r presenting to the reader; it affords a melancholy proof, that
not the ignorant and untaught only have provoked the justice of their
country to banish them to this remote region.

Sydney Cove, Port Jackson,

New South Wales, 24th June, 1788.

"My dear and honoured mother!

"With a heart oppressed by the keenest sense of anguish, and too much
agitated by the idea of my very melancholy condition, to express my own
sentiments, I have prevailed on the goodness of a commiserating friend,
to do me the last sad office of acquainting you with the dreadful fate
that awaits me.

"My dear mother! with what agony of soul do I dedicate the few
last moments of my life, to bid you an eternal adieu! my doom being
irrevocably fixed, and ere this hour to-morrow I shall have quitted this
vale of wretchedness, to enter into an unknown and endless eternity. I
will not distress your tender maternal feelings by any long comment on
the cause of my present misfortune. Let it therefore suffice to say,
that impelled by that strong propensity to evil, which neither the
virtuous precepts nor example of the best of parents could eradicate, I
have at length fallen an unhappy, though just, victim to my own follies.

"Too late I regret my inattention to your admonitions, and feel myself
sensibly affected by the remembrance of the many anxious moments you
have passed on my account. For these, and all my other transgressions,
however great, I supplicate the Divine forgiveness; and encouraged by
the promises of that Saviour who died for us all, I trust to receive
that mercy in the world to come, which my offences have deprived me of
all hope, or expectation of, in this. The affliction which this will
cost you, I hope the Almighty will enable you to bear. Banish from your
memory all my former indiscretions, and let the cheering hope of a happy
meeting hereafter, console you for my loss. Sincerely penitent for my
sins; sensible of the justice of my conviction and sentence, and firmly
relying on the merits of a Blessed Redeemer, I am at perfect peace with
all mankind, and trust I shall yet experience that peace, which this
world cannot give. Commend my soul to the Divine mercy. I bid you an
eternal farewell.

"Your unhappy dying Son,

"SAMUEL PEYTON."

After this nothing occurred with which I think it necessary to trouble
the reader. The contents of the following chapters could not, I
conceive, be so properly interwoven in the body of the wor