This man quitted the _Admiral Barrington_ at Batavia, and got to the Cape
in a Dutch ship, where meeting with Mr. Alt, he embarked with him, and by
the accident which brought the _Chesterfield_ hither returned to this
colony. On his arrival here, he circulated a report, that several of the
convicts who had got on board of these two ships had been landed by order
of the masters at an island which they met with in their passage to
Batavia, inhabited indeed, but by savages; and that those who remained
experienced such inhuman treatment, that they were glad to run away from
them at the first port where any civilised people were to be found. He
was himself among this number, and now declared that he was ready to make
oath to the truth of his relation if it should be required. If there was
any truth in his account, and the masters of these ships did actually
turn any people on shore in the manner already described, it was more
than probable that an act of such apparent cruelty had been occasioned by
some attempt of the convicts to take the ships from them; and the numbers
which were supposed to have been on board (seventeen) rather justified
the supposition. Captain Manning, of the _Pitt_, who had taken from this
settlement twenty men and nine women, found them so useless and
troublesome, that he was very glad to leave the greatest part of them at
Batavia*, and now declared that he regretted ever having received them on
board. When these circumstances should be made public, it was thought
that the masters of ships would not be so desirous of recruiting their
ships' companies from among the inhabitants of this colony.

[* At that grave of Europeans the _Pitt_ lost eighteen of her people.]

The grain called dholl, which had been issued as part of the ration at
the rate of three pints per man per week since the arrival of the
_Atlantic_, was discontinued on the 25th, the whole of that article
having been served out. It had been found useful for stock.

At Toongabbie the workmen were now employed in constructing a barn and
granary upon a very extensive scale.

Among the females who died this month was one, a stout healthy young
woman, of the name of Martha Todd, who came out in the _Mary Ann_, and
fell a victim to a dysenteric complaint, which seized her after drinking
too freely of the pernicious spirits which had been lately introduced
into the colony. The same fate attended James Hatfield, a man who had
been looked upon as