The erection
of barracks for the soldiers was projected, and the private men of
each company undertook to build for themselves two wooden houses, of
sixty-eight feet in length, and twenty-three in breadth. To forward the
design, several saw-pits were immediately set to work, and four ship
carpenters attached to the battalion, for the purpose of directing and
completing this necessary undertaking. In prosecuting it, however,
so many difficulties occurred, that we were fain to circumscribe our
original intention; and, instead of eight houses, content ourselves with
four. And even these, from the badness of the timber, the scarcity of
artificers, and other impediments, are, at the day on which I write, so
little advanced, that it will be well, if at the close of the year 1788,
we shall be established in them. In the meanwhile the married people,
by proceeding on a more contracted scale, were soon under comfortable
shelter. Nor were the convicts forgotten; and as leisure was frequently
afforded them for the purpose, little edifices quickly multiplied on the
ground allotted them to build upon.
Pages:
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96