nly two months), the one having got 54,
and the other 60 tons of spermaceti oil.

The _Eliza_ (more wisely) put into Botany Bay, to wood and water.
She, although much longer at seal had not been so successful, having got
only 45 tons of oil. The master of this ship stated, that he saw off the
NE part of New Caledonia a ship on shore upon a reef, the lower masts of
which were above water, and one of the tops was on the mast. The weather
was thick and hazy, and blew too fresh to allow him to send to examine
her; but a piece of a boat, which he took to be part of a whale boat,
floating near him, he judged the wreck to be that of a whaler. He also
fell in with a very dangerous and extensive shoal, lying NNW about 40
leagues from Sandy Cape, upon the coast of New South Wales. It was so
large, that, finding himself entered upon it, and unable to get back, it
took him from nine in the morning until six in the evening, going at the
rate of six knots (or miles) an hour, before he ran through it.

Thus already did the settlement and the public at large derive some
advantage from the fishing on the coast, by the discovery of this shoal.

There happened three deaths in this month which were out of the common
way: a woman at the Hawkesbury died of the bite of a snake; another woman
was drowned in attempting to land at Norfolk island; and on the 19th
died, very suddenly, Mr. Stephenson, the store-keeper at Sydney. As his
death was not exactly in the common way, so neither had been the latter
part of his life; indeed, all that part of it which he had passed in this
country; for, by an upright conduct, and a faithful discharge of the
duties of the office with which he had been entrusted, he secured to
himself the approbation of his superiors while living, and their good
name at his death.

Stephenson had been emancipated for his orderly behaviour, and to enable
him to execute the office of store-keeper.

The annual election of constables recurring about this time, the
magistrates were desired to be very particular in their selection of the
persons returned to them for that purpose; as there was reason to fear,
from the frequent escapes of prisoners from the different gaols, that the
constables had been tampered with, so shamefully to neglect their duty.

The wheat harvest being over, and the country, as happened generally at
this season of the year, every where on fire, those who were engaged in
farming were reminded of the necess