ay of March,
and did not return to this harbour until the 30th of this month, which
completed ten weeks within a day since she sailed. Contrary winds and
heavy gales had prevented her arrival at the time she might have been
reasonably expected. She was three weeks in her passage hither, and was
blown off the island for eleven days.

Captain Johnston, Lieutenants Creswell and Kellow, one sergeant, one
corporal, one drummer, and twenty privates of the marine detachment,
arrived in the _Supply_; with two prisoners, one a soldier for some
irregularity of conduct when sentinel, the other a convict.

The weather had been as dry at Norfolk Island as it had been here; which,
with the blighting winds, had considerably injured all the gardens, and
particularly some crops of potatoes. Of the great fertility of the soil
every account brought the strongest confirmation; and by attending to the
proper season for sowing, it was the general opinion that two crops of
corn might be got off in a year.

Their provisions, like ours, were again at so low an ebb, that the
lieutenant-governor had reduced the ration. The whole number victualled
when the _Supply_ sailed amounted to six hundred and twenty-nine persons;
and for that number there were in store at the _full_ ration, flour and
Indian corn for twenty weeks, beef for eighteen weeks, and pork for
twenty-nine weeks; and these, at the ration then issued, would be
prolonged, the grain to twenty-seven, the beef to forty-two, and the
pork to twenty-nine weeks.

It must however be remarked, that the ration at Norfolk Island was often
uncertain, being regulated by the plenty or scarcity of the Mount Pitt
birds. Great numbers of these birds had been killed for some time before
the _Supply_ sailed thence; but they were observed about that time to be
quitting the island.

On board the _Supply_ were some planks, and such part of the stores
belonging to the _Sirius_ as the lieutenant-governor could get on board.
That ship had not then gone to pieces; the side of her which was on the
reef was broken in and much injured, but the side next the sea (the
larboard side) appeared fresh and perfect.

At Sydney, by an account taken at the latter end of the month of the
provisions then remaining in store, there appeared to be at the ration
then issued of

Flour and rice 40 weeks, a supply till 31st March 1792;
Beef 12 weeks, a supply till 31st August 1791;
Pork 27 weeks, a supply