f 74 ACCOUNT OF THE ENGLISH COLONY [Jul?, 



bread, foon became four. The peafe were complained of as boiling 

 hard ; and the rice was found to be full of hulks. Some pork alio, 

 of which eight calks had been fent as an experiment, was, on being 

 ifliied, found to be for the mo ft part putrid. Thefe circumftances, 

 together with the extreme minutenefs of the Bengal breed of cattle, 

 excited a general hope in the inhabitants of thefe fettlements that they 

 might not be left to depend on that country for fupplies. To the 

 parent country every one anxioufly looked for fpeedy and fubftantial 

 affiftance ; and day after day was paffed in the fruitlefs hope that the 

 morrow would come accompanied with the long-wifhed-for arrival of 

 mips. 



The natives perfifting in having feen the mips before fpoken of, 

 and as every one remembered that the Juftinian, after making the 

 heads of Port Jackfon, had been kept at fea for three weeks, a fond 

 hope was cherifhed that the fun had mone upon the whitened fails of 

 fome approaching veflel, which had been difcovered by the pene- 

 trating eye of their favage neighbours. In this anxiety and ex- 

 pectation they remained till the 26th, when the long-looked-for fignal 

 was made ; and in a few hours after the Britannia ftoremip, Mr. Wil- 

 liam Raven mailer, anchored, after a paflage of twenty-three weeks 

 from Falmouth. 



The Britannia was the firfl: of three mips that were to be difpatched 

 hither, having on board twelve months' clothing for the convicts, 

 four months' flour, and eight months' beef and pork for every de- 

 fcription of perfons in the fettlements, at full allowance, calculating 

 their numbers at four thoufand fix hundred and thirty-nine. It was 

 Hill a matter of doubt in England, whether the merchants of Calcutta 

 had fupplied that colony with provifions ; and, under the idea that 

 fome circumftance might have prevented them, the prefent fupply was 

 ordered. 



It was heard with much fatisfaction in the colony, that fome fteps 

 had been taken towards profecuting Donald Trail, the mafter of the 

 Neptune tranfport, for his treatment of the convicts with which he 



failed 



