December 2nd, 1791.  Went up to Rose Hill.  Public buildings here have not greatly multiplied since my last survey.  The storehouse and barrack have been long completed; also apartments for the chaplain of the regiment, and for the judge-advocate, in which last, criminal courts, when necessary, are held; but these are petty erections.  In a colony which contains only a few hundred hovels built of twigs and mud, we feel consequential enough already to talk of a treasury, an admiralty, a public library and many other similar edifices, which are to form part of a magnificent square.  The great road from near the landing place to the governor’s house is finished, and a very noble one it is, being of great breadth, and a mile long, in a strait line.  In many places it is carried over gullies of considerable depth, which have been filled up with trunks of trees covered with earth.  All the sawyers, carpenters and blacksmiths will soon be concentred under the direction of a very adequate person of the governor’s household.  This plan is already so far advanced as to contain nine covered sawpits, which change of weather cannot disturb the operations of, an excellent workshed for the carpenters and a large new shop for the blacksmiths.  It certainly promises to be of great public benefit.  A new hospital has been talked of for the last two years, but is not yet begun.  Two long sheds, built in the form of a tent and thatched, are however finished, and capable of holding 200 patients.  The sick list of today contains 382 names.  Rose Hill is less healthy than it used to be.  The prevailing disorder is a dysentery, which often terminates fatally.  There was lately one very violent putrid fever which, by timely removal of the patient, was prevented from spreading.  Twenty-five men and two children died here in the month of November.

When at the hospital I saw and conversed with some of the ’Chinese travellers’; four of them lay here, wounded by the natives.  I asked these men if they really supposed it possible to reach China.  They answered that they were certainly made to believe (they knew not how) that at a considerable distance to northward existed a large river, which separated this country from the back part of China; and that when it should be crossed (which was practicable) they would find themselves among a copper-coloured people, who would receive and treat them kindly.  They added, that on the third day of their elopement, one of the party died of fatigue; another they saw butchered by the natives who, finding them unarmed, attacked them and put them to flight.  This happened near Broken Bay, which harbour stopped their progress to the northward and forced them to turn to the right hand, by which means they soon after found themselves on the sea shore, where they wandered about in a destitute condition, picking up shellfish to allay hunger.  Deeming the farther prosecution of their scheme impracticable, several of them agreed to return to Rose Hill, which with difficulty they accomplished, arriving almost famished.  On their road back they met six fresh adventurers sallying forth to join them, to whom they related what had passed and persuaded them to relinquish their intention.  There are at this time not less than thirty-eight convict men missing, who live in the woods by day, and at night enter the different farms and plunder for subsistence.