At Rose Hill the people were principally employed in clearing and cultivating land; but the labour of removing the timber off the ground when cut down very much retarded the best efforts of the people so employed.  The military and convicts still lived under tents; and, as a proof of the small space which they occupied, two Emus or Cassowaries, who must have been feeding in the neighbourhood, ran through the little camp, and were so intermingled with the people, who ran out of their tents at so strange an appearance, that it became dangerous to fire at them; and they got clear off, though literally surrounded by a multitude of people, and under the very muzzles of some of their muskets.

Very little molestation was at this time given by the natives; and had they never been ill treated by our people, instead of hostility, it is more than probable that an intercourse of friendship would have subsisted.

March.] The impracticability of keeping the convicts within the limits prescribed for them became every day more evident.  Almost every month since our arrival had produced one or more accidents, occasioned principally by a non-compliance with the orders which had been given solely with a view to their security; and which, with thinking beings, would have been of sufficient force as examples to deter others from running into the same danger.  But neither orders nor dangers seemed to be at all regarded where their own temporary convenience prompted them to disobey the one, or run the risk of incurring the other.  A convict belonging to the brick-maker’s gang had strayed into the woods for the purpose of collecting sweet tea; an herb so called by the convicts, and which was in great estimation among them.  The leaves of it being boiled, they obtained a beverage not unlike liquorice in taste, and which was recommended by some of the medical gentlemen here, as a powerful tonic.  It was discovered soon after our arrival, and was then found close to the settlement; but the great consumption had not rendered it scarce.  It was supposed, that the convict in his search after this article had fallen in with a party of natives, who had killed him.  A few days after this accident, a party of the convicts, sixteen in number, chiefly belonging to the brick-maker’s gang, quitted the place of their employment, and, providing themselves with stakes, set off toward Botany Bay, with a determination to revenge, upon whatever natives they should meet, the treatment which one of their brethren had received at the close of the last month.  Near Botany Bay they fell in with the natives, but in a larger body than they expected or desired.  According to their report, they were fifty in number; but much dependance was not placed on what they said in this respect, nor in their narrative of the affair; it was certain, however, that they were driven in by the natives, who killed one man and wounded six others.  Immediately on this being known in the settlement, an armed party