tants o f the different fettlements, were kindly treated, fed, and often
cloathed, yet they were never found to poffefs the fmalleft degree
o f gratitude for fuch favours. Even Ben-nil-long was as def-
titute o f this quality as the mod ignorant o f his countrymen. It is
an extraordinary fa£t, that even their children, who had been bred
up among the white people, and who, from being accuftomed to
follow their manner o f living, might have been fuppofed to ill re-
relifh the life o f their parents, when grown up, have quitted their
comfortable abodes, females as well as males, and taken to the fame
favage mode of living, where the fupply o f food was often precarious,
their comforts not to be called fuch, and their lives perpetually
in danger. As a proof o f the little perfonal fafety which
they enjoyed, a young woman, the wife of a man named Ye-ra-
ni-be, both o f whom had been brought up in the fettlement from
their childhood, was cruelly murdered at the brick-fields by her
huiband, affifted by another native, Cole-be, who firft beat her
dreadfully about the head (the common mode o f chaftifing their
women), and then put an end to he! exiftence by driving a fpear
through her heart.
When fpoken to or cenfured for robbing the maize-grounds,
thefe people, to be revenged, were accuftomed' to aflemble in large
bodies, burn the houfes o f the fettlers if they flood in lonely fix a tions,
and frequently attempted to take their lives; yet they were
feldom refufed a little com when they would alk for it. It was
imagined that they were ftimulated to this deftruftive conduft by
fome run-away convicts who were known to be among them at
the time o f their committing thefe depredations. In order to get
poffeffion o f thefe pefts, a proclamation was iffued, calling on them
by name to furrender themfelves within 14 days, declaring them
outlaws if they refufed, and requiring the inhabitants, as they valued
the peace and good order o f the fettlement, and their own fe-
curity, to aflift in apprehending and bringing them to juftiee. The
governor alfo fignified his determination, i f any o f the natives
could
could be detected in the aft o f robbing the fettlers, to hang one of
them in chains upon a tree near the fpot as a terror to the others.
Could it have been fotefeen, that this was their natural temper, it
would have been wifer to have kept them at adiftance, and in fear,
which might have been effected without fo much o f the feveiity
which their conduct had fometimes compelled him to exercife towards
them. But the kindnels which had been fhewn them, and
the familiar intercourfe with the white people in which they had
been indulged, tended only to make them acquainted with thofe
concerns in which they were the moft vulnerable, and brought on
all the evils which they fulfered from them.
In the evening o f the 16th, his Majefty’s Ihip Supply arrived
from the Cape o f Good Hope ; from which place £he failed about
the middle o f laft month, with a quantity o f young cattle on board
for the fettlement. She had met with much bad weather on her
paflage, and, being exceedingly infirm, her pumps had been kept
conftantly at work. She landed 3 1 cows, five mares, and 27 ewe
fheep, all of them in good health, though much weakened from
the nature o f their voyage : eight cows, two bulls, and 13 Iheep
had died.
During the night o f this day, a boat which had been fifhing at
a fmall diftance to the fouthward o f Botany Bay, brought up to
the fettlement three perfons, late belonging to a Ihip called the
Sydney Cove, which had failed from Bengal with a cargo for this
port upon fpeculation. The governor was informed by Mr. Clarke,
the fupercargo (one o f the three - who had arrived in the fifhing
boat), that the Ihip had fprung a dangerous leak before fhe had
rounded the South Cape, which, as foon as they had got to the
eaftward o f the fouthern part o f the coaft, increafed to fo great a degree
as to render it abfolutely neceflary to haul in for the land.
The wind being from the S. E. they were enabled to accomplifh
this, and reached it exactly in time to land the Ihip, when Ihe was
juft dropping from under them, having actually funk down to the
f 2 fore