His very deficiencies stood him in good stead; for, in presence of the elements with which he had to deal, it was well for him that nature had denied him any sense of the ridiculous.
Unconscious of what was absurd around him, and incapable of being flurried, frightened, or fatigued, he stood as a centre of order and authority amidst the seething chaos of inexperience and insubordination.
The staff was miserably insufficient, and every officer of the Company had to do duty for three in a climate such that a man is fortunate if he can find health for the work of one during a continuous twelvemonth.

The Governor had to be in the counting-house, the law-court, the school, and even the chapel.

He was his own secretary, his own paymaster, his own envoy.

He posted ledgers, he decided causes, he conducted correspondence with the Directors at home, and visited neighbouring potentates on diplomatic missions which made up in danger what they lacked in dignity.
In the absence of properly qualified clergymen, with whom he would have been the last to put himself in competition, he preached sermons and performed marriages;--a function which must have given honest satisfaction to one who had been so close a witness of the enforced and systematised immorality of a slave-nursery.

Before long, something fairly resembling order was established, and the settlement began to enjoy a reasonable measure of prosperity.