to hang one of them in chains upon a tree near the spot as a terror to the others.  Could it have been foreseen, that this was their natural temper, it would have been wiser to have kept them at a distance, and in fear, which might have been effected without so much of the severity which their conduct had sometimes compelled him to exercise towards them.  But the kindness which had been shown them, and the familiar intercourse with the white people in which they had been indulged, tended only to make them acquainted with those concerns in which they were the most vulnerable, and brought on all the evils which they suffered from them.

In the evening of the 16th, his Majesty’s ship Supply arrived from the Cape of Good Hope; from which place she sailed about the middle of last month, with a quantity of young cattle on board for the settlement.  She had met with much bad weather on her passage, and, being exceedingly infirm, her pumps had been kept constantly at work.  She landed 31 cows, five mares, and 27 ewe sheep, all of them in good health, though much weakened from the nature of their voyage:  eight cows, two bulls, and 13 sheep had died.

During the night of this day, a boat which had been fishing at a small distance to the southward of Botany Bay, brought up to the settlement three persons, late belonging to a ship called the Sydney Cove, which had sailed from Bengal with a cargo for this port upon speculation.  The governor was informed by Mr. Clarke, the supercargo (one of the three who had arrived in the fishing boat), that the ship had sprung a dangerous leak before she had rounded the South Cape, which, as soon as they had got to the eastward of the southern part of the coast, increased to so great a degree as to render it absolutely necessary to haul in for the land.  The wind being from the SE they were enabled to accomplish this, and reached it exactly in time to land the ship, when she was just dropping from under them, having actually sunk down to the fore channels, when they ran her upon the ground, which they did on an island in lat. 40 degrees 37 minutes south.  They met with this misfortune in the middle of last February; soon after which a certain number of them resolved to attempt the reaching Port Jackson in the ship’s long boat, leaving the commander and about thirty people to stay by the wreck.  The boat being prepared, 17 people embarked in her, and sailed; but meeting with much bad weather they were again wrecked, being driven on shore on the coast near Point Hicks.  Here they all landed, and endeavoured to travel northward, but dropped off one by one and lost each other daily, until the number was reduced to five, the three who had arrived (the supercargo, a sailor, and a Lascar), the first mate of the ship, who had undertaken the navigation of the long boat, and the carpenter.  These two, from excessive fatigue, had been unable to proceed any further, and had stopped the day before their companions in this miserable journey had been taken up by the fishing boat.