laced in the provision-store.

From the Hawkesbury were received accounts which corroborated the opinion
that the settlers there merited the attacks which were from time to time
made upon them by the natives. It was now said, that some of them had
seized a native boy, and, after tying him hand and foot, had dragged him
several times through a fire, or over a place covered with hot ashes,
until his back was dreadfully scorched, and in that state threw him into
the river, where they shot at and killed him. Such a report could not be
heard without being followed by the closest examination, when it appeared
that a boy had actually been shot when in the water, from a conviction of
his having been detached as a spy upon the settlers from a large body of
natives, and that he was returning to them with an account of their
weakness, there being only one musket to be found among several farms. No
person appearing to contradict this account, it was admitted as a truth;
but many still considered it as a tale invented to cover the true
circumstance, that a boy had been cruelly and wantonly murdered by them.

The presence of some person with authority was becoming absolutely
necessary among those settlers, who, finding themselves freed from
bondage, instantly conceived that they were above all restrictions; and,
being without any internal regulations, irregularities of the worst kind
might be expected to happen.

On the morning of the 25th a civil court was assembled, for the purpose
of investigating an action brought by one Joyce (a convict lately
emancipated) against Thomas Daveny, a free man and superintendant of
convicts at Toongabbie, for an assault; when the defendant, availing
himself of a mistake in his christian name, pleaded the misnomer. His
plea being admitted, the business was for that time got over, and before
another court could be assembled he had entered into a compromise with
the plaintiff, and nothing more was heard of it.

In the evening of the same day the _Surprise_ transport arrived from
England, whence she sailed on the 2nd of last May, having on board sixty
female and twenty-three male convicts, some stores and provisions, and
three settlers for this colony.

Among the prisoners were, Messrs. Muir, Palmer, Skirving, and Margarot,
four gentlemen lately convicted in Scotland of the crime of sedition,
considered as a public offence, and transported for the same to this
country.

We found also on board the