the commissary on the public account at a fair market-price.

Toward the latter end of the month some villains broke into the
dispensary at the hospital, and stole two cases of portable soup, one
case of camomile flowers, and one case containing sudorific powder. These
articles had been placed in the dispensary on the very evening it was
broken into, to be sent to Parramatta the following morning. The cases
with the camomile and sudorific powder (which perhaps they had taken for
sugar or flour) were found at the back of the hill behind the hospital;
and, in order to discover the persons concerned in this theft, as well as
those who maimed the sawyer, as before related, a proclamation was
published, offering to any person or persons giving such information as
should convict the principal offenders, a free pardon for every offence
which he, she, or they might have committed since their arrival in this
country; and that a full ration of provisions should be issued to such
person or persons during the remainder of their respective terms of
transportation.

Several people died at Parramatta, some of whom were at labour,
apparently in health, and dead in twenty-four hours. An extraordinary
circumstance attended, though it was not the cause of the death of one
poor creature: while dragging with others at a brick cart he was seized
with a fainting fit, and when he recovered was laid down under a cart
which stood in the road, that he might be in the shade. Being weak and
ill, he fell asleep. On waking, and feeling something tight about his
neck, he put up his hand, when, to his amazement and horror, he grasped
the folds of a large snake which had twined itself round his neck. In
endeavouring to disengage it, the animal bit him by the lip, which became
instantly tumid. Two men, passing by, took off the snake and threw it on
the ground, when it erected itself and flew at one of them; but they soon
killed it. The man who had fainted at the cart died the next morning,
not, however, from any effect of the bite of the snake, but from a
general debility.

At Parramatta the public bakehouse was broken into, and robbed of a large
quantity of flour and biscuit. The robber had made his way down the
chimney of the house, and, though a man and woman slept in the place,
carried off his booty undiscovered.

The convicts having assembled there at the latter end of the last month
in an improper and tumultuous manner, the governor now thought