teen days. When Mr. Kent left the island, the lieutenant-governor
was dangerously ill with the gout in his stomach. We understood that
cultivation was nearly at a stand there. The grounds were so over-run
with two great enemies to agriculture, rats, and a pernicious weed called
cow-itch*, that the settlers despaired of ever being able to get rid of
either.

[* The Pruriens, a species of the Dolichos.]

A circumstance happened this month not less extraordinary and unexpected
than the discovery of the four convicts at Port Stephens.

The contests which had lately taken place very frequently in this town,
and the neighbourhood of it, among the natives, had been attended by many
of those people who inhabited the woods, and came from a great distance
inland. Some of the prisoners gathering from time to time rumours and
imperfect accounts of the existence of the cattle lost in 1788, two of
them, who were employed by some officers in shooting, resolved on
ascertaining the truth of these reports, and trying by different
excursions to discover the place of their retreat. On their return from
the first outset they made, which was subsequent to the governor's
arrival, they reported, that they had seen them. Being, however, at that
moment too much engaged in perfecting the civil regulations he had in
view for the settlement, the governor could not himself go to that part
of the country where they were said to have been found; but he detached
Henry Hacking, a man on whom he could depend. His report was so
satisfactory, that on the 18th the governor set off from Parramatta,
attended by a small party, when after travelling two days, in a direction
SSW from the settlement at Prospect Hill, he crossed the river named by
Mr. Phillip the Nepean; and, to his great surprise and satisfaction, fell
in with a very fine herd of cattle, upwards of forty in number, grazing
in a pleasant and apparently fertile pasturage. The day being far
advanced when he saw them, he rested for the night in their
neighbourhood, hoping in the morning to be gratified with a sight of the
whole herd. A doubt had been started of their being cattle produced from
what we had brought into the country from the Cape; and it was suggested
that they might be of longer standing. The governor thought this a
circumstance worth determining, and directed the attendants who were with
him (Hacking and the two men who had first found them) to endeavour in
the morning to get near e