Port Jackson.'] 
TERRA AUSTRALIA 
233 
expense to government. But with these exceptions, I was obliged isos. 
to leave the refreshment of the people to their own individual exer- 
tions ; assisting them with the payment due for savings of bread 
since leaving the Cape of Good Hope, and the different artificers 
with the money earned by their extra services in refitting the ship. 
Fish are usually plentiful at Port Jackson in the summer, but not in 
the winter time ; and our duties were too numerous and indispens- 
able to admit of sending people away with the seine, when there 
was little prospect of success ; a few were, however, occasionally 
bought along-side, from boats which fished along the coast. 
In purchasing a sea stock for the cabin, I paid a head for 
sheep, weighing from thirty to forty pounds when dressed. Pigs 
were bought at gd. per pound, weighed alive, geese at 10s. each, 
and fowls at qs. ; and Indian corn for the stock cost 55. a bushel. 
To complete the ship's provisious, I entered into a contract for 
30,000 pounds of biscuit, 8000 pounds of flour, and 156 bushels of 
kiln-dried wheat ; but in the mean time, the ship Coromandel brought 
out the greater part of the twelvemonths' provisions, for which I 
had applied on sailing from Spithead ; and the contractor was pre- 
vailed upon to annul that part of the agreement relating to flour and 
wheat. The biscuit cost 33s. per hundred pounds ; and considering 
-that the colony was at short allowance, and that the French ships 
were to be supplied, it was a favourable price. From two American 
vessels which arrived, I purchased 1483 gallons of rum at 6s. 6d. 
per gallon ; which, with what remained of our former stock, was a 
proportion for twelve months. In other respects our provisions were 
completed from the quantity sent out from England; and the 
remaining part was lodged in the public stores, in charge of the 
commissary, until our return. 
In addition to the melancholy loss of eight officers and men, 
at the entrance of Spencer's Gulph, and the previous deficiency of 
four in the complement, I found it necessary to discharge the man 
who had been bitten by a seal at Kanguroo Island, as also a marine, 
