e first
Sunday after his arrival, preaching to the military in a barrack prepared
for the occasion in the forenoon, and to the convicts at the church
erected by Mr. Johnson in the afternoon.

On the day when the _William_ anchored in the cove Buffin's new mill was
completed and set to work; and Wilkinson' s was in some forwardness. At
first it went rather heavily; but in a few days, with nine men's labour,
it ground sixty-three pounds of wheat in seventeen minutes. It must be
observed, that not any mill was yet erected in the colony whereat corn
was ground for the public, the military as well as the convicts grinding
their own grain themselves. Whenever wind or water-mills should be
erected, this labour would be saved, and the allowance of wheat or Indian
corn be issued ground and dressed.

The late distress of the colony was not found to have made any amendment
in the morals of the convicts. Gaming still prevailed among them in its
fullest extent; and a theft which was committed at one of these meetings
showed how far it was carried. Among those who made a daily practice of
gaming was one who, in his situation as an overseer, had given such
offence to some of his fellow-prisoners, that a plan was formed to
plunder him the first time that he should have a sum worthy of their
attention. He was accordingly surrounded when engaged at play, by a party
who, watching their opportunity, rushed upon him when he had won a stake
of five-and-twenty dollars, and, in the confusion that ensued, secured
the whole. He was, however, fortunate enough to seize one of them, with
ten of the dollars in his hand, but was not able to recover any more. The
man whom he secured proved to be Samuel Wright, who in the month of July
last had been reprieved at the foot of the gallows; so soon had he
forgotten the terror of that moment. On this circumstance being reported
to the lieutenant-governor, Wright received an immediate corporal
punishment.

McKoy, the overseer, confessed that gaming had been for many years his
profession and subsistence, though born of honest and reputable parents;
and he acknowledged, that but for his pursuit of that vice he should
never have visited this country in the situation of a convict.

A better principle showed itself shortly after in Ca-ru-ey, a native
youth, who, from long residence among us, had contracted some of our
distinctions between good and ill. Being fishing one morning in his canoe
near the lieutenan