On Friday the 13th died Mr. David Burton, of a gunshot wound which he received on the preceding Saturday.  This young man, on account of the talents he possessed as a botanist, and the services which he was capable of rendering in the surveying line, could be but ill spared in this settlement.  His loss was occasioned by one of those accidents which too frequently happen to persons who are inexperienced in the use of fire-arms.  Mr. Burton had been out with Ensign Beckwith, and some soldiers of the New South Wales corps, intending to kill ducks on the Nepean.  With that sensation of the mind which is called presentiment he is said to have set out, having more than once observed, that he feared some accident would happen before his return; and he did not cease to be tormented with this unpleasant idea, until his gun, which he carried rather awkwardly, went off, and lodged its contents in the ground within a few inches of the feet of the person who immediately preceded him in the walk through the woods.  Considering this as the accident which his mind foreboded, he went on afterwards perfectly freed from any apprehension.  But he was deceived.  Reaching the banks of the river, they found on its surface innumerable flocks of those fowl of which they were in search.  Mr. Burton, in order to have a better view of them, got upon the stump of a tree, and, resting his hand upon the muzzle of his piece, raised himself by its assistance as high as he was able.  The butt of the piece rested on the ground, which was thickly covered with long grass, shrubs, and weeds.  No one saw the danger of such a situation in time to prevent what followed.  By some motion of this unfortunate young man the piece went off, and the contents, entering at his wrist, forced their way up between the two bones of his right arm, which were much shattered, to the elbow.  Mr. Beckwith, by a very happy presence of mind, applying bandages torn from a shirt, succeeded in stopping the vast effusion of blood which ensued, or his patient must soon have bled to death.  This accident happened at five in the afternoon, and it was not till ten o’clock at night of the following day that Mr. Burton was brought into Parramatta.  The consequence was, such a violent fever and inflammation had taken place that any attempt to save life by amputation would only have hastened his end.  In the night of the 12th the mortification came on, and he died the following morning, leaving behind him, what he universally enjoyed while living, the esteem and respect of all who knew him.

A person of a far different character and description met with an accidental death the following day.  He had been employed to take some provisions to a settler who occupied a farm on the creek leading to Parramatta, and was killed by a blow from the limb of a tree, which fell on his head and fractured his skull, without having allowed him that time for repentance of which a sinful life stood so much in need.  His companions and fellow prisoners (for he was a convict) declared him to have been so great a reprobate, that he was scarcely ever known to speak without an oath, or without calling on his Maker as a witness to the truth of the lie he was about to utter.