Bennillong, after appointing several days to visit the governor, came at last on the 8th, attended by three of his companions.  The welcome reception they met with from every one who saw them inspired the strangers with such a confidence in us, that the visit was soon repeated; and at length Bennillong solicited the governor to build him a hut at the extremity of the eastern point of the cove.  This the governor, who was very desirous of preserving the friendly intercourse which seemed to have taken place, readily promised, and gave the necessary directions for its being built.

19th.] While we were thus amusing ourselves with these children of ignorance, the signal for a sail was made at the South Head, and shortly after the Supply anchored in the cove from Batavia, having been absent from the settlement six months and two days.  Lieutenant Ball arrived at Batavia on the 6th of July last, where he hired a vessel, a Dutch snow, which was to sail shortly after him with the provisions that he had purchased for the colony.  While the Supply lay at Batavia the season was more unhealthy than had ever been known before; every hospital was full, and several hundreds of the inhabitants had died.  Lieutenant Ball, at this grave of Europeans, buried Lieutenant Newton Fowell, Mr. Ross the gunner, and several of his seamen.  He tried for some days to touch at Norfolk Island, but ineffectually, being prevented by easterly winds.  Mr. King and Mr. Miller (the late commissary) had sailed on the 4th of last August in a Dutch packet for Europe.

By the return of this vessel several comforts were introduced into the settlement; her commander, with that attention to the wants of the different officers which always characterised him, having procured and taken on board their respective investments.

In his passage to Batavia, Lieutenant Ball saw some islands, to which, conjecturing, from not finding them in any charts which he had on board, that he might claim being the discoverer of them, he gave names accordingly.  Although anxious to make an expeditious passage, he had the mortification to be baffled by contrary winds both to and from Batavia; and at that settlement, instead of finding the governor-general (to whom in his orders he was directed to apply for permission to purchase provisions, and for a ship to bring them) ready to forward the service he came on, which he represented as requiring the utmost expedition, he was referred to the Sabandhaar, Mr. N. Engelhard, who, after much delay and pretence of difficulty in procuring a vessel, produced one, a snow, which they estimated at three hundred and fifty tons burden, and demanded to be paid for at the rate of eighty rix dollars for every ton freight, amounting together to twenty-eight thousand rix dollars, each rix dollar being computed at forty-eight Dutch pennies; and the freight was to be paid although the vessel should be lost on the passage.