There was no machinery extant for distributing them, so Mrs. Chisholm determined to avail herself of the information supplied in answers to her circulars, and to send them into the country. The first dray that came to the door was sent away empty: frightened with foolish 'board-ship stories of blacks and bushrangers, not one girl would go. A second attempt, the first failure having been kept a secret, was successful. Mrs. Chisholm, at her own risk and expense, took a party up the Hunter River district by steam-boat. The enterprise was considered so Quixotish by her friends that, as she sat on deck in the centre of her troop of girls, no one of her acquaintance dared to expose himself to the ridicule of owning acquaintance by offering any refreshment.
The plan succeeded; the girls were well placed in the families of often humble but always respectable married people, and competent committees were induced to undertake the charge of "Branch Homes" in the interior. The bush journeys were repeated with parties of young women, varing from sixteen to thirty, who were conveyed to Campbell Town, Maitland, Liverpool, Paramatta, Cross Roads, and Port Macquarie—Yass, Gundegai, Murrumbidgee, Goulburn, and Bathurst—where she went from farm to farm, scrutinising the characters of the residents before she trusted them with "her children."
The settlers came forward nobly, and supplied provisions, horses, and drays; the inns universally refused payment for Mrs. Chisholm's personal accommodation; and the coaches, a most costly conveyance in Australia, carried her sick women and children free. Mr. William Bradley, a gentleman born in the colony, a member of the Legislative Council, gave an unlimited credit to draw for anything for the use of the emigrants—of which she was not obliged to avail herself, so liberally did the colonists of the interior come forward.
Very soon the fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands claimed the same care, and asked to be permitted to form part of her parties. Her journeys became longer and her armies larger: 147 souls left Sydney, which increased on the road to 240, in one party, in drays and on foot, Mrs. Chisholm leading the way on horseback. She established a registry-office for servants, where names could be inscribed and agreements effected on fair terms gratuitously: she drew up and printed a fair agreement, of which the master took one, the servant one, and one was filed. The result of this registration was to extinguish litigation as far as regards servants engaged at the "Home." Out of many thousands only two were litigated. Yet in the course of her experience, before she stirred in the matter, and for want of agreements and speedy
