screant as Williams, and others of his
description, to England, to be let loose again upon the public. The land
itself came into the possession of people who were interested in making
the most of it, and who would be more studious to raise plentiful crops
for market.

Building and covering the new barrack, and bringing in timber for the new
mill-house, which was not to be built of brick, formed the principal
labour of this month at Sydney. The shipwrights were employed in putting
up the frame of a long-boat purchased of the master of the _Britannia_,
and repairing the hoy, which had been lying for some months useless for
want of repairs, having been much injured by the destructive worm that
was found in the waters of this cove.

At the other settlements the convicts were employed in planting the
Indian corn. About four hundred and twenty acres were planted with that
article for this season's crop.

November.] In the night of Thursday the 7th of November, the _Francis_
schooner anchored in the cove from Dusky Bay in New Zealand; her long
absence from this place (nearly nine weeks) having been occasioned by
meeting with contrary and heavy gales of wind. The alteration which had
been made in this vessel by rigging her as a schooner instead of a sloop,
for which she was built, was found to have materially affected her
sailing; for a schooner she was too short, and, for want of proper sail,
she did not work well. Four times she was blown off the coast of New
Zealand, the _Britannia_ having anchored in Dusky Bay sixteen days before
the _Francis_.

Mr. Raven found in health and safety all the people whom he had left
there. They had procured him only four thousand five hundred seal-skins,
having been principally occupied in constructing a vessel to serve them
in the event of any accident happening to the _Britannia_. This they had
nearly completed when Mr. Raven arrived. She was calculated to measure
about sixty-five tons, and was chiefly built of the spruce fir, which
Mr. Raven stated to be the fittest wood he had observed there for
ship-building, and which might be procured in any quantity or of any
size. The carpenter of the _Britannia_, an ingenious man, and master of
his profession, compared it to English oak for durability and strength.

The natives had never molested the _Britannia's_ people: indeed they
seemed rather to abhor them; for if, by chance, in their excursions,
which were but very few, they visited and le