A practice having been discovered, of purchasing the soldiers regimental
necessaries for the purpose of disposing of them among the shipping, and
this requiring a punishment that should effectually check it, Bond, a
convict who baked for the hospital and others, was brought before two
magistrates, and, being convicted of having bought several articles of
wearing apparel which had been served to a soldier, was sentenced to pay
the penalty prescribed by act of parliament, five pounds; or, on failure
within a certain time, to go to prison. Having made some considerable
profits in the exercise of his trade as a baker, he preferred paying the
penalty.

It being always desirable to go as near the established ration as the
state of the stores would allow, and the governor never wishing to keep
the labouring man one moment longer than was absolutely necessary upon a
reduced allowance of provisions, he directed two pounds of rice to be
added to the weekly proportion of that article; but, although by this
addition eight pounds of grain were issued, viz three pounds of flour and
five pounds of rice, the ration was far from being brought up to the
standard established by the Treasury for the colony; five pounds of bad
worm-eaten rice making a most inadequate substitute for the same quantity
of good flour. In the article of meat the labouring man suffered still
more; for in a given quantity of sixty pounds, which were issued on one
serving day to two messes, there were no less than forty pounds of bone,
and the remainder, which was intended to be eaten, was almost too far
advanced in putrefaction for even hunger to get down. It must be observed
that it came in the snow from Batavia.

Patrick Burn, a person employed to shoot for the commanding officer of
the marine detachment, died this month: and the hut that he had lived in