This was the first accident of the kind that, to our knowledge, had occurred in the colony, though lightning more vivid and alarming had often been seen in storms of longer duration.
While every one was expecting our colonial vessel, the Francis, from New Zealand. the signal for a sail was made on the 29th; and shortly after the Fairy, an American snow, anchored in the cove from Boston in New England, and last from the island of St. Paul, whence she had a passage of only four weeks. The master, Mr. Rogers, touched at False Bay; but from there not having been any recent arrivals from Europe, he procured no other intelligence at that port, than what we had already received. At the island of St. Paul he found five seamen who had been left there from a ship two years before, and who had procured several thousand seal-skins. They informed him, that Lord Macartney in his Majesty's ship the Lion, and the Hindostan East-Indiaman, had touched there in their way to China, and Mr. Rogers expected to have heard that his lordship had visited this settlement.
The Fairy was to proceed from this place to the north-west coast of America, where the master hoped to arrive the first for the fur market. Thence he was to go to China with his skins, and from China back to St. Paul, where he had left a mate and two sailors. Their success was to regulate his future voyages.
Mr. Rogers expressed a surprise that we had not any small craft on the coast, as he had observed a plentiful harvest of seals as he came along. He came in here merely to refresh, not having any thing on board for sale, his cargo consisting wholly of articles of traffic for the north-west coast of America.
Charles Williams, the settler so often mentioned in this narrative, wearied of being in a state of independence, sold his farm with the house, crop, and stock, for something less than one hundred pounds, to an officer of the New South Wales corps, Lieutenant Cummings, to whose allotment of twenty-five acres Williams's ground was contiguous. James Ruse also, the owner of Experiment farm, anxious to return to England, and disappointed in his present crop, which he had sown too late, sold his estate with the house and some stock (four goats and three sheep) for forty pounds. Both these people had to seek employment until they could get away; and Williams was condemned to work as a hireling upon the ground of which he had been the master. But he was a stranger to the feelings which would have rendered this circumstance disagreeable to him.
The allotment of thirty acres, late in the possession of James Richards, a settler at the Ponds, deceased, was put into the occupation of a private soldier of the New South Wales corps; and a grant of thirty acres at the Eastern Farms was purchased for as many pounds by another soldier.
The greatest inconvenience attending this transfer of landed property was the return of such a miscreant as Williams, and others of his description, to England, to be let loose again upon the public. The land itself came into the possession of people who were interested in making the most of it, and who would be more studious to raise plentiful crops for market.
Building and covering the new barrack, and bringing in timber for the new mill-house, which was not to be built of brick, formed the principal labour of this month at Sydney. The shipwrights were employed in putting up the frame of a long-boat purchased of the master of the Britannia, and repairing the hoy, which had been lying for some months useless for want of repairs, having been much injured by the destructive worm that was found in the waters of this cove.
At the other settlements the convicts were employed in planting the Indian corn. About four hundred and twenty acres were planted with that article for this season's crop.
November.] In the night of Thursday the 7th of November, the Francis schooner anchored in the cove from Dusky Bay in New Zealand; her long absence from this place (nearly nine weeks) having been occasioned by meeting with contrary and heavy gales of wind. The alteration which had been made in this vessel by rigging her as a schooner instead of a sloop, for which she was built, was found to have materially affected her sailing; for a schooner she was too short, and, for want of proper sail, she did not work well. Four times she was blown off the coast of New Zealand, the Britannia having anchored in Dusky Bay sixteen days before the Francis.