rioted upon the Indian corn which was growing, and did considerable
mischief

The presence of a captain being no longer deemed necessary at Rose Hill,
the military guard there for the protection of the stores was reduced to
a subaltern officer, and a proportionate number of privates. Mr. Dodd,
who had for some time been authorized by the governor to inflict corporal
punishment on the convicts for idleness, rioting, or other misdemeanors,
had obtained such an influence over them, that military coercion was not
so necessary as when the settlement was first established. Of this
person, the officers who had been on duty at Rose Hill from time to time
gave the most favourable reports, speaking of him as one in every respect
qualified to execute the trust which had been reposed in him by the
governor.

During this month a gang of convicts were employed at Sydney in forming a
convenient road from the hospital to the magazine and observatory on the
point; and a small hut, for the reception of a corporal's guard at the
hospital, was erected.

Of the few people who died in October, (one soldier, three women, and one
child), one was an unhappy woman who had been sent on board in a state of
insanity, and who had remained in that condition until the day of her
death; she and another of the three women died in child-bed; and the
soldier was carried off by a disorder which he brought with him into the
country. These circumstances tended to establish the good opinion
which was at first formed of the salubrity of the climate of New South
Wales.

November.] This month opened with a serious, but prudent and necessary
alteration in our provisions. The ration which had hitherto been issued
was, on the first of the month, reduced to two thirds of every species,
spirits excepted, which continued as usual. This measure was calculated
to guard against accidents; and the necessity of it was obvious to every
one, from the great uncertainty as to the time when a supply might arrive
from England, and from the losses which had been and still were
occasioned by rats in the provision store. Two years provisions were
landed with us in the colony: we had been within two months of that time
disembarked, and the public store had been aided only by a small surplus
of the provisions which remained of what had been furnished by the
contractor for the passage, and the supply of four months flour which had
been received by the _Sirius_ from the Cape of Goo