ered to be served in lieu of that article, in
the proportion of a pint of molasses to a pound of sugar.

On Sunday the 15th died James Nation, a soldier in the New South Wales
corps, into which he had entered from the marine detachment. He sunk
under an inflammatory complaint brought on by hard drinking. With this
person Martha Todd cohabited at the time of her decease, which, as before
related, was occasioned by the same circumstance, and which, together
with her death, Nation had been frequently heard to say was the cause of
much unhappiness to him.

On Tuesday the 17th the signal was made at the South Head, and about six
o'clock in the evening the _Sugar Cane_ transport anchored in the cove
from Cork, whence she sailed the 13th of last April, having on board one
hundred and ten male and fifty female convicts, with a sergeant's party
of the New South Wales corps as a guard. Nothing had happened on board
her until the 25th of May, when information was given to Mr. David Wake
Bell, the agent on the part of Government, that a mutiny was intended by
the convicts, and that they had proceeded so far as to saw off some of
their irons. Insinuations were at the same time thrown out, of the
probability of their being joined by certain of the sailors and of the
guard. The agent, after making the necessary inquiry, thought it
indispensable to the safety of the ship to cause an instant example to
be made, and ordered one of the convicts who was found out of irons to
be executed that night. Others he punished the next morning; and by
these measures, as might well be expected, threw such a damp on the
spirits of the rest, that he heard no more during the voyage of attempts
or intentions to take the ship.

Since the arrival of the _Boddingtons_ many circumstances respecting the
intended mutiny in that ship had been disclosed by the convicts
themselves which were not before known. They did not hesitate to say,
that all the officers were to have been murdered, the first* mate and the
agent excepted, who were to be preserved alive for the purpose of
conducting the ship to a port, when they likewise were to be put to
death.

[* Mr. Duncan McEver. He belonged to the _Atlantic_, which ship he
quitted at Bengal.]

As intentions of this kind had been talked of in several ships, the
military guard should never have been less than an officer's command, and
that guard (especially when embarked for the security of a ship full of
wild lawle