His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales’s birthday was duly noticed.  At one o’clock the Endeavour fired twenty-one guns.

Wilson (Bun-bo-e), immediately after his return from Port Stephens with the deputy-surveyor, went off to the natives at the river.  Another vagabond, who like himself had been a convict, one Knight, thinking there must be some sweets in the life which Wilson led, determined to share them with him, and went off to the woods.  About the middle of this month they both came into the town, accompanied by some of their companions.  On the day following it appeared that their visit was for the purpose of forcing a wife from among the women of this district; for in the midst of a considerable uproar, which was heard near the bridge, Wilson and Knight were discovered, each dragging a girl by the arm (whose age could not have been beyond nine or ten years) assisted by their new associates.  The two white men being soon secured, and the children taken care of, the mob dispersed.  Wilson and Knight were taken to the cells and punished, and it was intended to employ them both in hard labour; but they found means to escape, and soon mixed again with companions whom they preferred to our overseers.

About this time the natives were, during two days, engaged in very severe contests.  Much blood was shed, and many wounds inflicted; but no one was killed.  It appeared to afford much diversion; for they were constantly well attended by all descriptions of people, notwithstanding the risk they ran of being wounded by a random spear.

On the 26th that settlement was gratified by the arrival of his Majesty’s ship Providence, of twenty-eight guns, commanded by Captain Broughton, from England.  She sailed thence on the 25th of February last, in company with his Majesty’s ships Reliance and Supply, which ships she left at Rio de Janeiro some time in May last.  We had the satisfaction of learning that Governor Hunter was on board the Reliance, and might be daily expected.

The Providence met with very bad weather on her passage from the Brazil coast, and was driven past this harbour as far to the northward as Port Stephens, in which she anchored.  There, to the great surprise of Captain Broughton, he found and received on board four white people, (if four miserable, naked, dirty, and smoke-dried men could be called white,) runaways from this settlement.  By referring to the transactions of the month of September 1790, it will be found that five convicts, John Tarwood, George Lee, George Connoway, John Watson, and Joseph Sutton, escaped from the settlement at Parramatta, and, providing themselves with a wretched weak boat, which they stole from the people at the South Head, disappeared, and were supposed to have met a death which, one might have imagined, they went without the Heads to seek.  Four of these people (Joseph Sutton having died) were now met with in this harbour by the officers of the