d the opportunity of some festivity on board of the _Britannia_,
then nearly ready for sea, and taken half a barrel of powder out of the
gun-room, about nine o'clock at night. Proof however was not brought home
to him; although many circumstances induced every one to suppose he was
the guilty person.

This month was fixed for beginning the new barracks. For the private
soldiers there were to be five buildings, each one hundred feet by
twenty-four in front, and connected by a slight brick wall. At each end
were to be two apartments for officers, seventy-five feet by eighteen;
each apartment containing four rooms for their accommodation, with a
passage of sixteen feet. Of these barracks, one at each end was to be
constructed at right angles with the front, forming a wing to the centre
buildings. Kitchens were to be built, with other convenient offices, in
the rear, and garden ground was to be laid out at the back. Their
situation promised to be healthy, and it was certainly pleasant, being
nearly on the summit of the high ground at the head of the cove,
overlooking the town of Sydney, and the shipping in the cove, and
commanding a view down the harbour, as well of the fine piece of water
forming Long Cove, as that branching off to the westward at the back of
the lieutenant governor's farm.

The foundation of one of the buildings designed for an officer's barrack
having been dug, and all the necessary materials brought together on the
spot, the walls of it were got up, and the whole building roofed and
covered in, in eleven days.

Their situation being directly in the neighbourhood of the ground
appropriated to the burial of the dead, it became necessary to choose
another spot for the latter purpose; and the governor, in company with
the Rev. Mr. Johnson, set apart the ground formerly cultivated by the
late Captain Shea of the marines.

Several thefts were committed at Sydney and at Parramatta, from which
latter place three male convicts absconded, taking with them the
provisions of their huts, intending, it was supposed, to get on board the
_Britannia_. Rewards being offered, some of them were taken in the woods.
It had been found, that the masters of ships would give passages to such
people as could afford to pay them from ten to twenty pounds for the
same, and the perpetrators of some of the thefts which were committed
appeared to have had that circumstance in view, as one or two huts, whose
proprietors were well kn