kinds went on slowly; the servants of
government being but few in proportion to the labour to be performed by
them, and all kinds of implements bad in quality, and scarce. A few slops
were served to the male convicts in the beginning of this month, they
being nearly naked, and the store unable to supply them with covering.

The tower of the new wind-mill was, under all these disadvantages,
completed, and the machinery put in hand. This tower was of large
dimensions, being 30 feet in height, and erected on a rock which was
considerably higher than the surrounding ground. The wheel was four feet
in thickness, and the diameter within was 20 feet.

There was very little intermission of rain, thunder, and lightning,
during the whole of the month.

April.] This month opened with a necessary act of justice. Five men were
capitally convicted, before the court of criminal judicature, of seizing
two boats, the property of individuals, with an intent of escaping from
the colony. One man was capitally convicted of a robbery; three were
transported to Norfolk Island for 14 years; one for 7; one was adjudged
corporal punishment, and one acquitted.

Two of the five that were condemned for seizing the boats suffered death
at Sydney, after a week's preparation for that awful moment. Their
companions were respited at the place of execution. They were all
extremely penitent, confessed the justice of their sentence, and
acknowledged how much mischief they had done, and how much more they
meditated, had they not been overtaken by justice.

One man, for robbery, was executed at Parramatta, George Mitton, who
certainly was a very fit subject for an example. He had been twice
pardoned when under sentence of death; once in Ireland; and once in this
country, by the present governor, for an offence similar to that for
which he now suffered.

These melancholy instances, had they been properly attended to, must have
shown to the convicts not only the difficulty which accompanied every
attempt to escape privately from the colony, and the danger to which
those who made the trial exposed themselves, but the certainty of meeting
that punishment which the various crimes that they committed on such
occasions so highly merited. The governor, in an order which he now
published, was desirous of calling back to the recollection of these
misguided people, who had been, either through ignorance, or through the
profligacy of their dispositions, so readil