The presence of a captain being no longer deemed necessary at Rose Hill, the military guard there for the protection of the stores was reduced to a subaltern officer, and a proportionate number of privates.  Mr. Dodd, who had for some time been authorized by the governor to inflict corporal punishment on the convicts for idleness, rioting, or other misdemeanors, had obtained such an influence over them, that military coercion was not so necessary as when the settlement was first established.  Of this person, the officers who had been on duty at Rose Hill from time to time gave the most favourable reports, speaking of him as one in every respect qualified to execute the trust which had been reposed in him by the governor.

During this month a gang of convicts were employed at Sydney in forming a convenient road from the hospital to the magazine and observatory on the point; and a small hut, for the reception of a corporal’s guard at the hospital, was erected.

Of the few people who died in October, (one soldier, three women, and one child), one was an unhappy woman who had been sent on board in a state of insanity, and who had remained in that condition until the day of her death; she and another of the three women died in child-bed; and the soldier was carried off by a disorder which he brought with him into the country.  These circumstances tended to establish the good opinion which was at first formed of the salubrity of the climate of New South Wales.

November.] This month opened with a serious, but prudent and necessary alteration in our provisions.  The ration which had hitherto been issued was, on the first of the month, reduced to two thirds of every species, spirits excepted, which continued as usual.  This measure was calculated to guard against accidents; and the necessity of it was obvious to every one, from the great uncertainty as to the time when a supply might arrive from England, and from the losses which had been and still were occasioned by rats in the provision store.  Two years provisions were landed with us in the colony:  we had been within two months of that time disembarked, and the public store had been aided only by a small surplus of the provisions which remained of what had been furnished by the contractor for the passage, and the supply of four months flour which had been received by the Sirius from the Cape of Good Hope.  All this did not produce such an abundance as would justify any longer continuance of the full ration; and although it was reasonable to suppose, as we had not hitherto received any supplies, that ships would arrive before our present stock was exhausted; yet, if the period of distress should ever arrive, the consciousness that we had early foreseen and strove to guard against its arrival would certainly soften the bitterness of our reflections; and, guarding thus against the worst, that worst providentially might never happen.  The governor, whose humanity