escaped from hence in a boat on the 2nd of October last, and who had been treacherously left on this desolate island by the other seven, who returned northward.  The boat, it seems, was too small for their whole number, and when they arrived at Broken Bay they boarded another boat [lying] in the Hawkesbury with fifty-six bushels of wheat on board; then they went off with her to the northward, leaving their old boat on shore.

“These poor distressed wretches” (the seven convicts discovered by Bass), “who were chiefly Irish, would have endeavoured to travel northward and thrown themselves upon His Majesty’s mercy, but were not able to get from this miserable island to the mainland.  Mr. Bass’ boat was too small to accommodate them with a passage, and, as his provision was nearly expended, he could only help them to the mainland, where he furnished them with a musket and ammunition and a pocket compass, with lines and fish-hooks.  Two of the seven were very ill, and those he took into his boat, and shared his provisions with the other five, giving them the best directions in his power how to proceed, the distance” (to Sydney) “being not less than five hundred miles.  He recommended them to keep along the coast the better to enable them to get food.  Indeed, the difficulties of the country and the possibility of meeting hostile natives are considerations which will occasion doubts of their ever being able to reach us.

“When they parted with Mr. Bass and his crew, who gave them what cloaths they could spare, some tears were shed on both sides.  The whale-boat arrived in this port after an absence of twelve weeks, and Mr. Bass delivered to me his observations on this adventur’g expedition.  I find he made several excursions into the interior of the country wherever he had an opportunity.  It will be sufficient to say that he found in general a barren, unpromising country, with very few exceptions; and, were it even better, the want of harbours would render it less valuable.

“Whilst this whale-boat was absent I had occasion to send the colonial schooner to the southward to take on board the remaining property saved from the wreck of the ship Sydney Cove, and to take the crew from the island she had been cast upon.  I sent in the schooner Lieutenant Flinders, of the Reliance (a young man well qualified), in order to give him an opportunity of making what observations he could amongst those islands; and the discoverys which was made there by him and Mr. Hamilton, the master of the wrecked ship, shall be annexed to those of Mr. Bass in one chart and forwarded to your Grace herewith, by which I presume it will appear that the land called Van Dieman’s, and generally supposed to be the southern promontory of this country, is a group of islands separated from its southern coast by a strait, which it is probable may not be of narrow limits, but may perhaps be divided into