of his
island and his shoal, without seeing either, and therefore concluded,
that they had not been placed far enough to the northward. The error
might have lain in copying the account from his log-book into his letter.

From Norfolk Island Lieutenant King wrote, that he had cleared seventeen
acres of ground upon the public account, all of which were either sown or
ready for sowing; that caterpillars had done much damage to some wheat
which had just come up; and that he was erecting a storehouse capable of
containing a large quantity of stores and provisions, and had made a
visible road from Sydney Bay to Cascade Bay. The pine trees, of the
utility of which such sanguine hopes had been entertained, were found to
be unfit for large masts or yards, being shakey or rotten at thirty or
forty feet from the butt; the wood was so brittle that it would not make
a good oar, and so porous that the water soaked through the planks of a
boat which had been built of it. Mr. King also lamented their ignorance
of the proper mode of preparing the flax plant, which rendered it useless
to them. A single pod of cotton had been found on the island, and a tree
had been discovered, the bark of which was strong, and of a texture like
cotton. A species of bird also had been met with, which burrowed in the
ground, and had been seen in such numbers about the summit of Mount Pitt,
the highest hill on the island, that they were contemplated as a resource
in any future season of distress, should they be found to visit the
island at stated periods, and to deposit their eggs on it. Mr. King spoke
well of the general behaviour of the subjects of his little government
since the detection of their late scheme to overturn it.

From the frequent commission of offences in this settlement and at Rose
Hill, where scarcely a night passed but complaint was made on the
following morning of a garden being robbed, or a house broken into, so
favourable a report could not be given of the general conduct of the
people. The frequency of these enormities had become so striking, that it
appeared absolutely necessary to devise some plan which might put a stop
to an evil that was every day increasing. The convicts who were employed
in making bricks, living in huts by themselves on the spot where their
work was performed, were suspected of being the perpetrators of most of
the offences committed at Sydney; and orders had been given, forbidding,
under pain of punishment, th