the first instance by the settler, who
preferred disposing of his corn where he could receive spirits in payment
(which he retailed for labour) to bringing it to the commissary for five
shillings a bushel; but at this price, from whose hands soever it might
come, it was received into the public stores.

The _Britannia_ and _Francis_ schooner sailed on Sunday. the 8th for
Dusky Bay. The _Francis_ was manned with seamen and boys who had been
left here from ships, and the master had for his assistant as mate Robert
Watson, who formerly belonged to his Majesty's ship _Sirius_, and was
afterwards a settler at Norfolk Island; but his allotment having been
erroneously surveyed, he, being obliged to resign a part of it, gave up
the whole, and gladly returned to his former way of life. One of the
three seamen who had been taken out of the _Kitty_, and punished, was
permitted to enter on board the schooner; another of them was taken by
the captain of the _Boddingtons_; Williams, the principal, remained in
the colony, not bearing that sort of character which would recommend him
to any master of a ship.

Captain Nicholas Nepean, the senior captain in the New South Wales corps,
having been for some time past in an ill state of health, obtained the
lieutenant-governor's leave to return to England by the way of Bengal,
and quitted the colony in the _Britannia_. Three men and one woman also
received permission to leave the settlement.

It might have been supposed, that the fatal consequences of endeavouring
to seek a place in the woods of this country where they might live
without labour had been sufficiently felt by the convicts who arrived
here in the _Queen_ transport from Ireland, to deter others from rushing
into the same error, as they would, doubtless, acquaint the new comers
with the ill success which attended their schemes of that nature. Several
of those, however, who came out in the _Boddingtons_ went off into the
woods soon after their landing; and a small party, composed of some
desperate characters, about the same time stole a boat from Mr. Schaffer,
the settler, with which, as they were not heard of for some days after,
it was supposed they had either got out of the harbour, or were lying
concealed until, being joined by those who had taken to the woods, they
could procure a larger and a safer conveyance from the country.

A slight change took place in the ration this month; the sugar being
expended, molasses was ord