d upon those
who were in the hospital, as soon as they should recover from their
wounds; in pursuance of which order, seven of them were tied up in front
of the provision store, and punished (for example's sake) in the presence
of all the convicts.

The same day two armed parties were sent, one toward Botany Bay, and the
other in a different direction, that the natives might see that their
late act of violence would neither intimidate nor prevent us from moving
beyond the settlement whenever occasion required.

Such were our enemies abroad: at home, within ourselves, we had enemies
to encounter of a different nature, but in their effects more difficult
to guard against. The gardens and houses of individuals, and the
provision store, were overrun with rats. The safety of the provisions was
an object of general consequence, and the commissary was for some time
employed in examining into the state of the store. One morning, on going
early to the store, he found the wards of a key which had been broken in
the padlock that secured the principal door, and which it was the duty of
the patrols to visit and inspect every night. Entering the storehouse, he
perceived that an harness-cask had been opened and some provisions taken
out. It being supposed that the wards of the key might lead to a
discovery of the perpetrator of this atrocious act, they were sent to a
convict blacksmith, an ingenious workman through whose hands most of the
work passed that was done in his line, who immediately knew them to
belong to a soldier of the name of Hunt, the same who in the course of
the preceding month received seven hundred lashes, and who had some time
back brought the key to this blacksmith to be altered. On this
information, Hunt was taken up; but offering to give some material
information, he was admitted an evidence on the part of the crown, and
made an ample confession before the lieutenant-governor and the
judge-advocate, in which he accused six other soldiers of having been
concerned with him in the diabolical practice of robbing the store for a
considerable time past of liquor and provisions in large quantities. This
crime, great enough of itself, was still aggravated by the manner in
which it was committed. Having formed their party, seven in number, and
sworn each other to secrecy and fidelity, they procured and altered keys
to fit the different locks on the three doors of the provision store; and
it was agreed, that whenever any