. The settlers
were not fed any better; and though they had an interest in working with
spirit, yet they always looked to be supplied from the public stores
beyond the time allowed them; and were consequently careless, indolent,
and poor: while the officer, from the hour he received his grant, applied
himself with activity to derive a benefit from it; and it was not too
much to say, that the independence of the colony was more likely to be
attained through their exertions, than by any other means. To encourage
them, therefore, was absolutely necessary to accelerate and promote the
prosperity of the colony.

One woman and six men, whose terms of transportation had expired, were
permitted to quit the colony in the _William_.

Some natives, who had observed the increasing number of the settlers on
the banks of the Hawkesbury, and had learned that we were solicitous to
discover other fresh-water rivers, for the purpose of forming
settlements, assured us, that at no very great distance from Botany Bay,
there was a river of fresh water which ran into the sea. As very little
of the coast to the southward was known, it was determined to send a
small party in that direction, with provisions for a few days, it not
being improbable that, in exploring the country, a river might be found
which had hitherto escaped the observation of ships running along the
coast.

Two people of sufficient judgment and discretion for the purpose being
found among the military, they set off from the south shore of Botany Bay
on the 14th, well armed, and furnished with provisions for a week. They
were accompanied by a young man, a native, as a guide, who professed a
knowledge of the country, and named the place where the fresh water would
be found to run. Great expectations were formed of this excursion, from
the confidence with which the native repeatedly asserted the existence of
a freshwater river; on the 20th, however, the party returned, with an
account, that the native had soon walked beyond his own knowledge of the
country, and trusted to them to bring him safe back; that having
penetrated about twenty miles to the southward of Botany Bay, they came
to a large inlet of the sea, which formed a small harbour; the head of
this they rounded, without discovering any river of fresh water near it.
The country they described as high and rocky in the neighbourhood of the
harbour, which, on afterwards looking into the chart, was supposed to be
somewher