_Surprise_ a Mr. James Thompson, late
surgeon of the _Atlantic_ transport, but who now came in quality of
assistant-surgeon to the settlement; and William Baker, formerly here a
sergeant in the marine detachment, but now appointed a superintendant of
convicts.

A guard of an ensign and twenty-one privates of the New South Wales corps
were on board the transport. Six of these people were deserters from
other regiments brought from the Savoy; one of them, Joseph Draper, we
understood had been tried for mutiny (of an aggravated kind) at Quebec.

This mode of recruiting the regiment must have proved as disgusting to
the officers as it was detrimental to the interests of the settlement. If
the corps was raised for the purpose of protecting the civil
establishment, and of bringing a counterpoise to the vices and crimes
which might naturally be expected to exist among the convicts, it ought
to have been carefully formed from the best characters; instead of which
we now found a mutineer (a wretch who could deliberate with others, and
consent himself to be the chosen instrument of the destruction of his
sovereign's son) sent among us, to remain for life, perhaps, as a check
upon sedition, now added to the catalogue of our other imported vices.

This ship touched only at Rio de Janeiro, between which port and the
south-west cape of this country the winds which they met with very much
favoured, in the idea of Mr. Campbell the master, the opinion of a
passage being readily made to the Cape of Good Hope, or to India, round
by Van Dieman's Land.

Among other articles of information now received, we learned that
Governor Hunter, with the _Reliance_ and _Supply_, two ships intended to
be employed in procuring cattle for the colony, might be expected to
arrive in about three months. The governor was to bring out with him a
patent for establishing a court of criminal judicature at Norfolk Island.

The two natives in England were said to be in health, and anxious for the
governor's departure, as they were to accompany him. They had made but
little improvement in our language.

The _Surprise_ anchoring in the cove after dark, she saluted at sunrise
the following morning with fifteen guns.

A theft was committed in the course of the month in one of the out-houses
belonging to Government House, used as a regimental storeroom; the
articles stolen were fifteen shirts and seventeen pair of shoes. In
searching among the rocks and bushes f