y may have been but a
short distance from the relief they must so earnestly have desired. A dog
that was known to have left the settlement with them reached Rose Hill,
almost famished, nine days after they had left it. The extreme danger
attendant on a man's going beyond the bounds of his own knowledge in the
forests of an unsettled country could no where be more demonstrable than
in this. To the westward was an immense open track before him, in which,
if unbefriended by either sun or moon, he might wander until life were at
an end. Most of the arms which extended into the country from Port
Jackson and the harbour on each side of Port Jackson, were of great
length, and to round them without a certain and daily supply of
provisions was impossible*.

[* In many of these arms, when sitting with my companions at my ease in a
boat, I have been struck with horror at the bare idea of being lost in
them; as, from the great similarity of one cove to another, the
recollection would be bewildered in attempting to determine any relative
situation. It is certain, that if destroyed by no other means, insanity
would accelerate the miserable end that must ensue.]

To guard as much as possible against these accidents every measure which
could be suggested was adopted. A short time after the settlement was
established at Rose Hill, the governor went out with some people in a
direction due South, and caused a visible path to be made; that if any
person who had strayed beyond his own marks for returning, and knew not
where he was, should cross upon his path, he might by following it have a
chance of reaching the settlement; and orders were repeatedly given to
prohibit straggling beyond the limits which were marked and known.

Toward the end of the month, some convicts having reported that they had
found the body of a white man lying in a cove at a short distance from
the settlement, a general muster of the convicts at Sydney was directed;
but no person was unaccounted for except Caesar, an incorrigibly stubborn
black, who had absconded a few days before from the service of one of the
officers, and taken to the woods with some provisions, an iron pot, and a
soldier's musket, which he had found means to steal.

Garden robberies, after Caesar's flight, were frequent, and some leads
belonging to a seine being stolen, a reward of a pardon was held out to
any of the accomplices on discovering the person who stole them; and the
like reward was