May.] From the reduced state of the salted provisions, it became necessary (such had often been the preamble of an order) to diminish the ration of that article weekly to each person, and half the beef and half the pork was stopped at once.  In some measure to make this great deduction lighter, three pints of peas were added.  This circumstance induced the commanding officer, on the day this alteration took place, to hire the Britannia to proceed to India for a cargo of salted provisions.  Supplies might arrive before she could return; but the war increased the chances against us.  He therefore took her up at fifteen shillings and sixpence per ton per month; and, in order to save as much salt meat as was possible, he directed the commissary to purchase such fresh pork as the settlers and others might bring in good condition to the store, issuing two pounds of fresh, in lieu of one of salt meat.  During the time this order continued, a barrow was killed and part sent to the store, which weighed five hundred pounds, and a sow which weighed three hundred and thirty-six pounds.  They had both been fed a considerable time* on Indian corn, and, according to the rate they sold at (the pork one shilling per pound, and the corn five shillings per bushel) could neither of them have repaid the expence of their feed.

[* The barrow two years and a half, and the sow about two years.]

On the 21st the colonial schooner returned from the Hawkesbury, bringing upwards of eleven hundred bushels of remarkably fine Indian corn from the store there.  The master again reported his apprehensions that the navigation of the river would be obstructed by the settlers, who continued the practice of falling and rolling trees into the stream.  He found five feet less water at the store-wharf than when he was there in February last, owing to the dry weather which had for some time past prevailed.

At that settlement an open war seemed about this time to have commenced between the natives and the settlers; and word was received over-land, that two people were killed by them; one a settler of the name of Wilson, and the other a freeman, one William Thorp, who had been left behind from the Britannia, and had hired himself to this Wilson as a labourer.  The natives appeared in large bodies, men, women, and children, provided with blankets and nets to carry off the corn, of which they appeared as fond as the natives who lived among us, and seemed determined to take it whenever and wherever they could meet with opportunities.  In their attacks they conducted themselves with much art; but where that failed they had recourse to force, and on the least appearance of resistance made use of their spears or clubs.  To check at once, if possible, these dangerous depredators, Captain Paterson directed a party of the corps to be sent from Parramatta, with instructions to destroy as many as they could meet with of the wood tribe (Be-dia-gal); and, in the