to purchase the stock and other articles.  The ship was well calculated for bringing cattle, having a very good between-decks; and artificers from the corps were immediately employed to fit her with stalls proper for the reception and accommodation of cows, horses, etc.  A quantity of hay was put on board sufficient to lessen considerably the expense of that article at the Cape; and she was ready for sea by the middle of the month.  Previous to her departure, on the 7th, the Royal Admiral East-Indiaman, commanded by Captain Essex Henry Bond, anchored in the cove from England, whence she had sailed on the 30th of May last.  Her passage from the Cape of Good Hope was the most rapid that had ever been made, being only five weeks and three days from port to port.

On board of the Royal Admiral came stores and provisions for the colony; one sergeant, one corporal, and nineteen privates, belonging to the New South Wales corps; a person to be employed in the cultivation of the country; another as a master miller; and a third as a master carpenter; together with two hundred and eighty-nine male and forty-seven female convicts.  She brought in with her a fever, which had been much abated by the extreme attention paid by Captain Bond and his officers to cleanliness, the great preservative of health on board of ships, and to providing those who were ill with comforts and necessaries beyond what were allowed for their use during the passage.  Of three hundred male convicts which she received on board, ten only died, and one made his escape from the hospital at False Bay; in return for whom, however, Captain Bond brought on with him Thomas Watling, a male convict, who found means to get on shore from the Pitt when at that port in December last, and who had been confined by the Dutch at the Cape town from her departure until this opportunity offered of sending him hither.

We had the satisfaction of hearing that the Supply armed tender made good her passage to England in somewhat less than five months, arriving at Plymouth on the 21st of April last.  It was, however, matter of much concern to all who were acquainted with him, to learn at the same time, that Captain Hunter, who sailed from this port in March 1791, in the Dutch snow Waaksamheyd, and who had anxiously desired to make a speedy passage, had been thirteen months in that vessel striving to reach England, where he at last let go his anchor a day after the termination of Lieutenant Ball’s more successful voyage in the Supply, arriving at Spithead on the evening of the 22nd of April last.  His Majesty’s ship Gorgon had been at the Cape of Good Hope, but had not arrived in England when the Royal Admiral left that country.

We were also informed, that the Kitty transport had sailed with provisions and a few convicts from England some weeks before the Royal Admiral; and Captain Bond left at False Bay an American brig, freighted on speculation with provisions for this colony, and whose master intended putting to sea immediately after him.