was sent out with an officer, who found the body of the man that had been killed, stripped, and lying in the path to Botany Bay.  They also found a boy, who had likewise been stripped and left for dead by the natives.  He was very much wounded, and his left ear nearly cut off.  The party, after burying the body of the man, returned with the wounded boy, but without seeing any of the perpetrators of this mischief; the other wounded people had reached the settlement, and were taken to the hospital.  The day following, the governor, judging it highly necessary to make examples of these misguided people, who had so daringly and flagrantly broken through every order which had been given to prevent their interfering with the natives as to form a party expressly to meet with and attack them, directed that those who were not wounded should receive each one hundred and fifty lashes, and wear a fetter for a twelvemonth; the like punishment was directed to be inflicted upon those who were in the hospital, as soon as they should recover from their wounds; in pursuance of which order, seven of them were tied up in front of the provision store, and punished (for example’s sake) in the presence of all the convicts.

The same day two armed parties were sent, one toward Botany Bay, and the other in a different direction, that the natives might see that their late act of violence would neither intimidate nor prevent us from moving beyond the settlement whenever occasion required.

Such were our enemies abroad:  at home, within ourselves, we had enemies to encounter of a different nature, but in their effects more difficult to guard against.  The gardens and houses of individuals, and the provision store, were overrun with rats.  The safety of the provisions was an object of general consequence, and the commissary was for some time employed in examining into the state of the store.  One morning, on going early to the store, he found the wards of a key which had been broken in the padlock that secured the principal door, and which it was the duty of the patrols to visit and inspect every night.  Entering the storehouse, he perceived that an harness-cask had been opened and some provisions taken out.  It being supposed that the wards of the key might lead to a discovery of the perpetrator of this atrocious act, they were sent to a convict blacksmith, an ingenious workman through whose hands most of the work passed that was done in his line, who immediately knew them to belong to a soldier of the name of Hunt, the same who in the course of the preceding month received seven hundred lashes, and who had some time back brought the key to this blacksmith to be altered.  On this information, Hunt was taken up; but offering to give some material information, he was admitted an evidence on the part of the crown, and made an ample confession before the lieutenant-governor and the judge-advocate, in which he accused six other soldiers of having been concerned with him in the diabolical practice of robbing