The boats in the colony not being found sufficient for the purpose of transporting provisions from the store at Sydney to the settlement at Rose Hill, a launch or hoy was put upon the stocks, under the direction of Mr. Reid, the carpenter of the Supply, to be employed for that and other necessary purposes.  She was to be built of the timber of the country, and to carry ten tons.

From that settlement, early in the month, two soldiers of the detachment doing duty there were reported to be missing; and, though parties had been sent out daily in different directions to seek for them, yet all was unavailing.  It was supposed that they must have lost their way in some of the thick and almost impenetrable brushes which were in the vicinity of Rose Hill, and had there perished miserably.  They had gone in search of the sweet tea plant already mentioned; and perhaps when they resigned themselves to the fate which they did not see how to avoid, oppressed with hunger, and unable to wander any farther, they may have been but a short distance from the relief they must so earnestly have desired.  A dog that was known to have left the settlement with them reached Rose Hill, almost famished, nine days after they had left it.  The extreme danger attendant on a man’s going beyond the bounds of his own knowledge in the forests of an unsettled country could no where be more demonstrable than in this.  To the westward was an immense open track before him, in which, if unbefriended by either sun or moon, he might wander until life were at an end.  Most of the arms which extended into the country from Port Jackson and the harbour on each side of Port Jackson, were of great length, and to round them without a certain and daily supply of provisions was impossible*.

[* In many of these arms, when sitting with my companions at my ease in a boat, I have been struck with horror at the bare idea of being lost in them; as, from the great similarity of one cove to another, the recollection would be bewildered in attempting to determine any relative situation.  It is certain, that if destroyed by no other means, insanity would accelerate the miserable end that must ensue.]

To guard as much as possible against these accidents every measure which could be suggested was adopted.  A short time after the settlement was established at Rose Hill, the governor went out with some people in a direction due South, and caused a visible path to be made; that if any person who had strayed beyond his own marks for returning, and knew not where he was, should cross upon his path, he might by following it have a chance of reaching the settlement; and orders were repeatedly given to prohibit straggling beyond the limits which were marked and known.

Toward the end of the month, some convicts having reported that they had found the body of a white man lying in a cove at a short distance from the settlement, a general muster of the convicts at Sydney was directed; but no person was unaccounted for except Caesar, an incorrigibly stubborn black, who had absconded a few days before from the service of one of the officers, and taken to the woods with some provisions, an iron pot, and a soldier’s musket, which he had found means to steal.