An unpleasant accident occurred at the lieutenant-governor’s farm.  A convict of good character, who had the care of the sheep, was found dead in the woods.  He had declined coming in to his breakfast, and was left eating some bread made of Indian corn and coarse-ground wheat.  His body was opened, but no cause for his sudden dissolution could be assigned from its appearance.

At the Ponds, a district of settlers in the neighbourhood of Parramatta, John Richards, in possession of a grant of thirty acres of land, died of intoxication.  This was the first death which had occurred among any of the people of that description.

By an account taken of the provisions remaining in store on the 28th of the month, it appeared that we had, calculating each article at the established ration for two thousand eight hundred and forty-five persons, the numbers victualled at Sydney and Parramatta,

Flour, to last 4 weeks, —­ or 91,040 lbs
Beef, to last 3 weeks, —­ or 59,745 lbs
Pork, to last 11 weeks, —­ or 125,180 lbs
Wheat, to last 1 week, —­ or 22,760 lbs
Gram and Peas, to last 8 weeks, —­ or 68,280 lbs
Sugar, to last 3 weeks, —­ or 3,200 lbs
Paddy, 43,000 lbs

September.] Unproductive as the Indian corn proved which was sown last year on the public grounds, the settlers must have had a better crop; for, after reserving a sufficiency for seed for the ensuing season, and for their domestic purposes, a few had raised enough to enable them to sell twelve hundred bushels to Government, who, on receiving it into the public stores, paid five shillings per bushel to the bringer.  Government, however, was not resorted to in the first instance by the settler, who preferred disposing of his corn where he could receive spirits in payment (which he retailed for labour) to bringing it to the commissary for five shillings a bushel; but at this price, from whose hands soever it might come, it was received into the public stores.

The Britannia and Francis schooner sailed on Sunday. the 8th for Dusky Bay.  The Francis was manned with seamen and boys who had been left here from ships, and the master had for his assistant as mate Robert Watson, who formerly belonged to his Majesty’s ship Sirius, and was afterwards a settler at Norfolk Island; but his allotment having been erroneously surveyed, he, being obliged to resign a part of it, gave up the whole, and gladly returned to his former way of life.  One of the three seamen who had been taken out of the Kitty, and punished, was permitted to enter on board the schooner; another of them was taken by the captain of the Boddingtons; Williams, the principal, remained in the colony, not bearing that sort of character which would recommend him to any master of a ship.

Captain Nicholas Nepean, the senior captain in the New South Wales corps, having been for some time past in an ill state of health, obtained the lieutenant-governor’s leave to return to England by the way of Bengal, and quitted the colony in the Britannia.  Three men and one woman also received permission to leave the settlement.