Bennillong’s influence over his countrymen not extending to the natives at the river, we this month again heard of their violence.  They attacked a man who had been allowed to ply with a passage-boat between the port of Sydney and the river, and wounded him, (it was feared mortally,) as he was going with his companion to the settlement; and they were beginning again to annoy the settlers there.

Notwithstanding the reward that had been offered for apprehending black Caesar, he remained at large, and scarcely a morning arrived without a complaint being made to the magistrates of a loss of property supposed to have been occasioned by this man.  In fact, every theft that was committed was ascribed to him; a cask of pork was stolen from the millhouse, the upper part of which was accessible, and, the sentinels who had the charge of that building being tried and acquitted, the theft was fixed upon Caesar, or some of the vagabonds who were in the woods, the number of whom at this time amounted to six or eight.

The harvest was all well got in during this month.  At Sydney, the labouring hands were employed in unloading the store-ship; for which purpose three men from each farm having ten were ordered in to public work.

On the 21st of this month his Majesty’s ship the Reliance sailed for Norfolk Island.  In her went Mr. Hibbins, the judge-advocate of that settlement who arrived from England in the Sovereign; and a captain of the New South Wales corps, to take the command of the troops there.

On the 7th the surgeon’s mate of the Supply died of a dysenteric complaint.  He had attended Mr. Barrow to his grave, who died in December last.  On the evening of the 23rd a soldier of the name of Eades, having gone over to the north shore to collect thatch to cover a hut which he had built for the comfort of his family, fell from a rock and was drowned.  He left a widow and five small children, mostly females, to lament his loss.  He was a quiet man and a good soldier.

February.] The players, with a politic generosity, on the 4th of this month performed the play of The Fair Penitent with a farce, for the benefit of the widow Eades and her family.  The house was full, and it was said that she got upwards of twelve pounds by the night.

A circumstance of a disagreeable nature occurred in the beginning of this month.  John Baughan*, the master carpenter at this place, being at work in the shed allotted for the carpenters in one of the mill-houses, overheard himself grossly abused by the sentinel who was planted there, and who for that purpose had quitted his post, and placed himself within hearing of Baughan.  This sentinel had formerly been a convict, and, while working as such under Baughan in the line of his business, thought himself in some circumstance or other ill-treated by him, for which he ‘owed him a grudge’, and took this way to satisfy his resentment.  Baughan, a man of a sullen and vindictive disposition, perceiving that the sentinel was without his arms, took them, unobserved by him, from the post where he had left them, and delivered them to the sergeant of the guard.