be raised among them.

Several native boys, from eight to fourteen years of age, were at this
time living among the settlers in the different districts. They were
found capable of being made extremely useful; they went cheerfully into
the fields to labour, and the elder ones with ease hoed in a few hours a
greater quantity of ground than that generally assigned to a convict for
a day's work. Some of these were allowed a ration of provisions from the
public stores.

In consequence of the heavy rains, the river at the Hawkesbury rose many
feet higher than it had been known to rise in other rains, by which
several settlers were sufferers. At Toongabbie the wheat belonging to
government was considerably injured. At Parramatta the damage was
extensive; the bridge over the creek, which had been very well
constructed, was entirely swept away; and the boats with their moorings
carried down the river. At Sydney some chimneys in the new barracks
fell in.

Mr. Jones, the quarter-master sergeant of the New South Wales corps, a
person of much respectability, and whose general demeanor indicated an
education far beyond what is met with in the sphere of life in which he
moved, died this month.

A convict lad, in the service of Mr. William Smith the store-keeper, died
on the 26th, having swallowed arsenic. It was remarkable in his untimely
end, that he himself placed the poison with a view of destroying the rats
with which the house was infested, and was particularly cautioned against
it. How he came, after that, to take it himself, was not to be accounted
for.

February.] Early in February, the storehouse at the Hawkesbury being
completed, the provisions which had been sent round in the schooner were
landed and put under the care of Baker. Some officers who had made an
excursion to that settlement, with a view of selecting eligible spots for
farms, on their return spoke highly of the corn which they saw growing
there, and of the picturesque appearance of many of the settlers' farms.
The settlers told them, that in general their grounds which had been in
wheat had produced from thirty to thirty-six bushels an acre; that they
found one bushel (or on some spots five pecks) of seed sufficient to sow
an acre; and that, if sown as early as the month of April or May, they
imagined the ground would produce a second crop, and the season be not
too far advanced to ripen it. Their kitchen gardens were plentifully
stocked with vegetables.