But although Hunter’s despatches are full of complaints of the soldiers, of the want of stores, and the need of honest, free men to cultivate the soil by way of a leaven to the hundreds of convicts who were arriving every year, he, like Phillip, believed that New South Wales would ultimately become a prosperous colony.  More than this, it was under Hunter that Bass and Flinders did most of their surveying; that Shortland discovered Newcastle; and to no governor more than to Hunter is credit due for the interest he took in exploration.

Here is a picture of the colony in the time of Hunter’s governorship, painted by certain missionaries who had been driven by the natives of Tahiti from their island, and who had taken refuge in New South Wales:—­

“His Majesty’s ship the Buffalo, Captain Kent, being on the eve of sailing from the colony for the Cape of Good Hope, we embrace the opportunity of confirming our letter to you of the 1st September, 1798, by the Barwell.  Here we have to contend with the depravity and corruptions of the human heart heightened and confirmed in all its vicious habits by long and repeated indulgences of inbred corruption, each one following the bent of his own corrupt mind, and countenancing his neighbour in the pursuit of sensual gratifications.  Here iniquity abounds, and those outward gross sins which in Europe would render a person contemptible in the public eye, and obnoxious to the civil law, are become fashionable and familiar—­adultery, fornication, theft, drunkenness, extortion, violence, and uncleanness of every kind, the natural concomitants of deism and infidelity, which have boldly thrown off the mask, and stalk through the colony in the open face of the sun, so that it is no uncommon thing to hear a person say, ‘When I was a Christian, I thought so and so.’”

This is strong, but it is true.

This letter was addressed to the directors of the London Missionary Society, and many of similar purport written by Johnson and Marsden, the chaplains of the settlement, are to be found in the records.  All these writers agree on one point:  the colony had fallen from grace under the military administration.  Phillip had left it in good order, and Hunter at the time, these witnesses testified, was doing his best to improve matters.

Lang (not a reliable authority in many things, but to be believed when not expressing opinions), in his History of New South Wales, tells an anecdote of Hunter which is worth retelling.  Captain Hunter was on one occasion the subject of an anonymous letter addressed by some disreputable colonist to the Duke of Portland, then Home Secretary. (There was no Colonial Secretary in those days.) The Duke sent back the letter without comment to Hunter, who one day handed it to an officer who was dining with him.  “You will surely notice this?” said the officer.  “No,” replied Hunter.  “The man has a family, and I don’t want to ruin them.”