To convey these materials from the brickfield to the barrack-ground, a distance of about three-quarters of a mile, three brick-carts were employed, each drawn by twelve men, under the direction of one overseer. Seven hundred tiles, or three hundred and fifty bricks, were brought by each cart, and every cart in the day brought either five loads of bricks, or four of tiles. To bring in the timber necessary for these and other buildings, four timber-carriages were employed, each being drawn by twenty-four men. In addition to these, to each carriage were annexed two fallers, and one overseer, making a total of two hundred and twenty-eight men, who must be employed in any such heavy labour as the building of a barrack or a storehouse, exclusive of the sawyers, carpenters, smiths, painters, glaziers, and stonemasons, without whose labour they could not be completed.
The expense of victualling and clothing these people (both their provisions and the materials for making their clothes being augmented above their prime cost, by freight and by the cost of what might be damaged and useless) must be supposed to be considerable; and must be taken into account, together with the cost of tools and of such materials as were not to be procured in the country, when calculating the expenses of the public works erected in this colony.
There died between the 1st of January and 31st of December, both inclusive, two settlers, seven soldiers, seventy-eight male convicts, twenty-six female convicts, and twenty-nine children. One male convict was executed; six male convicts were lost in the woods; one male convict was found dead in the woods; one male convict was killed by the fall of a tree, and two male convicts were killed by lightning; making a decrease by death and accidents of one hundred and fifty-three persons. To this decrease may be added, four male convicts, who found means to escape from the colony on board of some of the ships which had been here.
The following were the prices of grain, live and dead stock, grocery, spirits, etc. as they were sold or valued at Sydney and Parramatta at the close of the year 1793:
AT SYDNEY
GRAIN
Wheat per bushel, for cash, 10s
Ditto, in payment for labour, 14s
Maize per bushel, for cash, 7s
Ditto, in payment for labour, 12s 6d
Caffre corn 5s
English flour per lb 6d
Flour of this country, for cash, 3d
Ditto, for labour, 4d
VEGETABLES
Potatoes per cwt 10s
Ditto per lb 1½d
LIVE AND DEAD STOCK
Ewes (Cape) from £6 to £8 8s
Wethers (Cape) from £4 to £5 10s
She goats, full grown, £8 8s
Ditto, half grown, £4 4s
Male goat, full grown, £2
Breeding sows from £3 to £6
Sucking pigs 6s
A full grown hog from £3 to £3 10s
Turkeys per couple, nearly full grown, £2 ss
Ducks per couple, nearly ditto, 10s
Laying hens, each 5s
A full grown cock 4s
Half grown fowls 2s
Chickens, six weeks old, per couple 2s
Fresh pork per lb 9d
Mutton per lb from 2s to 2s 6d
Kangaroo per lb 4d
Salt pork per lb 9d
Salt beef per lb 6d
GROCERIES
Tea (green) from 12s to 16s
Tea (black) from 10s to 12s
Loaf sugar per lb 2s 6d
Fine moist sugar per lb 2s
Coarse moist sugar per lb 1s 6d
Butter from 2s per lb to 2s 6d
Cheese from 2s per lb to 2s 6d
Soap per lb from 2s to 3s
Tobacco per lb from 1s to 1s 6d
Lamp oil, made from shark's liver, per gall 4s
WINE--SPIRITS--PORTER
Jamaica rum per gallon from £1 to £1 8s
Rum (American) from 16s per gall to £1
Coniac brandy per gallon from £1 to £1 4s
Cape brandy per gallon from 16s to £1
Cherry brandy per dozen £3 12s
Wine (Cape Madeira) per gallon 12s
Porter per gallon from 4s to 6s
AT PARRAMATTA
GRAIN
Wheat per bushel, for cash, 10s
Ditto, in payment for labour, 14s
Maize per bushel, for cash, 7s 6d
Ditto, in payment for labour, l0s
Caffre corn, none
English flour per lb 6d
Flour of this country, for cash, 4d
Ditto, for labour, 6d
VEGETABLES
Potatoes per lb 3d
Greens per hundred 6s
LIVE AND DEAD STOCK
Ewes from £4 to £10
Wethers from £2 10s to £4
She goats from £4 to £10 10s
A young male goat £3
Breeding sows from £3 to £7
Sucking pigs from 4s to 7s 6d
Turkeys per couple, nearly full grown, £2 2s
Ducks per couple, full grown, £1 1s
Laying Hens, each from 4s to 7s 6d
A full grown cock 5s
Half grown fowls 3s
Chickens, six weeks old, per couple 2s
Fresh pork per lb 9d
Mutton per lb from 2s to 2s 6d
Kangaroo per lb 4d
Salt pork per lb 9d
Salt beef per lb 5d
GROCERIES
Tea (green) from 16s to £1 1s
Black tea from 10s to 16s
Moist sugar (coarse) 2s
Butter per lb 2s 6d
Cheese per lb 2s 6d
Soap per lb 3s
Tobacco per lb 2s
Lamp oil, made from shark's liver, per gall 4s
WINE--SPIRITS--PORTER
Neat spirits per gallon from £1 10s to £2
Wine of the most inferior quality per gall 16s
The high prices of wine, spirits, and porter, proceeded not only from their scarcity, but from the great avidity with which they were procured by the generality of the people in these settlements, with whom money was of so little value, that the purchaser had been often known (instead of asking) to name himself a price for the article he wanted, fixing it at as high again would otherwise have been required of him.
The live stock in the country belonging to individuals was confined to three or four persons, who kept up the price in order to create an interest in the preservation of it. An English cow, in calf by the bull which was brought here in the Gorgon, was sold by one officer to another for eighty pounds; and the calf, which proved a male, was sold for fifteen pounds. A mare, brought in the Britannia from the Cape, was valued at forty pounds, and, although aged and defective, was sold twice in the course of a few days for that sum. It must however be remarked, that in these sales stock itself was generally the currency of the country, one kind of animals being commonly exchanged for another.
Labour was also proportionably high. For sawing one hundred feet of timber, in their own time, for individuals, a pair of sawyers demanded seven shillings; a carpenter for his day's work charged three shillings; and for splitting paling for fences, and bringing it in from the woods, they charged from one shilling and six-pence to two shillings and six-pence per hundred. An officer who had an allotment of one hundred acres of land near the town of Sydney having occasion for a hundred thousand bricks to build a dwelling-house, contracted with a brickmaker and his gang, and for that number of bricks paid him the sum of forty-two pounds ten shillings. In the fields, for cutting down the timber of an acre of ground, burning it off, and afterwards hoeing it for corn, the price was four pounds. Five-and-twenty shillings were demanded and paid for hoeing an acre of ground already cleared.
For all this labour, where money was paid, it was taken at its reputed value; but where articles were given in lieu of labour, they were charged according to the prices stated.
The masters of merchantmen, who generally made it their business immediately on their arrival to learn the prices of commodities in the colony, finding them so extravagantly high as before related, thought it not their concern to reduce them to anything like a fair equitable value; but, by asking themselves what must be considered a high price, after every proper allowance for risk, insurance, and loss, kept up the extravagant nominal value which every thing bore in the colony.