to Anne Smith, a female
convict who absconded a few days after our landing in the country. This
might have been carried thither and dropped by some natives in their way
through the brush; but it gave a strong colour to the supposition of her
having likewise perished, by some means or other, in the woods.

CHAPTER IX

A convict made a free settler
A pleasing delusion
Extraordinary supply of fish
Caesar's narrative
Another convict wounded by the natives
The _Supply_ arrives from Norfolk Island
A large number of settlers sent thither on board the _Sirius_ and
_Supply_
Heavy rains
Scarcity of provisions increasing in an alarming degree
Lieutenant Maxwell's insanity
News brought of the loss of the _Sirius_
Allowance of provisions still further reduced
The _Supply_ sent to Batavia for relief
Robberies frequent and daring
An old man dies of hunger
Rose Hill
Salt and fishing-lines made
The native escapes
Transactions

1790.]

January.] Early in the new year the _Supply_ sailed again for Norfolk
Island with twenty-two male and two female convicts, and one child;
Lieutenant King having in his last letters intimated, that he could very
well find employment for a greater number of people than he then had
under his orders. With those convicts and some stores she sailed on the
7th, and on her return was to touch at Lord Howe island to procure
turtle.

Of the convicts the period of whose sentences of transportation had
expired, and of whom mention was made in the transactions of July last,
one, who signified a wish of becoming a settler, had been sent up to Rose
Hill by the governor; where his excellency, having only waited to learn
with certainty that he had become a free man before he gave him a grant
of land, caused two acres of ground to be cleared of the timber which
stood on them, and a small hut to be built for him. This man had been
bred to the business of a farmer, and during his residence in this
country had shown a strong inclination to be industrious, and to return
to honest habits and pursuits. Rewarding him, therefore, was but holding
out encouragement to such good dispositions. The governor had, however,
another object in view, beside a wish to hold him up as a deserving
character: he was desirous of trying, by his means, in what time an
industrious active man, with certain assistance, would be enabled to
support himself in this country as a settler; and for that purpose, in
addition to what