with whom she parted between the Cape of Good Hope and this
place.

We had the mortification to learn, that the prisoners in this ship were
very unhealthy, upwards of one hundred being now in the sick list on
board. They had been very sickly also during the passage, and had buried
forty-two of these unfortunate people. A portable hospital had
fortunately been received by the _Justinian_, and there now appeared but
too great a probability that we should soon have patients enough to fill
it; for the signal was flying at the South Head for the other transports,
and we were led to expect them in as unhealthy a state as that which had
just arrived.

On the evening of Monday the 28th, the _Neptune_ and _Scarborough_
transports anchored off Garden Island, and were warped into the cove the
following morning.

We were not mistaken in our expectations of the state in which they might
arrive. By noon the following day, two hundred sick had been landed from
the different transports. The west side afforded a scene truly
distressing and miserable; upwards of thirty tents were pitched in front
of the hospital, the portable one not being yet put up; all of which, as
well as the hospital and the adjacent huts, were filled with people, many
of whom were labouring under the complicated diseases of scurvy and the
dysentery, and others in the last stage of either of those terrible
disorders, or yielding to the attacks of an infectious fever.

The appearance of those who did not require medical assistance was lean
and emaciated. Several of these miserable people died in the boats as
they were rowing on shore, or on the wharf as they were lifting out of
the boats; both the living and the dead exhibiting more horrid spectacles
than had ever been witnessed in this country. All this was to be
attributed to confinement, and that of the worst species, confinement in
a small space and in irons, not put on singly, but many of them chained
together. On board the _Scarborough_ a plan had been formed to take the
ship, which would certainly have been attempted, but for a discovery
which was fortunately made by one of the convicts (Samuel Burt) who had
too much principle left to enter into it. This necessarily, _on board
that ship_, occasioned much future circumspection; but Captain Marshall's
humanity considerably lessened the severity which the insurgents might
naturally have expected. On board the other ships, the masters, who had
the entire direc