t
trees, a quantity of garden seed, and other articles for the colony.
Unfortunately, the bulls and seven of the cows died; but a bull calf,
which had been produced on board, arrived in good condition.

Six months provisions for about nine hundred people, with stores for his
Majesty's armed tender the _Supply_, and for the marine detachment, were
sent out in the _Gorgon_; wherein also was embarked Mr. King, the late
commandant of Norfolk Island, now appointed by his Majesty
lieutenant-governor of that settlement, and a commander in the navy;
together with Mr. Charles Grimes, commissioned as a deputy
surveyor-general to be employed at Norfolk Island; the chaplain and
quarter-master of the New South Wales corps, and Mr David Burton, a
superintendant of convicts.

By this ship we received a public seal to be affixed to all instruments
drawn in his Majesty's name, and a commission under the great seal
empowering the governor for the time being to remit, either absolutely or
conditionally, the whole or any part of the term for which felons, or
other offenders, should have been or might hereafter be transported to
this country. Duplicates of each pardon were to be sent to England, for
the purpose of inserting the names of the persons so emancipated in the
first general pardon which should afterward issue under the great seal
of the kingdom.

To deserving characters, of which description there were many convicts in
the colony, a prospect of having the period of their banishment
shortened, and of being restored to the privilege which by misconduct
they had forfeited, had something in it very cheering, and was more
likely to preserve well intentioned men in honest and fair pursuits, than
the fear of punishment, which would seldom operate with good effect on a
mind that entertained no hope of reward for propriety of conduct. The
people with whom we had to deal were not in general actuated by that nice
sense of feeling which draws its truest satisfaction from self
approbation; they looked for something more substantial, something more
obvious to the external senses.

In determining the device for the seal of the colony, attention had been
paid to its local and peculiar circumstances. On the obverse were the
king's arms, with the royal titles in the margin; on the reverse, a
representation of convicts landing at Botany Bay, received by Industry,
who, surrounded by her attributes, a bale of merchandise, a beehive, a
pickaxe, an