URTICA. See Encycl. where it is observed that the common nettle, though it has a place in the materia medica, is now very little used. It has lately been recommended, however, by Zannetini, a physician who attended the French army in Italy, as a good substitute in fevers for cinchona. The success of some experiments, which he made with it in tertian and quartan malignant fevers, surpassed, he says, his most sanguine expectation. The nettle often produces a speedier ef-
fect than bark; for it heats in a great degree, and when the dose is pretty strong, occasions a lethargic sleep. The dose must never exceed a dram, and is given in wine two or three times in the course of 24 hours. Zannetini found this medicine of great service to guard against that total exhaustion which forms the principal character of malignant fevers; and he recommends a slight infusion of it in wine as an excellent preservative for those who reside in marshy and insalubrious districts. In employing the nettle in fever, Zannetini gives the same caution as ought to be observed in regard to cinchona, that is, that it must not be employed where there is an inclination to inflammation, or where a continued fever, arising from obstructions, exists. This discovery is not unworthy the attention of physicians, and deserves at least to be farther investigated, as a great deal would be saved if cinchona could be entirely dispensed with.
Wales. WALES, NEW SOUTH, is a country which must be interesting on account of the singular colony which was settled there in the year 1788. Under the title New Holland (Encycl.) some account has been given of that settlement, as well as of the climate and the soil about Port Jackson; but it will probably gratify the curiosity of our readers, if we give a short history of those European settlers, of whom it is to be hoped that they carried not with them, to that distant shore,
"Minds not to be changed by time or place."
This history we shall take from the accurate Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, by David Collins, Esq; who went out with Governor Phillip, and continued to execute the offices of judge-advocate and Secretary till the close of the year 1796; and we shall begin our narrative from the disembarkation of the first colonists, when his Majesty's commission to the governor, and the letters patent establishing courts of criminal and civil judicature in the territory were read.
The criminal court was constituted a court of record, and was to consist of the judge-advocate and such six officers of the sea and land service as the governor shall, by precept issued under his hand and seal, require to assemble for that purpose. This court has power to inquire of, hear, determine, and punish all treasons, misprisions of treasons, murders, felonies, forgeries, perjuries, trespasses, and other crimes whatsoever that may be committed in the colony; the punishment for such offences to be inflicted according to the laws of England as nearly as may be, considering and allowing for the circumstances and situation of the settlement and its inhabitants. The charge against any offender is to be reduced into writing, and exhibited by the judge-advocate: witnesses are to be examined upon oath, as well for as against the prisoner; and the court is to adjudge whether he is guilty or not guilty by the opinion of the major part of the court. If guilty, and the offence is capital, they are to pronounce judgment of death, in like manner as if the prisoner had been convicted by the
verdict of a jury in England, or of such corporal punishment as the court, or the major part of it, shall deem meet. And in cases not capital, they are to adjudge such corporal punishment as the majority of the court shall determine. But no offender is to suffer death unless five members of the court shall concur in adjudging him to be guilty, until the proceedings shall have been transmitted to England, and the king's pleasure signified thereupon. The provost-marshall is to cause the judgement of the court to be executed according to the governor's warrant under his hand and seal.
Beside this court for the trial of criminal offenders, there is a civil court, consisting of the judge-advocate and two inhabitants of the settlement, who are to be appointed by the governor; which court has full power to hear and determine in a summary way all pleas of lands, houses, debts, contracts, and all personal pleas whatsoever.
From this court, on either party, plaintiff or defendant, finding himself or themselves aggrieved by the judgment or decree, an appeal lies to the governor, and from him, where the debt or thing in demand shall exceed the value of L. 300, to the king in council.
A vice-admiralty court was also appointed, for the trial of offences on the high seas; and the governor, lieutenant-governor, and judge-advocate, were by patent made justices of the peace, with a power in the governor to appoint other justices.
The situation which Governor Phillip had selected for his residence, and for the principal settlement, was the east side of a cove in Port Jackson, which he called Sydney Cove. Its latitude was found to be south, and its longitude east. This situation was chosen without due examination; for it soon appeared that the head or upper part of the cove wore a much more favourable appearance than the ground immediately about the settlement. From the natives, the new settlers met no opposition: during the first six weeks they received only one visit from them, two men strolling one evening into the camp, and remaining in it
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Wales. it for about half an hour. They appeared to admire whatever they saw; and after receiving a hatchet (of the use of which the eldest instantly and curiously shewed his knowledge, by turning up his foot and sharpening a piece of wood on the sole with the hatchet) took their leave, apparently well pleased with their reception. The fishing boats also frequently reported their having been visited by many of these people when hauling the seine; at which labour they often assisted with cheerfulness, and in return were generally rewarded with a part of the fish taken.
The first labour in which the convicts were employed was that of building huts; and for this purpose it was found necessary to divide them into gangs, and to appoint an overseer to each, who should see that the proper quantity of work was performed. The provisions were distributed by a weekly ration, and to each man were allowed 7 lb. of biscuit, 1 lb. of flour, 7 lb. of beef or 4 lb. of pork, 2 pints of peas, and 6 ounces of butter. To the female convicts two thirds of this ration were allowed. This was the full ration, which, in many instances, it became necessary to reduce; and once, in consequence of the delay of transports with a supply, the convicts were put on an allowance of which flesh meat constituted no part.
The temporary huts in which the colonists lived, for some time after their arrival, were formed principally of the cabbage tree. With this the fides and ends were filled; the posts and plates being made of the pine; and the whole was plastered with clay. The roofs were generally thatched with the grass of the gumrush; though some were covered with clay, but several of these failed; the weight of the clay and rain soon destroying them. In a short time they applied themselves to the burning of bricks; by which their habitations soon became much more lasting and comfortable. The progress of the colony, however, towards that degree of convenience which was within its reach, was greatly impeded by the incorrigible vices of those who principally composed it. Drunkenness, theft, robbery, and unconquerable laziness, continued to mark the character of the great body of the convicts. Though to fly from the colony, and venture into the interior of the country, was inevitable death in the form of famine or of murder, yet such was the invincible antipathy to labour manifested by some of those people, that they often fled to the woods, from which they seldom returned; some dying of hunger, and some being sacrificed by the natives. Disinclination to labour produced here, as elsewhere, its natural effect—robbery.
In the month of May 1788, a lad of 17 years of age was tried, convicted, and executed, for breaking open a tent belonging to one of the transport ships; several others were taken into custody in that month for various thefts and burglaries, and two were afterward tried and executed. One of these had absconded, and lived in the woods for 19 days, subsisting by what he was able to procure by nocturnal depredations among the huts and flock of individuals. His visits for this purpose were so frequent and daring, that it became absolutely necessary to proclaim him an outlaw. By the negligence of one of those fellows who had been entrusted with the care of the cattle, the bull and four cows were lost; he left them in the fields, and returned to his hut to dine; and in the mean time they either strayed away or
were driven off by the natives. Five years elapsed before these cattle were discovered wild, at a considerable distance up the country, and greatly multiplied.
The perpetration of crimes, chiefly theft and robbery, had become so prevalent before twenty months had passed since the colony was established, that it was necessary to think of a system of police. A plan was presented to the governor by a convict, which with some improvements was adopted on the 8th of August 1789. The following are the heads of the arrangement.
The settlement was divided into four districts, over each of which was placed a watch consisting of three persons, one principal and two subordinate watchmen. These being selected from among those convicts whose conduct and character had been unexceptionable since their landing, were vested with authority to patrol at all hours in the night, to visit such places as might be deemed requisite for the discovery of any felony, trespass, or misdemeanor, and to secure for examination all persons that might appear to be concerned therein; for which purpose they were directed to enter any suspected hut or dwelling, or to use any other means that might appear expedient. They were required to detain and give information to the nearest guardhouse of any soldier or seaman who should be found straggling after the tattoo had been beat. They were to use their utmost endeavours to trace out offenders on receiving accounts of any depredation; and in addition to their might-duty, they were directed to take cognizance of such convicts as gamed, or sold or bartered their slops or provisions, and report them for punishment. A return of all occurrences during the night was to be made to the judge-advocate; and the military were required to furnish the watch with any assistance they might be in need of, beyond what the civil power could give them. They were provided each with a short staff, to distinguish them during the night, and to denote their office in the colony; and were instructed not to receive any stipulated encouragement or reward from any individual for the conviction of offenders, but to expect that negligence or misconduct in the execution of their trust would be punished with the utmost rigour. It was to have been wished, says Mr Collins, that a watch established for the preservation of public and private property had been formed of free people, and that necessity had not compelled us, in selecting the first members of our little police, to appoint them from a body of men, in whose eyes, it could not be denied, the property of individuals had never before been sacred. But there was not any choice: The military had their line of duty marked out for them, and between them and the convict there was no description of people from whom overseers or watchmen could be provided. It might, however, be supposed, that among the convicts there must be many who would feel a pride in being distinguished from their fellows, and a pride that might give birth to a returning principle of honesty. It was hoped that the convicts whom we had chosen were of this description; some effort had become necessary to detect the various offenders who were prowling about with security under cover of the night; and the convicts who had any property were themselves interested in detecting such practices. They promised fidelity and diligence, from which the scorn of their fellow-prisoners should not induce them to swerve, and began with a
Wales. confidence of success the duty which they had themselves offered to undertake.
A species of disturber now infested the colony, against which the vigilance of a police could not guard. Rats, in immense numbers, had attacked the provision-stores, and could be counteracted only by removing the provisions from one store to another. When their ravages were first discovered, it was found that eight casks of flour were already destroyed by these vermin. Such of these animals as escaped the dogs, which were set upon them, flew to the gardens of individuals, where they roosted on the Indian corn that was growing, and did considerable mischief.
Our author gives the most melancholy account of the extreme sufferings of the early colonists from want of provisions, and of the diseases imported into the country by newcomers, who had either caught them on the voyage or brought them from England. The settlers on Norfolk Island (see Encycl.), to which New South Wales was a mother country, must have been much more liable than that colony to suffer from famine, had they not sometimes obtained a temporary supply from a source which was unknown at Sydney Cove. On a mountain in the island, to which had been given the name of Mount Pitt, they were fortunate enough to obtain, in an abundance almost incredible, a species of aquatic birds, answering the description of that known by the name of the puffin. These birds came in from the sea every evening, in clouds literally darkening the air, and descending on Mount Pitt, deposited their eggs in deep holes made by themselves in the ground, generally quitting them in the morning, and returning to seek their subsistence in the sea. From two to three thousand of these birds were often taken in a night. Their seeking their food in the ocean left no doubt of their own flesh partaking of the quality of that upon which they fed; but to people circumstanced as were the inhabitants on Norfolk Island, this lessened not their importance; and while any Mount Pitt birds (such being the name given them) were to be had, they were eagerly sought.
The first settler in New South Wales, who declared himself able to live on the produce of his farm, without any assistance from the stores, was James Ruse; who, in April 1790 relinquished his claim to any farther share of the public provision. As a reward, the governor immediately put him in possession of an allotment of 30 acres.
In the July of the same year, the convicts whose terms of transportation had expired were now collected, and by the authority of the governor informed, that such of them as wished to become settlers in this country should receive every encouragement; that those who did not, were to labour for their provisions, stipulating to work for 12 or 18 months certain; and that in the way of such as preferred returning to England no obstacles would be thrown, provided they could procure passages from the masters of such ships as might arrive; but that they were not to expect any assistance on the part of government to that end. The wish to return to their friends appeared to be the prevailing idea, a few only giving in their names as settlers, and none engaging to work for a certain time.
That the wish to return home was strong indeed, and paramount to all other feelings, was evinced in a very
melancholy instance some time before. A convict, an elderly man, was found dead in the woods, near the settlement; who, on being opened, it appeared, had died from want of nourishment; and it was found that he was accustomed to deny himself even what was absolutely necessary to his existence, abstaining from his provisions, and selling them for money, which he was reserving, and had somewhere concealed, in order to purchase his passage to England when his time should terminate!
Of some convicts whose terms of transportation had expired, the governor established a new settlement in August 1791, at a place which he called Prospect Hill, about twenty miles distant from Sydney Cove, and another residence was formed at the Ponds within three or four miles of the former. This made the fourth settlement in the colony, exclusively of that at Norfolk Island.
About this time the governor received from England a public seal for the colony: on the obverse of which were the king's arms and royal titles; and on the reverse, emblematic figures suited to the situation of the people for whose use it was designed. The motto was "Sic fortis Etruria crevit;" and in the margin were the words "Sigillum Nov. Gumb. Aust." A commission also arrived, empowering him to remit absolutely, or conditionally, the whole or any part of the term for which the felons sent to the colony might be transported. By this power he was enabled to bestow on superior honesty and industry the most valuable reward which, in such circumstances, they could receive.
In addition to the calamities under which the settlement had so often laboured from being reduced to very short allowance of provisions, and the frequency of the ordinary diseases which were to be expected among a people so situated, a new malady of a very alarming nature was perceived about April 1792. Several convicts were seized with insanity; and as the major part of those who were visited by this calamity were females, who, on account of their sex, were not harassed with hard labour, and who in general shared largely of such little comforts as were to be procured in the settlement, it was difficult to assign a cause for this disorder. It seems, however, to have been of short duration: for we hear not of it again during the period that Mr Collins's narrative comprehends.
About this time (1792) the colony had assumed something of an established form. Brick huts were in hand for the convicts in room of the miserable hovels occupied by many, which had been put up at their first landing, and in room of others which, from having been erected on such ground as was then cleared, were now found to interfere with the direction of the streets which the governor was laying out. People were also employed in cutting paling for fencing in their gardens. At a place called Paramatta, about 16 miles from Sydney Cove, situated on a small river which runs into Port Jackson, the people were employed, during the greatest part of the month of May, in getting in the maize and sowing wheat. A foundation for an hospital was laid, a house built for the master carpenter, and roofs prepared for the different huts either building or to be built in future.
In December 1792, when Captain Phillip resigned the government, nearly five years from the foundation of
Wales. of the colony, there were in cultivation at the different settlements 1429 acres, of which 417 belonged to settlers; that is, 67 settlers, for there were no more, cultivated nearly half as much ground as was cultivated by the public labour of all the convicts; a striking proof of the superior zeal and diligence with which men exert themselves when they have an interest in their labour. Of free settlers, whose exertions promised so fairly to promote the interests of the colony, several arrived from England in January 1793, and fixed themselves in a situation which they called Liberty Plains. To one of these, Thomas Rose, a farmer from Dorsetshire, and his family of a wife and four children, 120 acres were allotted. The conditions under which these people agreed to settle were, "to have their passage provided by government (A); an assortment of tools and implements to be given to them out of the stores; that they should be supplied with two years provisions; that their lands should be granted free of expense; the service of convicts also to be assigned to them free of expense; and that those convicts should be supplied with two years rations and one year's clothing."
Among the great difficulties with which this infant establishment had to struggle, not the least was that of procuring cattle. Of those which were embarked in England and other places for the colony, a very small proportion only arrived; for of 15 bulls and 119 cows, which had been embarked for Botany Bay, only 3 bulls and 28 cows were landed at the settlement. It was not until the arrival of the Endeavour, Captain Bampton, in 1795, that the mode of conveying cattle to the colony without material loss was discovered. In that vessel, out of 120 head which he embarked at Bombay, one cow only died on the passage, and that too on the day before his arrival.
The scarcity of cattle naturally raised their price. Even after this last importation, an English cow in calf sold for 1,80s.
Notwithstanding the various obstacles which industry had met in the cultivation of this settlement, it yet made considerable advances; for in October 1793, the value of land had so risen, that one settler sold his allotment of 30 acres for as many pounds; and one farm, with the house, &c. sold for 1,100. The value of ground, indeed, was considerably enhanced by government agreeing to purchase the redundancy of the produce of the settlers at fixed prices. Wheat properly dried and cleansed was received from the settlers at Sydney, by the commissary, at 10s. per bushel. Some cultivators, however, had devised another mode of disposing of their corn. One of them, whose situation was near Parramatta, having obtained a small still from England, found it more advantageous to draw an ardent diabolical spirit from his wheat, than to send it to the stores. From one bushel of wheat he obtained nearly five quarts of spirit, which he sold or paid in exchange for labour, at the rate of five or six shillings per quart. A better use was made of grain by another settler; who, having a mill, ground it, and procured 44lb. of good flour, from a bushel of wheat taken at 59lb. This flour he sold at 4d. per lb.