The detachment from the New South Wales corps, consisting of one captain, three subalterns, and a proportionate number of non-commissioned officers and privates, was immediately disembarked, and room being made in the marine barracks, they took possession of the quarters allotted for them.

Lieutenant Shapcote, the naval agent on board the Neptune, died between the Cape of Good Hope and this place.  A son of this gentleman arrived in the Justinian, to which ship he belonged, and received the first account of his father’s death, on going aboard the Neptune to congratulate him on his arrival.

An instance of sagacity in a dog occurred on the arrival of the Scarborough, too remarkable to pass unnoticed; Mr. Marshall, the master of the ship, on quitting Port Jackson in May 1788, left a Newfoundland dog with Mr. Clark (the agent on the part of the contractor, who remained in the colony), which he had brought from England.  On the return of his old master, Hector swam off to the ship, and getting on board, recognised him, and manifested, in every manner suitable to his nature, his Joy at seeing him; nor could the animal be persuaded to quit him again, accompanying him always when he went on shore, and returning with him on board.

At a muster of the convicts which was directed during this month, one man only was unaccounted for, James Haydon.  Soon after the muster was over, word was brought to the commissary, that his body had been found drowned in Long Cove, at the back of the settlement.  Upon inquiry into the cause of his death, it appeared that he had a few days before stolen some tobacco out of an officer’s garden in which he had been employed, and, being threatened with punishment, had absconded.  He was considered as a well-behaved man; and if he preferred death to shame and punishment, which he had been heard to declare he did, and which his death seemed to confirm, he was deserving a better fate.

The total number of sick on the last day of the month was three hundred and forty-nine.

July.] The melancholy scenes which closed the last month appeared unchanged at the beginning of this.  The morning generally opened with the attendants of the sick passing frequently backwards and forwards from the hospital to the burying-ground with the miserable victims of the night.  Every exertion was made to get up the portable hospital; but, although we were informed that it had been put up in London in a very few hours, we did not complete it until the 7th, when it was instantly filled with patients.  On the 13th, there were four hundred and eighty-eight persons under medical treatment at and about the hospital—­a dreadful sick list!

Such of the convicts from the ships as were in a tolerable state of health, both male and female, were sent up to Rose Hill, to be employed in agriculture and other labours.  A subaltern’s detachment from the New South Wales corps was at the same time sent up for the military duty of that settlement in conjunction with the marine corps.