hey were instructed to lead them back when,
fatigued and exhausted with their journey over steep and rocky
mountains, through thick and extensive woods, and fording deep and rapid
rivers, they should feel disposed to abandon their journey. This plan
was no sooner settled than I received information that a party of these
miscreants had agreed with the four above-mentioned to meet them at a
certain place absolutely to murder the very persons intended to be their
guides, and to possess themselves of their arms and munitions and
provisions, in addition to what each was supplied with, and to take
their own route. These circumstances will, no doubt, appear to your
Grace wild and extravagant; but after having mentioned their ignorance
in the manner I have it may serve to convince your Grace that there are
improper persons in this colony who work upon that ignorance to a
dangerous degree. In consequence of the information of this design
against their guides, I ordered four soldiers to attend them to the foot
of the first mountain with orders how to act if any others attempted to
join them; none appeared, and the whole of them returned with the
soldiers, most completely sick of their journey.

Our flocks and our crops, my Lord, are all I feel any concern about;
strict, rigid, and just punishment shall constantly hang over these
delinquents, and this, I trust, they are already convinced of. I hope
the return of the above three, and the story they can tell, will serve
to make them more contented with their present lot, and open their eyes
to the comforts which in this country they may derive and enjoy, and
which are certainly superior to any they ever possessed in their own.

Strange as such instances of human ignorance and depravity are, I have
to inform your Grace that a small party of those very people, some short
time after, actually contrived to make their escape, and after
travelling for many weeks through the country, made shift to reach the
sea-coast, near Botany Bay, but in a part where no boat has ever been
seen. Providentially, however, a boat had lost her way in going to
George's River and found those unhappy deluded wretches, on a place
where they had been nine days, and where they must soon have perished
but for this miraculous event. They were brought back almost exhausted
from want of food, and from sad and powerful conviction have promised to
warn their countrymen against such wild excursions in future.

I will