colonial schooner sailed for the river, having
on board a mill, provisions, etc. for the settlers there. A military
guard was also ordered, the commanding officer of which was to introduce
some regulations among the settlers, and to prevent, by the effect of his
presence and authority, the commission of those enormities which
disgraced that settlement. For the reception of such quantity of the
Indian corn and wheat grown there this season as might be purchased by
government, a store-house was to be erected under the inspection of the
commissary; and Baker, the superintendant who arrived in the _Surprise_,
was sent out to take the charge of it when finished. The master of the
schooner was ordered, after discharging his cargo, to receive on board
Mr. Charles Grimes, the deputy surveyor-general, and proceed with him to
Port Stephens, for the purpose of examining that harbour.

About the middle of the month a convict, on entering the door of his hut,
was bit in the foot by a black snake; the effect was, an immediate
swelling of the foot, leg, and thigh, and a large tumour in the groin.
Mr. Thompson, the assistant-surgeon, was fortunately able to reduce all
these swellings by frequently bathing the parts in oil, and saved the
man's life without having recourse to amputation. While we lived in a
wood, and might naturally have expected to have been troubled with them,
snakes and other reptiles were by no means so often seen, as since, by
clearing and opening the country about us, the natives had not had
opportunities of setting the woods so frequently on fire. But now they
were often met in the different paths about the settlements, basking at
mid-day in the sunshine, and particularly after a shower of rain.

We heard and saw much of the natives about this time. At the Hawkesbury a
man had been wounded by some of the Wood tribe. Two women (natives) were
murdered not far from the town of Sydney during the night, and another
victim, a female of Pe-mul-wy's party (the man who killed McIntyre),
having been secured by the males of a tribe inimical to Pe-mul-wy,
dragged her into the woods, where they fatigued themselves with
exercising acts of cruelty and lust upon her.

The principal labour performed in January was preparing the ground for
wheat. The Indian corn looked every where remarkably well; it was now
ripening, and the settlers on the banks of the Hawkesbury supposed that
at least thirty thousand bushels of that grain would