veniency.
Luckily for the gentleman who superintends this hospital, and still more
luckily for those who are doomed in case of sickness to enter it, the air
of Rose Hill has hitherto been generally healthy. A tendency to produce
slight inflammatory disorders, from the rapid changes* of the temperature
of the air, is most to be dreaded.

[*In the close of the year 1788, when this settlement was established, the
thermometer has been known to stand at 50 degrees a little before sunrise,
and between one and two o' clock in the afternoon at above 100 degrees.]

'The hours of labour for the convicts are the same here as at Sydney. On
Saturdays after ten o'clock in the morning they are allowed to work in
their own gardens. These gardens are at present, from the long drought and
other causes, in a most deplorable state. Potatoes, I think, thrive better
than any other vegetable in them. For the public conveniency a baker is
established here in a good bakehouse, who exchanges with every person bread
for flour, on stipulated terms; but no compulsion exists for any one to
take his bread; it is left entirely to every body's own option to consume
his flour as he pleases. Divine service is performed here, morning and
afternoon, one Sunday in every month, when all the convicts are obliged
to attend church, under penalty of having a part of their allowance of
provisions stopped, which is done by the chaplain, who is a justice of the
peace.

'For the punishment of offenders, where a criminal court is not judged
necessary, two or more justices, occasionally assemble, and order the
infliction of slight corporal punishment, or short confinement in a strong
room built for this purpose. The military present here consists of two
subalterns, two sergeants, three corporals, a drummer, and twenty-one
privates. These have been occasionally augmented and reduced, as
circumstances have been thought to render it necessary.

Brick-kilns are now erected here, and bricks manufactured by a convict
of the name of Becket, who came out in the last fleet, and has fifty-two
people to work under him. He makes 25,000 bricks weekly. He says that they
are very good, and would sell at Birmingham, where he worked about eighteen
months ago, at more than 30 shillings per thousand.

Nothing farther of public nature remaining to examine, I next visited a
humble adventurer, who is trying his fortune here. James Ruse, convict, was
cast for seven years at Bodmin ass