The 16th, being Sunday, I performed divine service.  Two convicts, whom I had given leave the preceding day to take an excursion into the interior part of the island, returned this day at noon quite naked:  they had several cuts in different parts of their bodies, some of which were deep, occasioned by the entangled state of the woods, and the sharpness of the briars:  they had not been an hour from the settlement before they lost sight of the sun from the thickness of the woods; this caused them to wander about till eleven o’clock, when they heard the noise of our church bell, which was a man beating on the head of an empty cask, and presently afterwards they returned to the settlement.

As my own situation, and that of every other person was very uncomfortable, owing to the tents being close to the sea shore, on which a heavy surf continually beats:  I set the people to work on the 17th, to clear a piece of ground to the right of the garden, and a little above it; here I intended to move the tents, or to build houses; and having two sawyers and a carpenter, I set them to work in digging a sawpit, in order to saw pine for building a store-house for the provisions and stores, they at present being lodged in my tent, which was made of the Sirius’s sprit-sail.

The surgeon, in walking about the island, found out the flax-plant, which proved to be what we had hitherto called the iris:  not having any description of this plant, I had no idea of its being what Captain Cook calls the flax-plant of New Zealand; the cliffs and shore near the settlement were covered with it; its root is bulbous, and eight leaves issue from it, which are, in general, five or six feet in length, and about four inches broad, close to the root:  the plant bears a great resemblance to the iris, except that the leaves are much thicker and larger; the flaxy part is the fibres, which extend the whole length of the leaf; towards the root they are very thick and strong, and diminish in size as they approach the end of the Jeaf.  This plant, in its green state, is of a surprising strength:  from the quantity of dead leaves about the root, I imagine it is an annual, and that the root sends forth fresh leaves.

The method of preparing the New Zealand flax not being described by Captain Cook, I caused three bundles of ours to be put in the rivulet to soak, intending to try it after the European method of dressing flax.  The sawpit being finished on the 18th, a small pine was cut down near it, which measured 115 feet in length, and two feet six inches diameter at the base:  a twelve foot length was got on the pit, and the sawyers began sawing it into framings and scantlings for the store-house.  By the 19th, the greatest part of the seeds we had procured at the Cape of Good Hope, and sown in the garden, were out of the ground, and seemed likely to do well; but scarcely any of the English seeds grew, they, in general, being spoiled.

From this time till the 1st of April, two men were employed in sawing up wood for the store-house; one man was building it, six were clearing away the ground, and the women burnt up the small boughs.