The principal works in hand by the people at Sydney were, erecting kitchens and storerooms for the officers’ new barracks, bringing in timber for rollers for the sloop, and constructing huts at Petersham for convicts.  At Toongabbie the Indian corn was not all gathered, and housing of that, and preparing the ground for the reception of the next season’s crop, occupied the labouring convicts at that settlement.

Some counterfeit dollars were at this time in circulation; but the manufacturers of them were not discovered.

August.] The two soldiers who were put into confinement on suspicion of being parties in a plan to seize one of the long-boats, were tried by a regimental court-martial on the first day of this month, and one was acquitted; but Roberts, a drummer, who was proved to have attempted to persuade another drummer to be of the party, was sentenced to receive three hundred lashes, and in the evening did receive two hundred and twenty-five of them.  While smarting under the severity with which his punishment was inflicted, he gave up the names of six or eight of his brother soldiers as concerned with him, among whom were the two who had absented themselves the preceding evening.  These people, the day following their desertion, were met in the path to Parramatta, and told an absurd story of their being sent to the Blue Mountains.  They were next heard of at a settler’s (John Nicholls) at Prospect Hill, whose house they entered forcibly, and, making him and a convict hutkeeper prisoners, passed the night there.  At another settler’s they took sixteen pounds of flour, which they sent by his wife to a woman well known to one of them, and had them baked into small loaves.  They signified a determination not to be taken alive, and threatened to lie in wait for the game-killers, of whose ammunition they meant to make themselves masters.  These declarations manifested the badness of their hearts, and the weakness of their cause; and the lieutenant-governor, on being made acquainted with them, sent out a small armed party to secure and bring them in, rightly judging that people who were so ready at expressing every where a resolution to part with their lives rather than be taken, would not give much trouble in securing them.

This desertion, and the disaffection of those who meant to take off a long-boat, was the more unaccountable, as the commanding officer had uniformly treated them with every indulgence, putting it entirely out of their power to complain on that head.  Spirits and other comforts had been procured for them; he had distinguished them from the convicts in the ration of provisions; he had allowed them to build themselves comfortable huts, permitting them while so employed the use of the public boats; he had indulged them with women; and, in a word, have never refused any of them a request which did not militate against the rules of the service, or of the discipline which he had laid down for the New South Wales corps; at the same time, however, to prevent these indulgencies from falling into contempt, they were counterbalanced by a certainty of their being withdrawn when abused, and flagrant offenders were sure of meeting with punishment:  yet there were many among them who were so ungrateful for the benefits which they received, and so unmindful of their own interest and accommodation, that they behaved ill whenever they had an opportunity.