sufficient to sow an acre; and that, if sown as early as the month of April or May, they imagined the ground would produce a second crop, and the season be not too far advanced to ripen it.  Their kitchen gardens were plentifully stocked with vegetables.  The master of the schooner complained that the navigation of the river was likely to be hurt.  The settlers having fallen many trees into the water, he was apprehensive they would drift ashore on some of the points of the river where, in process of time, sand, etc. might lodge against them, and form dangerous obstructions in the way of craft which might be hereafter used on the river.  No doubt remained of the ill and impolitic conduct of some of the settlers toward the natives.  In revenge for some cruelties which they had experienced, they threatened to put to death three of the settlers, Michael Doyle, Robert Forrester, and ——­ Nixon; and had actually attacked and cruelly wounded two other settlers, George Shadrach and John Akers, whose farms and persons they mistook for those of Doyle and Forrester.  These particulars were procured through the means of one Wilson, a wild idle young man, who, his term of transportation being expired, preferred living among the natives in the vicinity of the river, to earning the wages of honest industry by working for settlers.  He had formed an intermediate language between his own and theirs, with which he made shift to comprehend something of what they wished him to communicate; for they did not conceal the sense they entertained of the injuries which had been done them.  The tribe with whom Wilson associated had given him a name, Bun-bo-e, but none of them had taken his in exchange.  As the gratifying an idle wandering disposition was the sole object with Wilson in herding with these people, no good consequence was likely to ensue from it; and it was by no means improbable, that at some future time, if disgusted with the white people, he would join the blacks, and assist them in committing depredations, or make use of their assistance to punish or revenge his own injuries.  Mr. Grimes purposed taking him with him in the schooner to Port Stephens.

There were at this time several convicts in the woods subsisting by theft; and it being said that three had been met with arms, it became necessary to secure them as soon as possible.  Watchmen and other people immediately went out, and in the afternoon of the 14th a wretched fellow of the name of Suffini was killed by one of them.  This circumstance drove the rest to a greater distance from Sydney, and they were reported, some days afterwards, to have been met on their route to the river.  Suffini would not have been shot at, had he not refused to surrender when called to by the watchman while in the act of plundering a garden.