a very strong one, had been forced out, and a large chest that would require four men to convey it out of the door had been taken off.  It contained a great quantity of wearing apparel, money, bills, and letters; but, though the theft could not have been long committed, all the search that twenty or thirty people made for some hours that night was ineffectual, no trace being seen of it, and nothing found but a large caulking-iron, with which it was supposed the staple was wrenched off.  The chest was found the next morning behind a barrack (which had lately been fitted up as a place of divine worship for the accommodation of the chaplain of the New South Wales corps), and some of the wearing apparel was brought in from the woods; but Mr. Kent’s loss was very little diminished by this recovery.

In addition to these burglaries a highway robbery was committed on the supercargo of the American, who was attacked in the dusk of the evening, close by one of the barracks, by two men, who, in the moment of striking him, seized hold of his watch, and with a violent jerk wrenched off the seals, the watch falling on the ground.  The place was, however, too public to risk staying to look for it; and the owner was fortunate enough to find it himself, but the seals, which were of gold, were carried off.

All these offences against peace and good order were to be attributed to the horrid vice of gaming, which was still pursued in this place, and which, from the management and address of those who practised it, could not be prevented.  The persons of the peace-officers were well known to them; and, that they might never be detected in the fact, one of the party, commonly the greatest loser, was always stationed on the look-out to alarm in time.

During this month the millwright Buffin completed the mill which he was constructing in the room of Wilkinson’s; and, on its being worked, it was found to answer still better than the first which he made.  The body of Wilkinson, after being dragged for several days in vain, was found at last floating on the surface of the pond where he lost his life, and being brought into Parramatta was there decently interred.

Of the few who died in this month was one, a male convict, of the name of Peter Gillies, who came out to this country in the Neptune transport in the year 1791.  His death took place on the morning of the arrival of the Speedy from England, by which ship a letter was received addressed to him, admonishing him of the uncertainty of life, recommending him early to begin to think of the end of it, and acquainting him of the death of his wife, a child, and two other near relations.  He had ceased to breathe before this unwelcome intelligence reached the hospital.