308 HISTORY OF 



The harvest which had most certainly been 

 very unproductive, offered to the settlers an ex- 

 cuse for requesting the loan of grain from the 

 public store for seed, but as too many examples 

 had proved how little good, could result from 

 endeavouring to assist them, they were refus- 

 ed, for their own stock they were known to have 

 sold for spirits, and in some instances even that 

 lent them for seed before they left the store-? 

 house door, and for the sole purpose of obtain- 

 ing spirits; which may, with great propriety, 

 "be deemed the forbidden fruit of New South 

 Wales; and the effects of plucking it (if I may 

 be allowed the simile) was again exemplified on 

 the last day of this month, when a soldier was 

 found dead, sitting on the ground with his back 

 reclined against the barracks ; he had, in an in- 

 ordinate desire for spirits, taken too copious a 

 draught the preceding night, and unable to 

 reach home, undoubtedly fell down in the posi- 

 tion he was found, and thus, like Bibo, was 

 drunk when he died ; and though, from the si- 

 tuation in which he was found, he appeared to 

 have resigned his life without a struggle; it af- 

 fords to any mind capable of thinking an exam- 

 ple $t once just and dreadful ; for the mind, thus 

 rendered incapable of retaining a proper sense 

 of the creator, is thus shewn not fit to exist. 



The excessive heat of so long a continuance 

 had very much affected the water. Those ponds 

 which still retained any, were so reduced, that 

 the major part of them were become most into- 

 lerable brackish, and hardly drinkable. This 



