being the first time, since the establishment of the colony, that they had gone from the store without receiving either salted or fresh provisions. On the Monday following the military received,
Salt pork 2 pounds;
Indian corn 12 ditto (unground);
Peas 3 pints;
Rice 3 ditto;
Sugar 6 ounces.
This being the state of the stores, supplies were ardently to be desired. It was truly unfortunate, that Mr. Bampton had not been able to procure any salted provisions at Bombay, but in lieu thereof had brought us a quantity of rice. We now began to grow grain sufficient for our consumption from crop to crop, and grain that was at all times preferred to the imports from India. Dholl and rice were never well received by the prisoners as an equivalent for flour, particularly when peas formed a part of the ration; and it was to be lamented that a necessity ever existed, of forcing upon them such trash as they had from time to time been obliged to digest.
The effects of this ration soon appeared; several attacks were made on individuals; the house occupied by Mr. Muir was broken into, and all or nearly all that gentleman's property stolen; some of his wearing apparel was laid in his way the next day; but he still remained a considerable sufferer by the visit. Some private stock yards were attacked; but finding them too vigilantly watched, a fellow played off a trick that he thought would go down with the hungry; he stole a very fine greyhound, and instead of secretly employing him in procuring occasionally a fresh meal, he actually killed the dog, and sold it to different people in the town for kangaroo at nine-pence per pound. Being detected in this villainous traffic, he was severely punished.
A criminal court was assembled on the 20th for the trial of Mary Pawson, a settler's wife at the river, for the crime of arson. On the trial there was strong evidence of malice in the prisoner against the wife of the owner of the house; but not any that led directly to convict her of having set the house on fire. She was therefore acquitted; but the adjoining settlers disliking such a character in their neighbourhood, the husband, who had nothing against him but this wife, sold a very good farm which he possessed on a creek of the river, and withdrew to another situation, remote and less advantageous. At the same time a notorious offender, James Barry, was tried for attempting to break into a settler's house at the Ponds with an intent to steal, the proof of which was too clear to admit of his escape. He was sentenced to suffer one thousand lashes, and on the Saturday following received two hundred and seventy of them.
On the same day a civil court was held for the purpose of granting probate of the will of Thomas Daveney, late a superintendant of convicts, who died on the 3rd of the month. The cause of his death was extraordinary. He had been appointed a superintendant of the convicts employed in agriculture at Toongabbie by the late Governor Phillip, who, considering him trust-worthy, placed great confidence in him. Some time after Governor Phillip's departure, his conduct was represented to the lieutenant-governor in such a light, that he dismissed him from his situation, and he retired to a farm which he had at Toongabbie. He had been always addicted to the use of spirituous liquors; but he now applied himself more closely to them, to drown the recollection of his disgrace. In this vice he continued until the 3rd of May last, on which day he came to Sydney in a state of insanity. He went to the house of a friend in the town, determined, as it seemed, to destroy himself, for he there drank, unknown to the people of the house, as fast as he could swallow, nearly half a gallon of Cape brandy. He fell directly upon the floor of the room he was in (which happened to be of brick); where the people, thinking nothing worse than intoxication ailed him, suffered him to lie for ten or twelve hours; in consequence he was seized with a violent inflammation which broke out on the arm, and that part of the body which lay next the ground; to this, after suppuration had taken place, and several operations had been performed to extract the pus, a mortification succeeded, and at last carried him off on the 3rd of July. A few hours before his death he requested to see the ludge-advocate, to whom he declared, that it had been told him that he had been suspected of having improperly and tyrannically abused the confidence which he had enjoyed under Governor Phillip; but that he could safely declare as he was shortly to appear before the last tribunal, that nothing lay on his conscience which could make his last moments in this life painful. At his own request he was interred in the burying ground at Parramatta. He had been advancing his means pretty rapidly; for, after his decease, his stock of goats, consisting of eighty-six males and females, sold by public auction for three hundred and fifty-seven pounds fifteen shillings. He left a widow (formerly Catharine Hounson) who had for several years been deranged in her intellects.
In addition to the superintendant, there died in this month a woman, Jane Forbes, the wife of Butler, a settler at Prospect Hill, who fell into the fire while preparing their breakfast, and received such injury that she shortly after expired.
August.] From the scantiness of salted provisions, the article salt was become as scarce. There came out in the Surprise, as a settler, a person of the name of Boston. Among other useful knowledge* which we were given to understand he possessed, he at this time offered his skill in making salt from sea-water. As it was much wanted, his offers were accepted, and, an eligible spot at Bennillong's Point (as the east point of the cove had long been named) being chosen, he began his operations, for which he had seven men allowed him, whose labour, however, only produced three or four bushels of salt in more than as many weeks.
[* Having been sent out by government to supply us with salted fish, he had some time before offered to procure and salt fish for the settlement; but he required boats and men, and more assistance than it was possible to supply. He proposed to try Broken Bay.]
His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales's birthday was duly noticed. At one o'clock the Endeavour fired twenty-one guns.