r welfare! Reflection on the bare possibility of its
miscarriage made every mind anxious during her absence from the
settlement.

From the evident necessity that existed of maintaining a strict
discipline among the military employed in this country, it became a
requisite to punish with some severity any flagrant breach of military
subordination that might occur. Joseph Hunt, a soldier in the detachment,
having been found absent from his post when stationed as a sentinel, was
tried by a court-martial, and sentenced to receive seven hundred lashes;
which sentence was put in execution upon him at two periods, with an
interval of three weeks.

Toward the end of this month the detachment took possession of their
barracks; two of which, having been nearly twelve months in hand, were
now completed, and ready for their reception. A brick house, forty feet
by thirteen, was begun on the east side for the commissary; and materials
were preparing for a guard-house.

At Rose Hill the people were principally employed in clearing and
cultivating land; but the labour of removing the timber off the ground
when cut down very much retarded the best efforts of the people so
employed. The military and convicts still lived under tents; and, as a
proof of the small space which they occupied, two Emus or Cassowaries,
who must have been feeding in the neighbourhood, ran through the little
camp, and were so intermingled with the people, who ran out of their
tents at so strange an appearance, that it became dangerous to fire at
them; and they got clear off, though literally surrounded by a multitude
of people, and under the very muzzles of some of their muskets.

Very little molestation was at this time given by the natives; and had
they never been ill treated by our people, instead of hostility, it is
more than probable that an intercourse of friendship would have
subsisted.

March.] The impracticability of keeping the convicts within the limits
prescribed for them became every day more evident. Almost every month
since our arrival had produced one or more accidents, occasioned
principally by a non-compliance with the orders which had been given
solely with a view to their security; and which, with thinking beings,
would have been of sufficient force as examples to deter others from
running into the same danger. But neither orders nor dangers seemed to be
at all regarded where their own temporary convenience prompted them to
disobey the on