The distressful state of the colony for provisions continued gradually to augment until the 9th of July, when the Mary Anne transport arrived from England.  This ship had sailed from the Downs so lately as the 25th of February, having been only four months and twelve days on her passage.  She brought out convicts, by contract, at a specific sum for each person.  But to demonstrate the effect of humanity and justice, of 144 female convicts embarked on board only three had died, and the rest were landed in perfect health, all loud in praise of their conductor.  The master’s name was Munro; and his ship, after fulfilling her engagement with government, was bound on the southern fishery.  The reader must not conclude that I sacrifice to dull detail, when he finds such benevolent conduct minutely narrated.  The advocates of humanity are not yet become too numerous:  but those who practise its divine precepts, however humble and unnoticed be their station, ought not to sink into obscurity, unrecorded and unpraised, with the vile monsters who deride misery and fatten on calamity.

July, 1791.  If, however, the good people of this ship delighted us with their benevolence, here gratification ended.  I was of a party who had rowed in a boat six miles out to sea, beyond the harbour’s mouth, to meet them; and what was our disappointment, on getting aboard, to find that they had not brought a letter (a few official ones for the governor excepted) to any person in the colony!  Nor had they a single newspaper or magazine in their possession; nor could they conceive that any person wished to hear news; being as ignorant of everything which had passed in Europe for the last two years as ourselves, at the distance of half the circle.  “No war—­the fleet’s dismantled,” was the whole that we could learn.  When I asked whether a new parliament had been called, they stared at me in stupid wonder, not seeming to comprehend that such a body either suffered renovation or needed it.

“Have the French settled their government?”

“As to that matter I can’t say; I never heard; but, damn them, they were ready enough to join the Spaniards against us.”

“Are Russia and Turkey at peace?”

“That you see does not lie in my way; I have heard talk about it, but don’t remember what passed.”

“For heaven’s sake, why did you not bring out a bundle of newspapers?  You might have procured a file at any coffee house, which would have amused you, and instructed us?”

“Why, really, I never thought about the matter until we were off the Cape of Good Hope, when we spoke a man of war, who asked us the same question, and then I wished I had.”

To have prosecuted inquiry farther would have only served to increase disappointment and chagrin.  We therefore quitted the ship, wondering and lamenting that so large a portion of plain undisguised honesty should be so totally unconnected with a common share of intelligence, and acquaintance with the feelings and habits of other men.