the _Guardian_ arrived, perhaps we should never
again have been in want.

On the 9th, being the day appointed for returning thanks to Almighty God
for his Majesty's happy restoration to health, the attendance on divine
service was very full. A sermon on the occasion was preached by the Rev.
Mr. Johnson, who took his text from the book of Proverbs, 'By me kings
reign.' The officers were afterwards entertained at the governor's, when
an address on the occasion of the meeting was resolved to be sent to his
Majesty.

When the women were landed on the 11th, many of them appeared to be
loaded with the infirmities incident to old age, and to be very improper
subjects for any of the purposes of an infant colony. Instead of being
capable of labour, they seemed to require attendance themselves, and were
never likely to be any other than a burden to the settlement, which must
sensibly feel the hardship of having to support by the labour of those
who could toll, and who at the best were but few, a description of people
utterly incapable of using any exertion toward their own maintenance.

When the women were disembarked, and the provisions and stores landed, it
was found that twenty casks of flour (from the unfitness of the ship to
perform such a voyage, being old and far from tight) were totally
destroyed. This was a serious loss to us, when only four pounds of flour
constituted the allowance of that article for one man for seven days.

From this situation of distress, however, we were in a short time
afterwards effectually relieved, and the colony might be pronounced to be
restored, by the arrival (on the 20th) of the _Justinian_ storeship, Mr.
Benjamin Maitland master, from England, after a short passage of only
five months. Mr. Maitland, on the 2nd of this month, the day preceding
the arrival of the _Lady Juliana_, was off the entrance of this harbour,
and would certainly have been found by that ship at anchor within the
heads, had he not, by a sudden change of the wind, aided by a current,
been driven as far to the northward as Black Head, in latitude 32 degrees
S. where he was very nearly lost in an heavy gale of wind; but which he
providentially rode out, having been obliged to come to an anchor, though
close in with some dangerous rocks. The wind was dead on the shore, and
the rocks so close when he anchored, that the rebound of the wave
prevented him from riding any considerable strain on his cable. Had that
failed him,