ibition. The mention of future regulations in this order instantly
begat an opinion among the convicts, that on the departure of the ships
all the live stock in the colony would be called in, or that the owners
would be deprived of the benefits which might result from the possession
of it. Under colour, therefore, of its belonging to those who were
exempted in the late order, nearly all the stock in the settlement was in
the course of a few nights destroyed; a wound being thereby given to the
independence of the colony that could not easily be salved, and whose
injurious effects time and much attention alone could remove.

The expected supplies not having arrived, on the 3rd, the two companies
of marines with their officers and the colours of the corps embarked on
board the _Sirius_ and the _Supply_. With them also embarked the
lieutenant-governor, and Mr. Considen the senior assistant surgeon of the
settlement. On the day following, one hundred and sixteen male and
sixty-eight female convicts, with twenty-seven children, were put on
board; among the male convicts the governor had sent the troublesome and
incorrigible Caesar, on whom he had bestowed a pardon. With these also
was sent, though of a very different description, a person whose exemplary
conduct had raised him from the situation of a convict to the privileges
of a free man. John Irving had since our landing in the country been
employed as an assistant at the hospital. He was bred a surgeon, and in
no instance whatever, since the commission of the offence for which he
was transported, had he given cause of complaint. He was now sent to
Norfolk Island, to act as an assistant to the medical gentlemen there.

On the 5th the _Sirius_ and the _Supply_ left the cove, but did not get to
sea until the following day, when at the close of the evening they were
scarcely to be discerned from the South Head. At the little post at this
place Captain Hunter left the gunner, a midshipman, and six of the
_Sirius's_ people. Mr. Maxwell, one of her lieutenants, having been for a
considerable time past in a melancholy and declining way, and his
disorder pronounced by the surgeons to be insanity, he was discharged
from the ship, and had taken up his residence on shore under the care of
the surgeon, with proper people who were left from the ship to attend
him. This was the second officer whose situation in the _Sirius_ it
became necessary to have filled. Lieutenant King, the command