From the Hawkesbury were received accounts which corroborated the opinion that the settlers there merited the attacks which were from time to time made upon them by the natives.  It was now said, that some of them had seized a native boy, and, after tying him hand and foot, had dragged him several times through a fire, or over a place covered with hot ashes, until his back was dreadfully scorched, and in that state threw him into the river, where they shot at and killed him.  Such a report could not be heard without being followed by the closest examination, when it appeared that a boy had actually been shot when in the water, from a conviction of his having been detached as a spy upon the settlers from a large body of natives, and that he was returning to them with an account of their weakness, there being only one musket to be found among several farms.  No person appearing to contradict this account, it was admitted as a truth; but many still considered it as a tale invented to cover the true circumstance, that a boy had been cruelly and wantonly murdered by them.

The presence of some person with authority was becoming absolutely necessary among those settlers, who, finding themselves freed from bondage, instantly conceived that they were above all restrictions; and, being without any internal regulations, irregularities of the worst kind might be expected to happen.

On the morning of the 25th a civil court was assembled, for the purpose of investigating an action brought by one Joyce (a convict lately emancipated) against Thomas Daveny, a free man and superintendant of convicts at Toongabbie, for an assault; when the defendant, availing himself of a mistake in his christian name, pleaded the misnomer.  His plea being admitted, the business was for that time got over, and before another court could be assembled he had entered into a compromise with the plaintiff, and nothing more was heard of it.

In the evening of the same day the Surprise transport arrived from England, whence she sailed on the 2nd of last May, having on board sixty female and twenty-three male convicts, some stores and provisions, and three settlers for this colony.

Among the prisoners were, Messrs. Muir, Palmer, Skirving, and Margarot, four gentlemen lately convicted in Scotland of the crime of sedition, considered as a public offence, and transported for the same to this country.

We found also on board the Surprise a Mr. James Thompson, late surgeon of the Atlantic transport, but who now came in quality of assistant-surgeon to the settlement; and William Baker, formerly here a sergeant in the marine detachment, but now appointed a superintendant of convicts.

A guard of an ensign and twenty-one privates of the New South Wales corps were on board the transport.  Six of these people were deserters from other regiments brought from the Savoy; one of them, Joseph Draper, we understood had been tried for mutiny (of an aggravated kind) at Quebec.