being
called upon to answer for his death, proved to the satisfaction of the
court, that it had been occasioned by the intemperance of the seaman, and
he was accordingly found to have committed a justifiable homicide.

This accident was the effect of intoxication, to which a few days after
another victim was added, in the person of a female, who was either the
wife or companion of Simon Taylor, a man who had been considered as one
of the few industrious settlers which the colony could boast of. They had
both been drinking together to a great excess; and in that state they
quarrelled, when the unhappy man, in a fit of madness and desperation,
put an untimely end to her existence. He was immediately taken into
custody, and reserved for trial.

To this pernicious practice of drinking to excess, more of the crimes
which disgraced the colony were to be ascribed than to any other cause;
and more lives where lost through this than through any other
circumstance; for the settlement had ever been free from epidemical or
fatal diseases. How much then was the importation of spirits to be
lamented! How much was it to be regretted, that it had become the
interest of any set of people to vend them!

Several robberies which at this time had been committed were to be
imputed to the same source.

A new enemy to agriculture made its appearance in this month. A
destructive grub-worm was discovered in several parts of the cultivated
ground; and at the Hawkesbury a caterpillar had commenced its ravages
wherever it found any young grain just shooting out of the earth. This
occasioned some delay in sowing the government ground.

It having been for several days reported, that the crews of two boats,
which had been permitted to go to Hunter's River for a load of coals, had
been cut off by the natives, the governor ordered his whale boat to be
well armed, and to proceed thither in quest of the boats and their crews;
sending in her Henry Hacking, a person on whom he could depend. Upon his
return, he informed the governor, that on his arrival he found an attempt
had been made to burn the smaller boat, which had had three men in her,
who were each provided with a musket. The boat was there, but the men
were not to be found. Going immediately in search of them, he fell in
with a large body of natives all armed. On desiring them to inform him
what was become of the white men, they told him they were gone to Sydney.
This did not satisfy him, as