Arrivals from England, with provisions as well as stores, were now rather anxiously expected, as 16 months had elapsed since the last were received.  Public works of all kinds went on slowly; the servants of government being but few in proportion to the labour to be performed by them, and all kinds of implements bad in quality, and scarce.  A few slops were served to the male convicts in the beginning of this month, they being nearly naked, and the store unable to supply them with covering.

The tower of the new wind-mill was, under all these disadvantages, completed, and the machinery put in hand.  This tower was of large dimensions, being 30 feet in height, and erected on a rock which was considerably higher than the surrounding ground.  The wheel was four feet in thickness, and the diameter within was 20 feet.

There was very little intermission of rain, thunder, and lightning, during the whole of the month.

April.] This month opened with a necessary act of justice.  Five men were capitally convicted, before the court of criminal judicature, of seizing two boats, the property of individuals, with an intent of escaping from the colony.  One man was capitally convicted of a robbery; three were transported to Norfolk Island for 14 years; one for 7; one was adjudged corporal punishment, and one acquitted.

Two of the five that were condemned for seizing the boats suffered death at Sydney, after a week’s preparation for that awful moment.  Their companions were respited at the place of execution.  They were all extremely penitent, confessed the justice of their sentence, and acknowledged how much mischief they had done, and how much more they meditated, had they not been overtaken by justice.

One man, for robbery, was executed at Parramatta, George Mitton, who certainly was a very fit subject for an example.  He had been twice pardoned when under sentence of death; once in Ireland; and once in this country, by the present governor, for an offence similar to that for which he now suffered.

These melancholy instances, had they been properly attended to, must have shown to the convicts not only the difficulty which accompanied every attempt to escape privately from the colony, and the danger to which those who made the trial exposed themselves, but the certainty of meeting that punishment which the various crimes that they committed on such occasions so highly merited.  The governor, in an order which he now published, was desirous of calling back to the recollection of these misguided people, who had been, either through ignorance, or through the profligacy of their dispositions, so readily prevailed upon to engage in such dangerous enterprises, that they would find an attention to the advice which he had so often given them the most effectual means of ensuring their real happiness.  They would also recollect, that an information was given him on the 19th of January last, in which he appeared to have foreseen, and had