ad made proposals to government to be received in this
country as settlers, were to take their passage.

It was with great pleasure heard in the colony, that some steps had been
taken toward prosecuting Donald Trail, the master of the _Neptune_
transport, for his treatment of the convicts with which he sailed from
England for this settlement in the year 1790. The sickness and mortality
which prevailed among them excited a suspicion that they had been
improperly treated; and information upon oath was soon procured of many
acts of neglect, ill usage, and cruelty toward them.

In the consequence of the arrival of the _Britannia_, the commissary was
on the following day directed to issue, _until further orders_, the
following weekly ration, viz to each man 4 pounds of maize, 3 pounds of
soujee, 7 pounds of beef, or in lieu thereof 4 lbs. of pork, 3 pints of
peas or dholl, and 1/2 a pound of rice.

Two thirds of the man's ration was directed to be issued to each woman
and to every child above ten years of age; one half of the man's ration
to each child above two, and under ten years of age; and one fourth of
the man's ration to each child under two years of age.

Thus happily was the colony once more put upon something like a full
ration of provisions; a change in our situation that gave universal
satisfaction, as at the hour of the arrival of the _Britannia_ there were
in the public store only twenty-four days salt provisions for the
settlement at the ration then issued. A delay of a month in her voyage
would have placed the colony in a state that must have excited the
commiseration of its greatest enemies; a vast body of hard-working people
depending for their support upon one pound and a half of soujee, or bad
Bengal flour, four pounds of maize, one pound of rice, and one quart of
peas for one man per week, without one ounce of meat! But with this new
ration all entertained new hopes, and trusted that their future labours
would be crowned with success, and that the necessity of sending out
supplies from the mother country until the colony could support itself
without assistance would have become so evident from the frequency of our
distresses and the reduction of the ration, that the journalist would no
longer have occasion to fill his page with comparisons between what we
might have been and what we were; to lament the non arrival of supplies;
nor to paint the miseries and wretchedness which ensued; but might adopt
a