and at such a distance from each other, that when both their feet are in the notches, the right foot is raised nearly as high as the middle of the left thigh: when they are going to raise themselves a step, their hatchet is held in the mouth, in order to have the use of both their hands; and, when cutting the notch, the weight of the body rests on the ball of the great toe: the fingers of the left hand are also fixed in a notch cut on the side of the tree for that purpose, if it is too large to admit their clasping it sufficiently with the left arm to keep the body close to the tree.

In this manner do these people climb trees, whose circ.u.mference is ten or fifteen feet, or upwards, after an opossum or a squirrel, though they rise to the height of sixty or eighty feet before there is a single branch.

Governor Phillip had occasionally seen a few of the natives climb the trees at Sydney and Rose-Hill, but this old man greatly surpa.s.sed them. In the evening, the four natives and the child took their places at the fire, and a scene ensued which shows that these people are not a little superst.i.tious.

Colebe had been wounded below the left breast with a fiz-gig, and though it must have been done many years back, or the wound must have been slight, as it was difficult to discover any scar, yet it was supposed he felt some pain, though it probably might be occasioned by the straps of his knapsack; however, the youngest of the two strangers was applied to for relief.

He began the ceremony by taking a mouthful of water, which he squirted on the part affected, and then applying his mouth, he began to suck as long as he could without taking breath; this seemed to make him sick, and when he rose up, (for his patient was sitting on the ground) he walked about for a few minutes, and then began to suck again, till it was again necessary for him to take breath: this was repeated three times, and he seemed, by drawing in his stomach, to feel the pain he had drawn from the breast of his patient; and having picked up a bit of stick or stone, which he did with so little caution that several of the party saw him, he pretended to take something out of his mouth and throw it into the river. He certainly did throw something away, which must be what he picked up; but Colebe, after the ceremony was over, said it was what he had sucked from his breast, which some understood to be two barbs of a fiz-gig, as he made use of the word _Bul-ler-doo-ul_; but Governor Phillip was of opinion he meant two pains.

Before this business was finished, the doctor felt his patient's back below the shoulder, and seemed to apply his fingers as if he twitched something out; after which, he sat down by the patient, and put his right arm round his back; the old man, at the same time, sat down on the other side the patient, with his face the contrary way, and clasped him round the breast with his right arm; each of them had hold of one of the patient's hands, in which situation they remained a few minutes.

Thus ended the ceremony, and Colebe said he was well. He gave his worsted night cap and the best part of his supper to the doctor as a fee; and being asked, if both the men were doctors, he said, yes, and the child was a doctor also, so that it may be presumed the power of healing wounds descends from father to son.

This affair being finished, most of the party fell asleep, whilst the two doctors were amused by Colebe and Ballederry, with an account of the buildings at Sydney and Rose-Hill, and in what manner the colonists lived: in this history, names were as particularly attended to as if their hearers had been intimately acquainted with every person who was mentioned.

Though the tribe of Buruberongal, to which these men belonged, live chiefly by hunting, the women are employed in fis.h.i.+ng, and our party were told, that they caught large mullet in the river.

Neither of these men had lost their front tooth, and the names they gave to several parts of the body were such as the natives about Sydney had never been heard to make use of. Ga-dia (the p.e.n.i.s), they called _Cud-da_; Go-rey (the ear), they called -Ben-ne_; in the word _mi_ (the eye), they p.r.o.nounced the letter _I_ as an _E_; and in many other instances their p.r.o.nunciation varied, so that there is good reason to believe several different languages are spoken by the natives of this country, and this accounts for only one or two of those words given in Captain Cook's vocabulary having ever been heard amongst the natives who visited the settlement.

Having taken leave of their new friends the -Car-ra-dy-gans_ (doctors), our party set off at a quarter past seven o'clock in the morning of the 15th of April, and followed the natives path along the banks of the river, walking at a good pace till a quarter past eight o'clock, when they came to a creek which was too wide to be crossed by cutting down a tree, and was too deep to be forded; they were, therefore, obliged to follow its windings till they supposed themselves at the head of it, and then they endeavoured to regain the banks of the river; but they presently found that they had only rounded a small arm of this creek, the princ.i.p.al branch of which they continued to trace with infinite fatigue for the remainder of the day.

It was high water in this creek at forty minutes past twelve o'clock, and at half past three, they found it divide into two branches, either of which might have been crossed on a tree; but by this time the party were tired, and threatened with heavy rain, which would make their night very uncomfortable, as they had no tent; they therefore took up their residence at a spot where a quant.i.ty of timber, from trees, which had already been burnt down by the natives, promised them good fires with little labour.

The rain went off after a few light showers, but our two natives now began to grow quite impatient to return home. Colebe talked about his wife, and said his child would cry; and Ballederry lost all patience when the rain began, telling the governor, that there were good houses at Sydney and Rose-Hill, but that they had no house now, no fish, no melon (of which fruit all the natives are very fond); and there is no doubt but they would have left the party, had they been acquainted with the country through which they had to return. It was most likely that the greatest part of the next day would be spent in getting to that part of the river which the creek had obliged them to quit, so that two days would be taken up in getting to the opposite side of a creek, not one hundred feet wide; it was, therefore, determined to return to Rose-Hill, which bore from the sleeping place south-east, sixteen miles distant.

The river which Governor Phillip had named the Nepean in a former excursion, was then traced for some miles, and he expected to have fallen in with it this journey, and to have traced it down to where it empties itself into the Hawkesbury, which it is supposed to do above Richmond-Hill: indeed, during the first day of this excursion, he supposed it possible that the river they were then tracing might be the Nepean, but what they saw of it afterwards, left no doubt but that they had fallen in with the Hawkesbury some miles below Richmond-Hill.

In the morning of the 16th of April, at half past seven o'clock, Governor Phillip and his party set off on their return to Rose-Hill; and, as soon as they were clear of the creek, they went south 40 east, which, they supposed, would carry them into the path leading from Rose-Hill to Prospect-Hill.--The face of the country where they slept, and for several miles in their road, was a poor soil, but finely formed, and covered with the stately white gum-tree. At noon, they came to a hollow, in which they found some very good water; here they stopped near an hour: after pa.s.sing this gully, and a rocky piece of ground, the soil grew better, and they soon came to a brook of good water, which they had occasion to cross twice; the soil was good, and covered with long gra.s.s: they were now drawing near to Rose-Hill, where they arrived a little before four o'clock.

The dry weather still continued, and though they had a few showers, the quant.i.ty of rain which fell in the month of April, was not sufficient to bring the dry ground into proper order for sowing the grain; a few acres, however, of what was in the best condition, were sown with wheat the last week in the month. This long continuance of dry weather, not only hurt their crops of corn very much, but the gardens likewise suffered greatly; many being sown a second and a third time, as the seed never vegetated, from the want of moisture in the soil; this was a double misfortune, for vegetables were not only growing scarce, but seed also.

The expected supply of provisions not arriving, Governor Phillip was obliged to reduce the ratio of daily subsistence; but this reduction did not extend to the women and children.

After saying that there were many of the convicts, who, if not attended to, ate their week's allowance of provisions in two or three days; it will be obvious that the labour hitherto drawn from that cla.s.s of people, must be greatly lessened by the necessity the Governor was under of reducing even that allowance; indeed, it was felt by every individual, for the daily ratio of provisions issued from the public stores, was the same to the convict as it was to the governor.

Two seamen, who had belonged to the Sirius, became settlers, and were fixed on the creek leading to Rose-Hill, where they had sixty acres of ground each allotted them, and they were to be victualled from the public store for eighteen months. A person who was sent from England to superintend the labour of the convicts, also became a settler, and one hundred and forty acres of land were allotted him on the creek: he was allowed the labour of four convicts for a year, and himself and his daughter were to be victualled from the public store for twelve months.

Several convicts, whose terms for which they were sentenced were expired, were permitted to cultivate ground at the foot of Prospect-Hill, and to those who became settlers, Governor Phillip gave what live stock he could spare, as there was not any belonging to the public in the settlement; nor were individuals possessed of any considerable quant.i.ty of live stock, the greatest part having been killed the last year, when they were distressed for want of provisions; and those who were able to cultivate a little maize, were glad to make use of it as a subst.i.tute for bread.

Little more than twelve months back, hogs and poultry were in great abundance, and were increasing very rapidly; but, at this time, a hen that laid eggs sold for twenty s.h.i.+llings; pork sold for a s.h.i.+lling per pound, but there was seldom any to sell; a roasting-pig sold for ten s.h.i.+llings, and good tobacco for twenty s.h.i.+llings per pound: tobacco, the growth of this country, which, if properly cured, would probably equal the best Brazil tobacco, sold in its green state, for ten s.h.i.+llings per pound.

Such was the state of the colony at this time.

All the maize was now got in, and, notwithstanding the extraordinary drought for some time before, and long after it was put into the ground, the crop was not a bad one, and the cobs were remarkably large where the ground had been well prepared.

In the beginning of May, the officers and men of the New South-Wales corps went into the new barrack at Rose-Hill. The barrack for the soldiers had been finished some time, but one of the wings, which was intended for the officers, could not be compleated before the end of the month.

Those natives who had been most accustomed to live at the settlement, would now leave it frequently for several days together, as they found plenty of fish towards the head of the harbour.

The savage ferocity of these people shows itself whenever they find themselves thwarted. Bannelong and Colebe with their wives, dined at the governor's on the 8th of May, and came in as usual, to have a gla.s.s of wine and a dish of coffee; after which they left the house to go and sleep at Bannelong's hut on the point; but, in the middle of the night, Governor Phillip was called up by the cries of the young girl whom he had formerly rescued from Bannelong: she, it seems, had gone to sleep in a shed at the back of the governor's house, and Bannelong, Colebe, and two others got over the paling, and were endeavouring to carry her off, which the centinels prevented; and, as Governor Phillip did not know at the moment, but that Bannelong and those who were with him, had returned to sleep in the yard after he went to bed, and before the gate was locked, they were permitted to escape; which, indeed, could only have been prevented by ordering them to be put to death.

One of these men was seen the next day, and, being taxed with attempting to carry off the girl, he denied the charge; as the natives always do when they are not caught in the fact. Bannelong and Colebe were not seen for a week, and the latter appearing first, when accused, said he was asleep at the time, and laid the blame on Bannelong, who coming soon after, and not being able to make any excuse, or to deny being in the yard, appeared sullen; and when Governor Phillip told him that he was angry, and that the soldiers should shoot him if he ever came again to take any woman away, he very cooly replied, that then he would spear the soldier; at the same time, he said he was very hungry; and, as no advantage would have followed punis.h.i.+ng him, he was ordered something to eat, after the threat had been repeated of his being shot, if ever he came again in the night.

It was probable, that the displeasure of Governor Phillip with Bannelong would have a better effect than any corporal punishment, which might only lead him to revenge himself on some of those who frequently went into the woods unarmed; at the same time, orders were given for the centinels to fire on any of the natives who might be seen getting over the paling in the night, and the sleeping of the women in the yard when their husbands were not with them was discouraged,

The girl was asked if the natives were going to take her away in order to beat her,--she said no, it was to force her to sleep with them; at the same time these men had left their own wives at their fires.

The Supply had now so far exceeded the time in which she generally made the voyage to and from Norfolk-Island, that fears were entertained for her safety, but they were removed by her arrival on the 30th of May. As she was the only vessel in this country, it was not without great concern that Governor Phillip found the necessary repairs she wanted would require more time than he could have wished her to remain in the harbour.

Chapter XXII

TRANSACTIONS AT PORT JACKSON

June 1791 to September 1791