But it so happened that, as a special favour, a few had been given to King George, who was an enthusiastic farmer; and when he heard of Macarthur’s idea, he sent him one or two from his own flock to be carried out to New South Wales. They were safely landed at Sydney, Governor King made a grant of ten thousand acres to Mr. Macarthur, at Camden, and the experiment was begun. It was not long before the most marked success crowned the effort, and in the course of a few years the meadows at Camden were covered with great flocks of sheep, whose wool yielded annually a handsome fortune to their enterprising owner.

6. Governor Bligh.—In 1806 Governor King was succeeded by Captain Bligh, whose previous adventures have made his name so well known. In his ship, the Bounty, he had been sent by the British Government to the South Sea Islands for a cargo of bread-fruit trees. But his conduct to his sailors was so tyrannical that they mutinied, put him, along with eighteen others, into an open boat, then sailed away, and left him in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Bligh was a skilful sailor, and the voyage he thereupon undertook is one of the most remarkable on record. In an open boat he carried his little party over 3,500 miles of unknown ocean to the island of Timor, where they found a vessel that took them home.

In appointing Captain Bligh to rule the colony, the English Government spoiled an excellent seaman to make a very inefficient Governor. It was true that New South Wales contained a large convict population, who required to be ruled with despotic rigour; yet there were many free settlers who declined to be treated like slaves and felons, and who soon came to have a thorough dislike to the new Governor. Not that he was without kindly feeling; his generous treatment of the Hawkesbury farmers, who were ruined by a flood in 1806, showed him to have been warm-hearted in his way; he exerted himself to the utmost, both with time and money, to alleviate their distress, and received the special thanks of the English Government for his humanity.