and twenty-one male and eleven female convicts, embarked on board the Golden Grove for Norfolk Island, and with the Sirius sailed on the 2d of October.

The detachment finding it convenient to collect vegetables, and being obliged to go for them as far as Botany Bay, the convicts were ordered to avail themselves of the protection of an armed party, and never on any account to straggle from the soldiers, or go to Botany Bay without them, on pain of severe punishment. Notwithstanding which, a convict, who had been looked upon as a good man, having gone out with an armed party to procure vegetables at Botany Bay, straggled from them, and was killed by the natives. On the return of the soldiers from the bay he was found lying dead in the path, his head beaten to a jelly, a spear driven through it, another through his body, and one arm broken. Some people were sent out to bury him; and in the course of the month the parties who went by the spot for vegetables reported that his body was three times found above ground, having, it was supposed, been torn up by the natives's dogs.

On the departure of the Sirius, one pound of flour was de ducted from the weekly ration of those who received the full proportion, and two-thirds of a pound from such as were at two-thirds allowance. The public works went on, as usual, very slowly; those employed on them in general barely exerting themselves beyond what was necessary to avoid immediate punishment for idleness.

In the course of this month a launch, or hoy, capable of conveying provisions to Rose Hill and other places, was constructed from the timber of the country; a landing-place was formed on the east side of the Cove; and at the point on the west side, a magazine was marked out, to be constructed of stone, and large enough to contain fifty or sixty barrels of powder.

It being observed with concern, that the natives were every day becoming more troublesome and hostile, several people having been wounded, and others, who were necessarily em

ployed in the woods, driven in and much alarmed by them, the Governor determined on endeavouring to seize, and bring into the settlement, one or two of these people, whose language it was become absolutely necessary to acquire, that they might be taught to distinguish friends from enemies. Accordingly, on the 30th, a young man was taken and brought in by Lieutenant Ball of the Supply, and Lieutenant George Johnson, of the marines. A second was seized; but, after dragging into the water beyond his depth the man who held him, he got clear off. The native who had been secured was on his landing conveyed to the Governor's, where he was clothed, a slight iron or manacle put upon his wrist, and a trusty convict appointed to take care of him. A small hut had been previously built for his reception close to the guardhouse, wherein he and his keeper were locked up at night; and the following morning the convict reported, that his charge had slept very well during the night, not offering to make any attempt to get away.

The first day of the new year (January 1789) was marked as a holiday by a suspension of all kinds of labour, and by hoisting of colours at the fort. The ration of provisions, though still less by a pound of flour than the proper allowance, was yet so sufficient as not to be complained of; nor was labour diminished by it. Upon a calculation of the different people employed for the public in cultivation, it appeared, that of all the numbers in the colony there were only two hundred and fifty so employed:-a very small number indeed to procure the means of rendering the colony independent of the mother-country for the necessaries of life. The rest were occupied in carrying on various public works, such as stores, houses, wharfs, &c. A large number were incapable, through age or infirmities, of being called to labour; and the civil establishment, the military, females, and children, filled up the catalogue of those unassisting in cultivation.

The soil immediately about the settlement was found to be of too sandy a nature to give much promise of yielding a suf

ficient produce even for the small quantity of stock that it possessed. At Rose Hill the prospect was better; indeed, whatever expectation could be formed of successful cultivation in the country, rested as yet in that quarter.

The Supply sailed for Norfolk Island on the 17th, having on board twenty-one male and six female convicts, and three children; of the latter, two were to be placed under Mr King's care as children of the public. The one, a boy of three years old, had lost his mother on the passage to that country; the other, a girl one year older, had a mother in the colony, but of so very abandoned a character, that the child was taken from her in the hope of saving it from the ruin which was otherwise inevitable. These children were to be instructed in reading, writing, and husbandry. The commandant of the island was directed to cause five acres of ground to be allotted and cultivated for their benefit, by such person as he should think fit to entrust with the charge of bringing them up according to the spirit of this intention, in promoting the success of which every friend of humanity seemed to feel an in

terest.

Very little molestation was at this time given by the natives; and had they never been ill treated by the inhabitants, instead of hostility, it is more than probable that an intercourse of friendship would have subsisted.

A convict, disregarding both orders and dangers, went in search of herbs, and was killed by the natives. A few days after this accident a party of the convicts, sixteen in number, chiefly belonging to the brick-maker's gang, as had also the unfortunate straggler, provided themselves with stakes, and set off toward Botany Bay, with a determination to revenge, upon whatever natives they should meet, the treatment which one of their brethren had received. Near Botany Bay they fell in with the natives, but in a larger body than they expected or desired. According to their report, they were fifty in number; but much dependence was not to be placed on what they said in this respect, nor in their narrative of the af

fair; it is certain, however, they were driven in by the natives, who killed one man and wounded six others. On this being known in the settlement, an armed party was sent out with an officer, who found the body of the murdered man stripped, and lying in the path. They also found a boy, who had likewise been stripped and left for dead by the natives; he was very much wounded, and his left ear nearly cut off. The party returned bearing in the boy, but without seeing any of the perpetrators of this mischief: the other wounded people had reached the settlement. The Governor, judging it highly necessary to make examples of these misguided people, who had so daringly and flagrantly broken through every order which had been given to prevent their interfering with the natives as to form a party expressly to meet with and attack them, directed that those who were not wounded should receive each one hundred and fifty lashes, and wear a fetter for a twelvemonth; the like punishment was directed to be inflicted upon those who were in the hospital, as soon as they should recover from their wounds.

The same day two armed parties were sent, one towards Botany Bay, and the other in a different direction, that the natives might see that their late act of violence would neither intimidate nor prevent the English from moving beyond the settlement whenever occasion required.

Such were their enemies abroad: at home, within themselves, they had enemies to encounter of a different nature, but in their effects more difficult to guard against. The gardens and houses of individuals, and the provision store, were over-run with rats. The safety of the provisions was an object of general importance, and the Commissary was for some time employed in examining into the state of the store. By his diligence it was discovered that a soldier, named Hunt, had robbed it. Being admitted an evidence on the part of the crown, six soldiers, whom he accused, were taken up and tried; when the evidence of the accomplice being confirmed by several strong corroborating circumstances,

(among which it appeared that the store had been broken into and robbed by them at various times for upwards of eight months), they were unanimously found guilty, and sentenced to suffer that death which they acknowledged they had justly merited.

While these transactions were passing at Sydney, the little colony at Norfolk Island had been threatened with an insurrection. The Supply returned from thence on the 24th, after an absence of five weeks, and brought from Lieutenant King, the commandant, information of a chimerical scheme for the capture of the island, and the subsequent escape of the captors, but it was fortunately revealed to a seaman belonging to the Sirius, who lived with Mr King as a gardener, by a female convict that cohabited with him.

On Thursday the 26th of February, the island was visited by a hurricane, which came on early in the morning in very heavy gales of wind and rain. Several pines of one hundred and eighty and two hundred feet in length, and from twenty to thirty feet in circumference, were blown down. The gale had increased by noon to a dreadful degree, with torrents of heavy rain. Every instant pines and live oaks, of the largest dimensions, were borne down by the fury of the blast, which, tearing up roots and rocks with them, left chasms of eight or ten feet deep in the earth. Nothing but horror and desolation every where presented itself. The storm raged with the utmost violence; and by one o'clock there were as many trees torn up by the roots as would have required the labour of fifty men for a fortnight to have felled. Early in the afternoon the Swamp and Vale were overflowed, and had every appearance of a large navigable river. The gardens, public and private, were wholly destroyed; cabbages, turnips, and other plants, were blown out of the ground; and those which withstood the hurricane seemed as if they had been scorched.

Early in the month of April, and throughout its continuance, the people whose business called them down the harbour daily reported, that they found, either in excavations of