e transaction, treating with equal
indifference both promises of rewards and threats of punishment. Crow,
who was executed in December last, declared a short time before he
suffered, that he had been shown the watches by Bevan in the corn ground
between Parramatta and Toongabbie; but as they had never been found in
his possession, he resolved on obstinately persisting in the declaration
that, however guilty of others, he was at least innocent of this offence;
and he thus escaped this time from justice, to be led, perhaps at no very
distant period, if not sufficiently warned, with surer step to the
gallows that he had so often merited, and in the high road to which he
seemed daily to be walking.

On the 12th the _Francis_ returned from Norfolk Island, having been
absent five weeks and three days.

The information received from that settlement was, that the _Shah
Hormuzear_ and _Chesterfield_ arrived there from this place, on the 2nd
day of May last, when, every article of stores and provisions which had
been put on board of them being safely landed, both ships sailed for
India on the 27th day of the same month; Captain Bampton purposing to
attempt making the passage between New Holland and New Guinea, that was
expected to be found to the northward of Endeavor Straits.

While these ships were off Lord Howe Island, they experienced a heavy
gale of wind, in which the _Shah Hormuzear_ lost her topmasts, and the
_Chesterfield_ was in much danger from a leak which she sprung. Captain
Bampton having, in some bad weather off Norfolk Island, lost his
long-boat, he, with the assistance given him by Lieutenant-governor King,
built, in ten days, a very fine one of thirty-two feet keel, with which
he sailed, and without which it would not have been quite safe for him to
have proceeded on a voyage where much of the navigation lay among islands
and shoals, and where part of it had certainly been unexplored.

Mr. King had the satisfaction of stating, that his crops had been
abundant, plenty reigning among all descriptions of people in the island.
His wheat was cut, the first of it on the 25th of November last, and the
harvest was well got in by Christmas Day. About two thousand bushels were
the calculated produce of this crop, which would have been greater had it
not, during its growth, been hurt by the want of rain. Of the maize, the
first crop (having always two) was gathering while the schooner was
there, and, notwithstanding the