ttalion, drew nigh. If I be allowed to speak
from my own feelings on the occasion, I will not say that we contemplated
its approach with mingled sensations: we hailed it with rapture and
exultation.

The 'Supply', ever the harbinger of welcome and glad tidings, proclaimed
by her own departure, that ours was at hand. On the 26th of November
she sailed for England. It was impossible to view our separation with
insensibility: the little ship which had so often agitated our hopes and
fears, which from long acquaintance we had learned to regard as part of
ourselves, whose doors of hospitality had been ever thrown open to relieve
our accumulated wants, and chase our solitary gloom!

In consequence of the offers made to the non-commissioned officers and
privates of the marine battalion to remain in the country as settlers or to
enter into the New South Wales corps, three corporals, one drummer and 59
privates accepted of grants of land, to settle at Norfolk Island and Rose
Hill. Of these men, several were undoubtedly possessed of sufficient skill
and industry, by the assistance of the pay which was due to them from the
date of their embarkation, in the beginning of the year 1787, to the day on
which they were discharged, to set out with reasonable hopes of being
able to procure a maintenance. But the only apparent reason to which the
behaviour of a majority of them could be ascribed was from infatuated
affection to female convicts, whose characters and habits of life, I am
sorry to say, promise from a connection neither honour nor tranquillity.

The narrative part of this work will, I conceive, be best brought to a
termination by a description of the existing state of the colony, as taken
by myself a few days previous to my embarkation in the Gorgon, to sail for
England.

December 2nd, 1791. Went up to Rose Hill. Public buildings here have not
greatly multiplied since my last survey. The storehouse and barrack have
been long completed; also apartments for the chaplain of the regiment, and
for the judge-advocate, in which last, criminal courts, when necessary, are
held; but these are petty erections. In a colony which contains only a few
hundred hovels built of twigs and mud, we feel consequential enough already
to talk of a treasury, an admiralty, a public library and many other
similar edifices, which are to form part of a magnificent square. The great
road from near the landing place to the governor's house is finished, an