An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales Volume I Part 9

The natives returned to the same place un.o.bserved, and, while the c.o.c.kswain and his people were collecting what rushes they had cut, threw a spear at the c.o.c.kswain, which wounded him in the arm, notwithstanding they must have known that at that time we had one of their people in our possession, on whom the injury might be retaliated. He, poor fellow, did not seem to expect any such treatment from us, and began to seem reconciled to his situation. He was taken down the harbour once or twice, to let his friends see that he was alive, and had some intercourse with them which appeared to give him much satisfaction.

For fifteen days of this month the thermometer rose in the shade above eighty degrees. Once on the 8th, at one in the afternoon, it stood at 105 degrees in the shade.

February 2nd.] Captain John Shea, of the marines, who had been for a considerable time in a declining state of health, died, and was interred with military honours the day following; the governor and every officer of the settlement attending his funeral. The major commandant of the detachment shortly after filled up the vacancy which this officer's death had occasioned by appointing Captain Lieutenant Meredith to the company; and First Lieutenant George Johnston succeeded to the captain-lieutenancy. Second Lieutenant Ralph Clarke was appointed a First, and volunteer John Ross a Second Lieutenant; but their commissions were still to receive the confirmation of the lords commissioners of the Admiralty.

The convicts being found to continue the practice of selling their clothing, an order was issued, directing, that if in future a convict should give information to the provost-marshal against any person to whom he had sold his clothes, the seller should receive them again, be permitted to keep whatever was paid him for them, and receive no punishment himself for the sale. It was also found necessary to direct, that all stragglers at night who, on being challenged by the patrole, should run from them, should be fired at; but orders, in general, were observed to have very little effect, and to be attended to only while the impression made by hearing them published remained upon the mind; for the convicts had not been accustomed to live in situations where their conduct was to be regulated by written orders. There was here no other mode of communicating to them such directions as it was found necessary to issue for their observance; and it was very common to have them plead in excuse for a breach of any regulation of the settlement, that they had never before heard of it; nor had they any idea of the permanency of an order, many of them seeming to think it issued merely for the purpose of the moment.

It was much to be regretted, that there existed a necessity for placing a confidence in these people, as in too many instances the trust was found to be abused: but unfortunately, to fill many of those offices to which free people alone should have been appointed in this colony, there were none but convicts. From these it will be readily supposed the best characters were selected, those who had merited by the propriety of their conduct the good report of the officers on board the s.h.i.+ps in which they were embarked, and who had brought with them into those s.h.i.+ps a better name than their fellows from the prisons in which they had been confined.

Those also who were qualified to instruct and direct others in the exercise of professions in which they had superior knowledge and experience, were appointed to act as overseers, with gangs under their direction; and many had given evident proofs or strong indications of returning dispositions to honest industry.

There were others, however, who had no claim to this praise. Among these must be particularised William Bryant, to whom, from his having been bred from his youth to the business of a fisherman in the western part of England, was given the direction and management of such boats as were employed in fis.h.i.+ng, every encouragement was held out to this man to keep him above temptation; an hut was built for him and his family; he was always presented with a certain part of the fish which he caught; and he wanted for nothing that was necessary, or that was suitable to a person of his description and situation. But he was detected in secreting and selling large quant.i.ties of fish; and when the necessary enquiry was made, this practice appeared to have been of some standing with him. For this offence he was severely punished, and removed from the hut in which he had been placed; yet as, notwithstanding his villainy, he was too useful a person to part with and send to a brick cart, he was still retained to fish for the settlement; but a very vigilant eye was kept over him, and such steps taken as appeared likely to prevent him from repeating his offence, if the sense of shame and fear of punishment were not of themselves sufficient to deter him.

A person of the name of Smith having procured a pa.s.sage from England in the _Lady Penrhyn_, with a design to proceed to India in the event of his not finding any employment in this country, on his offering his services, and professing to have some agricultural knowledge was received into the colony, and, being judged a discreet prudent man, was placed about the provision store under the a.s.sistant to the commissary at Rose Hill, and was moreover sworn in as a peace-officer, to act as such immediately under the provost-marshal; a line wherein, from the circ.u.mstance of his being a free man, it was supposed he might render essential aid to the civil department of the colony. It was farther intended, at a future period, to place some people under his direction, to give him an opportunity of exercising the abilities he was said to possess as a practical farmer.

14th.] The magazine at the Point being now completed, the powder belonging to the settlement was lodged safely within its walls.

It being of importance to the colony to ascertain the precise situation and extent of the reefs seen by Mr. Blackburn, in the _Golden Grove_ stores.h.i.+p, in November last, Leiutenant Ball (who was proceeding to Norfolk Island with provisions and convicts) was directed to perform that duty on his return. He sailed with the vessel under his command 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. They were of different s.e.xes; the boy, Edward Parkinson, who was about three years of age, had lost his mother on the pa.s.sage to this country, the girl, who was a year older, had a mother in the colony; but as she was a woman of abandoned character*, the child was taken from her to save it from the ruin which would otherwise have been its inevitable lot. These children were to be instructed in reading and writing, and in 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 interest.

[* The same who was wounded by Rugla.s.s, earlier this chapter]

The cove was now, for the first time, left without a s.h.i.+p; a circ.u.mstance not only striking by its novelty, but which forcibly drew our attention to the peculiarity of our situation. The _Sirius_ was gone upon a long voyage to a distant country for supplies, the arrival of which were a.s.suredly precarious. The _Supply_ had left us, to look after a dangerous reef; which service, in an unknown sea, might draw upon herself the calamity which she was seeking to instruct others to avoid. Should it have been decreed, that the arm of misfortune was to fall with such weight upon us, as to render at any time the salvation of this little vessel necessary to the salvation of the colony, how deeply was every one concerned in her welfare! Reflection on the bare possibility of its miscarriage made every mind anxious during her absence from the settlement.

From the evident necessity that existed of maintaining a strict discipline among the military employed in this country, it became a requisite to punish with some severity any flagrant breach of military subordination that might occur. Joseph Hunt, a soldier in the detachment, having been found absent from his post when stationed as a sentinel, was tried by a court-martial, and sentenced to receive seven hundred lashes; which sentence was put in execution upon him at two periods, with an interval of three weeks.

Toward the end of this month the detachment took possession of their barracks; two of which, having been nearly twelve months in hand, were now completed, and ready for their reception. A brick house, forty feet by thirteen, was begun on the east side for the commissary; and materials were preparing for a guard-house.

At Rose Hill the people were princ.i.p.ally employed in clearing and cultivating land; but the labour of removing the timber off the ground when cut down very much r.e.t.a.r.ded the best efforts of the people so employed. The military and convicts still lived under tents; and, as a proof of the small s.p.a.ce which they occupied, two Emus or Ca.s.sowaries, who must have been feeding in the neighbourhood, ran through the little camp, and were so intermingled with the people, who ran out of their tents at so strange an appearance, that it became dangerous to fire at them; and they got clear off, though literally surrounded by a mult.i.tude of people, and under the very muzzles of some of their muskets.

Very little molestation was at this time given by the natives; and had they never been ill treated by our people, instead of hostility, it is more than probable that an intercourse of friends.h.i.+p would have subsisted.

March.] The impracticability of keeping the convicts within the limits prescribed for them became every day more evident. Almost every month since our arrival had produced one or more accidents, occasioned princ.i.p.ally by a non-compliance with the orders which had been given solely with a view to their security; and which, with thinking beings, would have been of sufficient force as examples to deter others from running into the same danger. But neither orders nor dangers seemed to be at all regarded where their own temporary convenience prompted them to disobey the one, or run the risk of incurring the other. A convict belonging to the brick-maker's gang had strayed into the woods for the purpose of collecting sweet tea; an herb so called by the convicts, and which was in great estimation among them. The leaves of it being boiled, they obtained a beverage not unlike liquorice in taste, and which was recommended by some of the medical gentlemen here, as a powerful tonic.

It was discovered soon after our arrival, and was then found close to the settlement; but the great consumption had not rendered it scarce. It was supposed, that the convict in his search after this article had fallen in with a party of natives, who had killed him. A few days after this accident, a party of the convicts, sixteen in number, chiefly belonging to the brick-maker's gang, quitted the place of their employment, and, providing themselves with stakes, 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 at the close of the last month. 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 dependance was not placed on what they said in this respect, nor in their narrative of the affair; it was certain, however, that they were driven in by the natives, who killed one man and wounded six others. Immediately on this being known in the settlement, an armed party was sent out with an officer, who found the body of the man that had been killed, stripped, and lying in the path to Botany Bay. 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, after burying the body of the man, returned with the wounded boy, but without seeing any of the perpetrators of this mischief; the other wounded people had reached the settlement, and were taken to the hospital. The day following, 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; in pursuance of which order, seven of them were tied up in front of the provision store, and punished (for example's sake) in the presence of all the convicts.

The same day two armed parties were sent, one toward 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 us from moving beyond the settlement whenever occasion required.

Such were our enemies abroad: at home, within ourselves, we 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 overrun with rats. The safety of the provisions was an object of general consequence, and the commissary was for some time employed in examining into the state of the store. One morning, on going early to the store, he found the wards of a key which had been broken in the padlock that secured the princ.i.p.al door, and which it was the duty of the patrols to visit and inspect every night. Entering the storehouse, he perceived that an harness-cask had been opened and some provisions taken out. It being supposed that the wards of the key might lead to a discovery of the perpetrator of this atrocious act, they were sent to a convict blacksmith, an ingenious workman through whose hands most of the work pa.s.sed that was done in his line, who immediately knew them to belong to a soldier of the name of Hunt, the same who in the course of the preceding month received seven hundred lashes, and who had some time back brought the key to this blacksmith to be altered. On this information, Hunt was taken up; but offering to give some material information, he was admitted an evidence on the part of the crown, and made an ample confession before the lieutenant-governor and the judge-advocate, in which he accused six other soldiers of having been concerned with him in the diabolical practice of robbing the store for a considerable time past of liquor and provisions in large quant.i.ties. This crime, great enough of itself, was still aggravated by the manner in which it was committed. Having formed their party, seven in number, and sworn each other to secrecy and fidelity, they procured and altered keys to fit the different locks on the three doors of the provision store; and it was agreed, that whenever any one of the seven should be posted there as sentinel during the night, two or more of the gang, as they found it convenient, were to come during the hours in which they knew their a.s.sociate would have the store under his charge, when, by means of their keys, and sheltered in the security which he afforded them (by betraying in so flagrant a manner the trust and confidence reposed in him as a sentinel), they should open a pa.s.sage into the store, where they should remain shut up until they had procured as much liquor or provisions as they could take off. If the patrols visited the store while they chanced to be within its walls, the door was found locked and secure, the sentinel alert and vigilant on his post, and the store apparently safe.

Fortunately for the settlement, on the night preceding the discovery one of the party intended to have availed himself of his situation as sentinel, and to enter the store alone, purposing to plunder without the partic.i.p.ation of his a.s.sociates. But while he was standing with the key in the lock, he heard the patrol advancing. The key had done its office, but as he knew that the lock would be examined by the corporal, in his fright and haste to turn it back again, he mistook the way, and, finding that he could not get the key out of the lock, he broke it, and was compelled to leave the wards in it; the other part of the key he threw away.

On this information, the six soldiers whom he accused were taken up and tried; when, the evidence of the accomplice being confirmed by several strong corroborating circ.u.mstances, 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 owned they justly merited.

Their defence wholly consisted in accusing the accomplice of having been the first to propose and carry the plan into execution, and afterwards the first to accuse and ruin the people he had influenced to a.s.sociate with him. A crime of such magnitude called for a severe example; and the sentence was carried into execution a few days after their trial.

Some of these unhappy men were held in high estimation by their officers, but the others, together with the accomplice Hunt, had been long verging toward this melancholy end. Four of them had been tried for the death of their comrade Bulmore, which happened in a contest with one of them in November last; and their manner of conducting themselves at various times appeared to have been very reprehensible. The liquor which they procured from the store was the cause of drunkenness, which brought on affrays and disorders, for which, as soldiers, they were more than once punished. To these circ.u.mstances must be added (what perhaps must be considered as the root of these evils) a connexion which subsisted between them and some of the worst of the female convicts, at whose huts, notwithstanding the internal regulations of their quarters, they found means to enjoy their ill-acquired plunder.

On the morning of their execution, one of them declared to the clergyman who attended him, that the like practices had been carried on at the store at Rose Hill by similar means and with similar success. He named two soldiers and a convict as the persons concerned; these were afterwards apprehended, and underwent an examination of several hours by the lieutenant-governor and the judge-advocate, during which nothing being drawn from either that could affect the others, they were all discharged. It was, however, generally believed, that the soldier would not in his dying moments have falsely accused three men of a crime which they had never committed; and that nothing but their constancy to each other had prevented a discovery of their guilt.

While these transactions were pa.s.sing at Sydney, the little colony at Norfolk Island had been threatened with an insurrection. The _Supply_ returned from thence the 24th, after an absence of five weeks, and brought from Lieutenant King, the commandant, information of the following chimerical scheme. The capture of the island, and the subsequent escape of the captors, was to commence by the seizure of Mr.

King's person, which was intended to be effected on the first Sat.u.r.day after the arrival of any s.h.i.+p in the bay, except the _Sirius_. They had chosen that particular day in the week, as it had been for some time Mr.

King's custom on Sat.u.r.days to go to a farm which he had established at some little distance from the settlement, and the military generally chose that day to bring in the cabbage palm from the woods. Mr. King was to be secured in his way to his farm. A message, in the commandant's name, was then to be sent to Mr. Jamison, the surgeon, who was to be seized as soon as he got into the woods; and the sergeant and the party were to be treated in the same manner. These being all properly taken care of, a signal was to be made to the s.h.i.+p in the bay to send her boat on sh.o.r.e, the crew of which were to be made prisoners on their landing; and two or three of the insurgents were to go off in a boat belonging to the island, and inform the commanding officer that the s.h.i.+p's boat had been stove on the beach, and that the commandant requested another might be sent ash.o.r.e; this also was to be captured: and then, as the last act of this absurd scheme, the s.h.i.+p was to be taken, with which they were to proceed to Otaheite, and there establish a settlement. They charitably intended to leave some provisions for the commandant and his officers, and for such of the people as did not accompany them in their escape--this was their scheme. Not one difficulty in the execution of it ever occurred to their imagination: all was to happen with as much facility as it was planned; and, had it not been fortunately revealed to a seaman belonging to the _Sirius_, who lived with Mr. King as a gardener, by a female convict who cohabited with him, there was no doubt but that all these improbabilities would have been attempted.

On being made acquainted with these circ.u.mstances, the commandant took such measures as appeared to him necessary to defeat them; and several who were concerned in the scheme confessed the share which they were to have had in the execution of it. Mr. King had hitherto, from the peculiarity of his situation--secluded from society, and confined to a small speck in the vast ocean, with but a handful of people--drawn them round him, and treated them with the kind attentions which a good family meets with at the hands of a humane master; but he now saw them in their true colours, and one of his first steps, when peace was restored, was to clear the ground as far as possible round the settlement, that future villainy might not find a shelter in the woods for its transactions. To this truly providential circ.u.mstance, perhaps, many of the colonists afterwards were indebted for their lives.

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.

By four o'clock several pines of 180 and 200 feet in length, and from 20 to 30 feet in circ.u.mference, were blown down. From that hour until noon the gale increased to a dreadful hurricane, 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 depth in the earth. Those pines that were able to resist the wind bent their tops nearly to the ground; and nothing but horror and desolation everywhere presented itself. A very large live oak tree was blown on the granary, which it dashed to pieces, and stove a number of casks of flour; but happily, by the activity of the officers and free people, the flour, Indian corn, and stores, were in a short time collected, and removed to the commandant's house, with the loss only of about half a cask of flour, and some small stores. At noon the gale blew with the utmost violence, tearing up whole forests by the roots. At 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 forenoon 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. An acre of Indian corn which grew in the vale, and which would have been ripe in about three weeks, was totally destroyed*.

[* The direction of the hurricane was across the island from the South-east; and as its fury had blown down more trees than were found lying on the ground when Mr. King landed on it, he conjectured that it was not an annual visitant of the island. This conjecture seems now to be justified, as nothing of the kind has since occurred there.]

His people continued to be healthy, and the climate had not forfeited the good opinion he had formed of it. He acquainted the governor, that for his internal defence he had formed all the free people on the island into a militia, and that a military guard was mounted every night as a picket.

There were at this time victualled on the island sixteen free people, fifty-one male convicts, twenty-three female convicts, and four children.

The arrival of the _Supply_ with an account of these occurrences created a temporary variety in the conversation of the day; and a general satisfaction appeared when the little vessel that brought them dropped her anchor again in the cove. Lieutenant Ball, having lost an anchor at Norfolk Island, did not think it prudent to attempt to fall in with the shoal seen by the _Golden Grove_ stores.h.i.+p; his orders on that head being discretionary.

We now return to the transactions of the princ.i.p.al settlement. The person who was noticed in the occurrences of the last month as being employed at Rose Hill under the commissary, had been also entrusted with the direction of the convicts who were employed in clearing and cultivating ground at that place; but, being advanced in years, he was found inadequate to the task of managing and controlling the people who were under his care, the most of whom were always inventing plausible excuses for absence from labour, or for their neglect of it while under his eye.

He was therefore removed, and succeeded by a person who came out from England as a servant to the governor. This man joined to much agricultural knowledge a perfect idea of the labour to be required from, and that might he performed by the convicts; and his figure was calculated to make the idle and the worthless shrink if he came near them. He had hitherto been employed at the spot of ground which was cleared soon after our arrival at the adjoining cove, since distinguished by the name of Farm Cove, and which, from the natural poverty of the soil, was not capable of making an adequate return for the labour which had been expended on it. It was, however, still attended to, and the fences kept in repair; but there was not any intention of clearing more ground in that spot.

Toward the latter end of the month two of the birds distinguished in the colony by the name of Emus were brought in by some of the people employed to shoot for the officers. The weight of each was seventy pounds.

CHAPTER VII

Neutral Bay Smallpox among the natives Captain Hunter in the _Sirius_ returns with supplies from the Cape of Good Hope Middleton Island discovered Danger of wandering in the forests of an unknown country Convicts The King's birthday kept Convicts perform a play A reinforcement under Lieutenant Cresswell sent to Norfolk Island Governor Phillip makes an excursion of discovery Transactions Hawkesbury River discovered Progress at Rose Hill Important papers left behind in England

April.] The governor thinking it probable that foreign s.h.i.+ps might again visit this coast, and perhaps run into this harbour for the purpose of procuring refreshments, directed Mr. Blackburn to survey a large bay on the north sh.o.r.e, contiguous to this cove; and a sufficient depth of water being found, his excellency inserted in the port orders, that all foreign s.h.i.+ps coming into this harbour should anchor in this bay, which he named Neutral Bay, bringing Rock Island to bear SSE and the hospital on the west side of Sydney Cove to bear SW by W.

Early in the month, and throughout its continuance, the people whose business called them down the harbour daily reported, that they found, either in excavations of the rock, or lying upon the beaches and points of the different coves which they had been in, the bodies of many of the wretched natives of this country. The cause of this mortality remained unknown until a family was brought up, and the disorder p.r.o.nounced to have been the smallpox. It was not a desirable circ.u.mstance to introduce a disorder into the colony which was raging with such fatal violence among the natives of the country; but the saving the lives of any of these people was an object of no small importance, as the knowledge of our humanity, and the benefits which we might render them, would, it was hoped, do away the evil impressions they had received of us. Two elderly men, a boy, and a girl were brought up, and placed in a separate hut at the hospital. The men were too far overcome by the disease to get the better of it; but the children did well from the moment of their coming among us. From the native who resided with us we understood that many families had been swept off by this scourge, and that others, to avoid it, had fled into the interior parts of the country. Whether it had ever appeared among them before could not be discovered, either from him or from the children; but it was certain that they gave it a name (gal-gal-la); a circ.u.mstance which seemed to indicate a preacquaintance with it.

The convicts, among other public works, were now employed in forming a convenient road on the west side from the hospital and landing-place to the storehouses; and in constructing a stable at Farm Cove, with some convenient out-houses for stock.

May.] Of the native boy and girl who had been brought up in the last month, on their recovery from the smallpox, the latter was taken to live with the clergyman's wife, and the boy with Mr. White, the surgeon, to whom, for his attention during the cure, he seemed to be much attached.

While the eruptions of this disorder continued upon the children, a seaman belonging to the _Supply_, a native of North America, having been to see them, was seized with it, and soon after died; but its baneful effects were not experienced by any white person of the settlement, although there were several very young children in it at the time.

From the first hour of the introduction of the boy and girl into the settlement, it was feared that the native who had been so instrumental in bringing them in, and whose attention to them during their illness excited the admiration of every one that witnessed it, would be attacked by the same disorder; as on his person were found none of those traces of its ravages which are frequently left behind. It happened as the fears of every one predicted; he fell a victim to the disease in eight days after he was seized with it, to the great regret of every one who had witnessed how little of the savage was found in his manner, and how quickly he was subst.i.tuting in its place a docile, affable, and truly amiable deportment.

6th.] After an absence of seven months and six days, to the great satisfaction of every one, about five in the evening his Majesty's s.h.i.+p _Sirius_ anch.o.r.ed in the cove from the Cape of Good Hope. Captain Hunter sailed from this port on the 2nd of October 1788, and, during the s.p.a.ce which had elapsed between his departure and his return, had circ.u.mnavigated the globe. He made his pa.s.sage by Cape Horn, arriving on the 2nd of last January at the Cape of Good Hope, from which place he sailed on the 20th of the following month. Off the southern extremity of this country the _Sirius_ met with a gale of wind, when so close in with the land that it was for some time doubtful whether she would clear it.

In this gale she received considerable damage; the head of the s.h.i.+p, the figure of the Duke of Berwick, was torn from the cut.w.a.ter, and she was afterwards found to have been very much weakened.

The _Sirius_ brought 127,000 weight of flour for the settlement, and a twelvemonth's provisions for her s.h.i.+p's company; but this supply was not very flattering, as the short s.p.a.ce of four months, at a full ration, would exhaust it. It was, however, very welcome, and her return seemed to have gladdened every heart. Eager were our inquiries after intelligence from that country from which we had been now two years divided, and to whose transactions we were entire strangers. With joy, mingled with concern that we were not personal sharers in the triumph, did we hear of our country's successful efforts in the cause of the Stadtholder, and of the n.o.ble armaments which our ministers had fitted out to support it. We trusted, however, that while differently employed, our views were still directed to the same object; for, though labouring at a distance, and in an humbler scene, yet the good, the glory, and the aggrandizement of our country were prime considerations with us. And why should the colonists of New South Wales be denied the merit of endeavouring to promote them, by establis.h.i.+ng civilization in the savage world; by animating the children of idleness and vice to habits of laborious and honest industry; and by showing the world that to Englishmen no difficulties are insuperable?

We heard with concern that Lieutenant Shortland was near five months in reaching Batavia in the _Alexander_, in which s.h.i.+p he sailed from this port on the 14th of last July, in company with the _Friends.h.i.+p_, _Borrowdale_, and _Prince of Wales_. From this s.h.i.+p and the _Borrowdale_ he parted company very shortly after leaving our harbour; they proceeded round Cape Horn, to Rio de Janeiro, where in last December they were left lying ready for sea. The _Alexander_ and _Friends.h.i.+p_ proceeding to the northward kept company together as far as the island of Borneo, where, the crews of both s.h.i.+ps being so much reduced by the scurvy (the _Alexander_ had buried seventeen of her seamen) that it was impossible to navigate both vessels against the strong currents which they met with, and the western monsoon which had then set in, both s.h.i.+ps were brought to an anchor, and most of the _Friends.h.i.+p's_ stores, with all her people, being taken out and received on board the _Alexander_, she was scuttled and sunk. When the Alexander arrived at Batavia, she had, of both s.h.i.+p's crews, but one man who was able to go aloft.

Lieutenant Shortland, in his letter, noticed some discoveries which he had made; particularly one of an extensive and dangerous shoal, which obtained the name of Middleton Shoal, and was reckoned to be in the lat.i.tude of 29 degrees 20 minutes South, and in the longitude of 158 degrees 40 minutes East. He had also discovered an island, which he placed in the lat.i.tude of 28 degrees 10 minutes South, and in the longitude of 159 degrees 50 minutes East, and named Sir Charles Middleton Island: his other discoveries, not being so immediately in the vicinity of this territory, were not likely to be of any advantage to the settlement; but it was of some importance to it to learn that an extensive reef was so near, and to find its situation ascertained to be in the track of s.h.i.+ps bound from hence to the northward; for if Sir Charles Middleton Island should hereafter be found to possess a safe and convenient harbour, it might prove an interesting discovery for this colony.