[* The Loyalty Islands are situated between New Caledonia and the New Hebrides, and extend from about 21 degrees 30 minutes to 20 degrees 50 minutes S and from the longitude of 168 degrees to 167 degrees E. Mr. Raven supposed them to be a large group of islands, which, being pressed for time, he could not stop to survey.  All that he had opportunity to determine was, the longitude and latitude of some of the head-lands.  Many fires were seen on them in the night; the whole appeared to be full of wood, and in some places in high cultivation.  These islands, certainly a discovery belonging to Mr. Raven, may be thought worthy of being explored at some future day, and become an object of consequence to the settlement in New South Wales.]

If leaving Port Jackson any time between the beginning of March and the 1st of September, Mr. Raven would prefer passing through a strait in the longitude of 156 degrees 10 minutes E or thereabout; and from the latitude of 7 degrees 06 minutes E to 6 degrees 42 minutes S which divides some part of the islands of the New Georgia of Captain Shortland; thence through St. George’s Channel to the northward of New Guinea, through Dampier’s Strait, down Pitt’s Passage, to the southward of Boutton, and through the Straits of Salayer, into the Banda or Amboyna Sea.  This passage the Britannia performed in sixty-five days from Port Jackson to Batavia; which, had it not been for calms she met with off the coast of New Guinea, would in all probability have been performed in six weeks, or thereabout.

Mr. Raven furnished these observations in the hope that they might benefit the settlement, by proving useful to the commanders of any ships which the governor might have occasion to send into those seas on the service of the colony.

The governor, convinced that an example was necessary to check the present practice of villainy, had ordered James McCarthy, the prisoner under sentence of death for forgery, to be executed on Saturday the 14th of this present month; but yielded to the request of Mr. Johnson (the clergyman who attended the prisoner) to spare his life, it appearing evidently on the trial, that, guilty though he certainly was, he had in the present instance been rather the victim of the vice of others, than of his own.  He was accordingly pardoned, on condition of his serving for seven years at hard labour at Norfolk Island.

About this time the Marquis Cornwallis and Experiment sailed for India.  Previous to their departure, Mr. Hogan, the commander of the former, had requested an examination might be taken as to the circumstances of his conduct toward the convicts and others on board his ship during their passage from Ireland to this country.  The examination upon oath was made by the judge-advocate, assisted by two other magistrates, to whom it appeared, that Mr. Hogan, but for the fortunate and timely discovery of it, would with his ship have fallen a sacrifice to as daring and alarming a conspiracy as, perhaps, ever had been entered into by a set of desperate wretches on board of any ship; and that nothing was left for him, to save himself from the danger of a similar circumstance occurring during the voyage, but to inflict immediate punishment, on the persons who were concerned in it.