try.

Among other articles now received were five pipes of port wine and a
quantity of rum, which were consigned to the governor for the purpose of
being sold to the officers of the civil and military establishments at
prime cost; and three thousand pounds of tobacco for the use of the
soldiers of the garrison and others.

The shameful impositions which had been practised by many who had brought
out articles for sale in the colony, and the advantage which had been
taken in too many instances of our necessities, had been properly stated
at home, and this measure had been adopted by Government for our
accommodation. The wine was immediately distributed; coming to the
officer, after every expense of wharfage, etc. at L19 10s per hogshead,
and the rum at five shillings per gallon. The tobacco was likely to
remain for some time undisposed of, as a quantity had been lately brought
into the settlement, and was selling at a lower price than could be taken
for that imported by this ship; and tobacco formed a material article of
the different investments in the _Britannia_.

With great pleasure we also found that Government, in consequence of the
representations of Governor Phillip, had directed a strong substantial
Russia duck to be substituted for the slight unserviceable Osnaburgs with
which the convicts had been hitherto supplied.

We learned by the _Bellona_, that his Majesty's ship _Gorgon_ arrived at
Spithead on the 19th of June last. In her passage, which she made by Cape
Horn, on the 18th of February last, being in the latitude of 51 degrees
30 minutes S and longitude 34 degrees 07 minutes W variation 13 degrees
37 minutes E she fell in with twenty-nine islands of ice. When the ship
reached within three or four miles of the first of these islands, they
observed one compact body, without the smallest appearance of any opening,
bearing from NNE to WNW and which with some difficulty, being embayed*,
they were enabled to clear, by hauling the ship from N to WSW. This was
done at ten in the forenoon; they did not reach the extreme western point
of the ice until five in the evening; and from the rate at which the ship
sailed, from her coming up with the first island of ice, until she cleared
the north-west point of the field abovementioned, it was computed that she
had run full twenty leagues.

[* When near this great body of ice, the thermometer was as low as
thirty-six degrees; and it rose from that point, as she drew of