the sweat of their brows, and must very unwillingly find that without great bodily exertions they could not provide it at all.  A few months experience convinced them of the truth of these observations, and they grew discontented; as a proof of which they wrote a letter to the judge-advocate, to be submitted to the governor, stating, as a subject of complaint among other grievances, that the officers of the settlement bred stock for their own use, and requesting that they might be directed to discontinue that practice, and purchase stock of them.

Very few of the convicts at Norfolk Island whose terms of transportation had expired were found desirous of becoming permanent settlers; the sole object with the major part appearing to be, that of taking ground for the purpose of raising by the sale of the produce a sum sufficient to enable them to pay for their passages to England.  The settler to benefit this colony, the bona fide settler, who should be a man of some property, must come from England.  He is not to be looked for among discharged soldiers, shipwrecked seamen, or quondam convicts.

Governor King finding, after trying every process that came within his knowledge for preparing and dressing the flax-plant, that unless some other means were devised, it never would be brought to the perfection necessary to make the canvas produced from it an object of importance, either as an article of clothing for the convicts or for maritime purposes, proposed to Mr. Ebor Bunker, the master of the William and Ann, who had some thoughts of touching at Dusky Bay in New Zealand, to procure him two natives of that country, if they could be prevailed on to embark with him, and promised him one hundred pounds if he succeeded, hoping from their perfect knowledge of the flax-plant, and the process necessary to manufacture it into cloth, that he might one day render it a valuable and beneficial article to his colony; but Captain Bunker had never returned.

Norfolk Island had been visited by all the whalers which sailed from this port on that fishery.  The Admiral Barrington and Pitt left with Mr. King eleven men and two female convicts, who had secreted themselves at this port on board of those ships.

October.] The Britannia, which had quitted the cove on the last day of September, preparatory to her departure on a fishing voyage (a licence for which had been granted by the East India Company for the space of three years), returned to the cove on the third of this month for the purpose of fitting for the Cape of Good Hope, the officers of the New South Wales corps having engaged the master to proceed thither and return on their account with a freight of cattle, and such articles as would tend to the comfort of themselves and the soldiers of the corps, and which were not to be found in the public stores.  Mr. Raven, the master, let his ship for the sum of L2000; and eleven shares of L200 each were subscribed