August.] On Monday, the 1st of August, the Matilda, the first of the expected fleet of transports, arrived, after an extraordinary passage of four months and five days, from Portsmouth; having sailed from thence on the 27th day of March last, with four sail of transports for this place, with whom she parted company that night off Dunnoze.  Another division of transports had sailed a week before from Plymouth Sound.  On board the Matilda were two hundred and five male convicts, one ensign, one. sergeant, one corporal, one drummer, and nineteen privates, of the New South Wales corps; and some stores and provisions calculated as a supply for the above number for nine months after their arrival.

The master of this ship anchored for two days in a bay of one of Schoeten’s Islands, distant from the main land about twelve miles, in the latitude of 42 degrees 15 minutes S.:  where, according to his report, five or six ships might find shelter.  Those who were on shore saw the footsteps of different kinds of animals, and traces of natives, such as huts, fires, broken spears, and the instrument which they use for throwing the spear.  They spoke of the soil as sandy, and observed that the ground was covered with shrubs such as were to be found here.

The convicts in this ship, on their landing, appeared to be aged and infirm, the state in which they were said to have been embarked.  It was not therefore to be wondered at, that they had buried twenty-five on the passage.  One soldier also died.  Twenty were brought in sick, and were immediately landed at the hospital.

It was intended by the governor that this ship should have proceeded immediately to Norfolk Island with the greater part of the convicts she had on board, together with all the stores and provisions; but the master, Mr. Matthew Weatherhead, requesting that as the ship was very leaky the Mary Ann might be permitted to perform the service required, instead of the Matilda (both ships belonging to the same owners), and the Mary Ann being perfectly ready for sea, the governor consented to this proposal; and that ship was hauled alongside the Matilda to receive her cargo.  Fifty-five of the convicts brought in this ship, selected from the others as farmers or artificers, were sent up to Parramatta; of the remainder, those whose health would permit them to go were put on board the Mary Ann, together with thirty-two convicts of bad character from among those who came out in the preceding year, and eleven privates of the New South Wales corps.  On the Monday following (the 8th) the Mary Ann sailed for Norfolk Island.

At Parramatta the only accommodation which the shortness of the notice admitted of being provided for the people who were on their passage was got up; two tent huts, one hundred feet long, thatched with grass, were erected; and, independent of the risk which the occupiers might run from fire, they would afford good and comfortable shelter from the weather.