An instance of sagacity in a dog occurred on the arrival of the Scarborough, too remarkable to pass unnoticed; Mr. Marshall, the master of the ship, on quitting Port Jackson in May 1788, left a Newfoundland dog with Mr. Clark (the agent on the part of the contractor, who remained in the colony), which he had brought from England. On the return of his old master, Hector swam off to the ship, and getting on board, recognised him, and manifested, in every manner suitable to his nature, his Joy at seeing him; nor could the animal be persuaded to quit him again, accompanying him always when he went on shore, and returning with him on board.
At a muster of the convicts which was directed during this month, one man only was unaccounted for, James Haydon. Soon after the muster was over, word was brought to the commissary, that his body had been found drowned in Long Cove, at the back of the settlement. Upon inquiry into the cause of his death, it appeared that he had a few days before stolen some tobacco out of an officer's garden in which he had been employed, and, being threatened with punishment, had absconded. He was considered as a well-behaved man; and if he preferred death to shame and punishment, which he had been heard to declare he did, and which his death seemed to confirm, he was deserving a better fate.
The total number of sick on the last day of the month was three hundred and forty-nine.
July.] The melancholy scenes which closed the last month appeared unchanged at the beginning of this. The morning generally opened with the attendants of the sick passing frequently backwards and forwards from the hospital to the burying-ground with the miserable victims of the night. Every exertion was made to get up the portable hospital; but, although we were informed that it had been put up in London in a very few hours, we did not complete it until the 7th, when it was instantly filled with patients. On the 13th, there were four hundred and eighty-eight persons under medical treatment at and about the hospital--a dreadful sick list!
Such of the convicts from the ships as were in a tolerable state of health, both male and female, were sent up to Rose Hill, to be employed in agriculture and other labours. A subaltern's detachment from the New South Wales corps was at the same time sent up for the military duty of that settlement in conjunction with the marine corps.
There also the governor in the course of the month laid down the lines of a regular town. The principal street was marked out to extend one mile, commencing near the landing-place, and running in a direction west, to the foot of the rising ground named Rose Hill, and in which his excellency purposed to erect a small house for his own residence whenever he should visit that settlement. On each side of this street, whose width was to be two hundred and five feet, huts were to be erected capable of containing ten persons each, and at the distance of sixty feet one from the other; and garden ground for each hut was allotted in the rear. As the huts were to be built of such combustible materials as wattles and plaster, and to be covered with thatch, the width of the street, and the distance they were placed from each other, operated as an useful precaution against fire; and by beginning on so wide a scale the inhabitants of the town at some future day would possess their own accommodations and comforts more readily, each upon his own allotment, than if crowded into a small space.
View of the Governor's house at Rose Hill in the township of Parramatta.
While these works were going on at Rose Hill, the labouring convicts at Sydney were employed in constructing a new brick storehouse, discharging the transports, and forming a road from the town to the brick-kilns, for the greater ease and expedition in bringing in bricks to the different buildings.