should touch at in India. About this time a boat
belonging to Mr. White was taken from its mooring; and it was for a time
supposed that she had been taken off by some runaways to get on board
one of the ships then about to sail, and afterwards set adrift; but she
was found by some gentlemen of the _Gorgon_ the day after their
departure, between this harbour and Broken Bay, with two men in her, who
on the appearance of the party which found her ran into the woods. The
gentlemen left her with a plank knocked out, an oar and the rudder
broken, and otherwise rendered useless to the people who ran away with
her. They also fell in with a convict, an Irishman, who had been absent
five weeks from Parramatta, and who had set off with some others to
proceed along the coast in search of another settlement. The boat was
brought up a few days afterwards.

Two of the whalers, the _Matilda_ and _Mary Ann_, came in from sea the
day on which the other ships sailed. The former landed a boat in a bay
on the coast about six miles to the southward of Port Stephens, where the
seine was hauled and a large quantity of fish taken; but of the fish
which they went to procure (whales) they saw none.

The _Mary Ann_ was rather more fortunate. By going to the southward, she
killed nine fish; of five of them she secured enough to procure about
thirty barrels of oil; but was prevented by bad weather from getting
more. These ships sailed again immediately, and both ran down the coast
as far to the southward as 36 degrees 30 minutes, and returned on the
16th without killing a fish. The masters attributed their bad success to
currents; and, giving up all hopes of a fishery here, they determined,
after refitting, to quit the coast. The _Salamander_ and _Britannia_
whalers came in at the same time, and with like ill fortune. Melvill the
master of the _Britannia_, who had been formerly so sanguine in his hopes
of a fishery, seemed now to have adopted a different opinion, and hinted
to some in the colony, that he did not think he should try the coast any
longer. It must be remarked however, that the whalers were not out of
port at any one time long enough to enable them to speak with any great
degree of precision either for or against the probability of success.
They seemed more desirous of obtaining a knowledge of the harbours on
the coast; the _William and Ann_ had been seen in Broken Bay; others had
visited Botany Bay and Jervis Bay; the _Salamander_ had