MacArthur, now a landed proprietor and merchant, soon after Bligh landed, paid him a visit, and reminded the new governor of an instruction sent to King that he (MacArthur) was to be given every encouragement in his endeavour to develop the pastoral resources of the colony.  “Would Governor Bligh visit his estate on the Cowpasture river” (now Camden), “and see what had been done in this direction?” to which Governor Bligh, according to the report of Major Johnston’s trial, replied, and with oaths:  “What have I to do with your sheep and cattle?  You have such flocks and herds as no man ever had before, and 10,000 acres of the best land in the country; but you shall not keep it.”  Here then was a declaration of war—­MacArthur, too much of a trader to be a soldier, and politician enough to have enlisted on his side the English Government—­which had announced its will that he should be encouraged as a valuable pioneer colonist—­versus Bligh, so much of a warrior as to have fought beside Nelson with honour and so impolitic as to have lost his ship to a body of [Sidenote:  1807] mutineers, some of them officers, of whose discontent, according to his own showing, he was unaware until the moment of the outbreak.

[Illustration:  CAPTAIN BLIGH.  From an engraving after J. Russell, R.A., in Hugh’s “Voyage to the South Sea” [London, 1792]. To face p. 256.]

The fight began in this fashion.  MacArthur had taken a promissory note from a man named Thompson.  When the note became due, a fixed quantity of wheat was to be paid for its redemption; but, subsequent to the drawing of the note, came the great flood before mentioned; wheat went to ten times its former value, and MacArthur demanded payment on the higher scale.  Thompson refused payment at the current rate, alleging that he was only bound to pay for grain at the rate he received it, although his crops had not suffered by the floods.  The matter came before Bligh to decide, and he gave judgment against MacArthur, who forthwith ceased to visit Government House.  Then MacArthur was taken ill, Bligh called upon him, and a peaceful aspect of affairs came over the land, which lasted until early in 1807.

Bligh, in accordance with his special instructions, had issued an order by which the distillation of spirits was prohibited, and the seizure of any apparatus employed in such process enjoined.  Just about this time Captain Abbott, of the New South Wales Corps, had sent orders to his London agent to send him a still.  MacArthur happened to employ the same agent, who thought it a good idea to also send his other patron a still.