seemed to have been attended with some effect; for
in a few days several idle people, who, being out of their time, were
employed only in wandering from one district to another, without any
visible means of getting their bread, were apprehended, and, being
examined before the sitting magistrate, were ordered to labour in the
gaol gang.

Still alarming depredations were nightly committed upon the live stock of
individuals, and were doubtless effected by those wandering pests to
society; the regulations which had long since been established as a check
to such an evil being wholly disregarded. It was discovered, that hogs
were stolen, and delivered on the victualling days at the public store,
without any enquiry being made, as to whose property they were, or by
whom delivered, any person's name which they chose to give in being
considered by the store-keeper as sufficient to authorise him to receive
it, although printed vouchers for the delivery of such pork (and grain
likewise) were left at the store, for the purpose of being signed by the
party offering it. This certainly operated as an encouragement to the
commission of these thefts; and it became necessary to order, that such
persons as attended the receipt of any of these articles at the store
should direct whoever delivered them to sign the voucher of the quantity
received by him, the governor being determined never to approve of any
bill laid before him for that purpose, unless the commissary should
produce the voucher, properly signed, by the person in whose name such
bill was made out.

About the middle of this month a general muster was made of all the
inhabitants in the different districts of the settlement; and the
governor, attending in person, collected from the settlers an accurate
state of their farms and grounds in cultivation. This he did with a view
of transmitting, in his next dispatches to Government, such an account of
these people as, from being taken under his immediate inspection, might
be depended upon. From the 14th to the 24th were taken up in this
enquiry, from the result of which it appeared that there were in the
district of the River Hawkesbury: 2544 and a half acres in wheat, 907
acres for maize; in the district of Parramatta: 1259 and a half acres in
wheat, 663 and a half acres for maize; in the Sydney districts: 538 and
a half acres in wheat, 365 and a half acres for maize; making a total of
4392 acres and a half in wheat, and 1436 acres