The convicts in general wore a very unhealthy cadaverous appearance, owing, it was supposed, not only to spare diet, but to the fatigue consequent on their traversing the woods to Mount Pitt, by night, for the purpose of procuring some slender addition to their ration, instead of reposing after the labours of the day.  They had committed many depredations on the settlers, and one was shot by a person of that description in the act of robbing his farm.

Governor King, having discovered that the island abounded with that valuable article lime-stone, was building a convenient house for his own residence, and turning his attention to the construction of permanent storehouses, barracks for the military, and other necessary buildings.

The weather had been for some time past very bad, much rain having fallen accompanied with storms of wind, thunder, and lightning.  In some of these storms the wreck of his Majesty’s ship Sirius went to pieces and disappeared, no part of that unfortunate ship being left together, except what was confined by the iron ballast in her bottom.

On board of the Atlantic came sixty-two persons from Norfolk Island, among whom were several whose terms of transportation had expired; thirteen offenders; and nine of the marine settlers, who had given up the hoe and the spade, returned to this place to embrace once more a life to which they certainly were, from long habit, better adapted than to that of independent settlers.  They gave up their estates, and came here to enter as soldiers in the New South Wales corps.’

Mr. Charles Grimes, the deputy-surveyor, arrived in the Atlantic, being sent by Mr. King to state to the governor the situation of the settlers late belonging to the Sirius, whose grounds had, on a careful survey by Mr. Grimes, been found to intersect each other.  They had been originally laid down without the assistance of proper instruments, and being situated on the side of the Cascade Stream, which takes several windings in its course, the different allotments, being close together, naturally interfered with each other when they came to be carried back.  The settlers themselves saw how disadvantageously they were situated, and how utterly impossible it was for every one to possess a distinct allotment of sixty acres, unless they came to some agreement which had their mutual accommodation in view; but this, with an obstinacy proportioned to their ignorance, they all declined:  as their grounds were marked out so would they keep them, not giving an inch in one place, though certain of possessing it with advantage in another.  These people proved but indifferent settlers; sailors and soldiers, seldom bred in the habits of industry, but ill brooked the personal labour which they found was required from them day after day, and month after month.  Men who from their infancy had been accustomed to have their daily subsistence found them were but ill calculated to procure it by