and now a merchant. On my arrival I found that my chief officer had not thought proper to attend, and I proceeded to take the sense of the meeting; when it was unanimously agreed, that he having acted very improperly, should not be suffered to continue any longer on duty as chief officer of the Research. Shortly after this I received a letter from him stating that it was his intention to proceed in the Guide brig towards Bengal.

At 2 P.M. I received a letter from on board, without signature, the purport of which was that the ship's company wished to see me on board. I informed the bearer that I never allowed seamen to command me either to go on board or to go on shore: that it was my place to order, and not to be ordered. Though I had business on board, I declined going, having heard that my late officer had been distributing rum amongst the seamen, who were all drunk.

About 4 P.M. Mr. Deane, my new officer, came on shore to acquaint me that my clerk had escaped from the ship unknown to him. On inquiry I found that he had gone in the boat with my late officer's baggage; and that the draughtsman had gone on board of the Guide to make inquiry concerning him, where he learnt that my clerk had been with the baggage, and was now on shore. To the last part of this in

formation I paid little credit, suspecting that my late officer took him to Sydney with the intention of conveying him to India, where a part might have been allotted him in the drama got up by the Doctor for their mutual exculpation. Thus I was deprived of my clerk's services, together with a sum of money he stood indebted to me. However, that no means might be left untried for his apprehension, I despatched a police officer in quest of him to the several punch and dancing-houses in town, who, as I had expected, returned unsuccessful.

This afternoon I paid all my bills and shipped my stores, with the intention of proceeding to sea at daylight in the morning.

CHAPTER V.

OCCURRENCES FROM VAN DIEMEN'S LAND TO
PORT JACKSON.

20th.-I WENT on board with the pilot about 8 A.M., and shortly afterwards ordered the anchor to be weighed. In a few minutes the chief officer entered the cuddy, telling me that the crew would not heave up the anchor, but that they wanted to speak to me. My reply was, that I had nothing to say to them: that if they wished to communicate any thing to me they should commit it to paper. In the course of about half an hour I received a note without signature, and merely subscribed in these words: "Your obedient servant, at the request of the ship's company."

The tenour of the note was, that as the officers who had been placed over them in India had been removed, and others substituted of whose characters they were ignorant, it was their wish to be discharged. Now the port regulations here forbid the discharge of seamen, but finding my men in an actual state of mutiny, I addressed them in the following words: "My men, I have no authority to discharge you in this port but such of you as persist in a refusal to do your

duty, are at liberty to leave the ship, bearing in mind that by so doing you forfeit all claim to whatever arrears of pay may be due to you, as well as every article belonging to you on board, which revert to the India Government." When I ceased speaking, seven of the most resolute of these fellows stepped into a shore-boat; but two of them immediately returned through the portholes, the other five putting on shore.

We now hove up the anchor and sailed down. the river, the Europeans being all nearly drunk, their faces dreadfully mangled, with black eyes, broken noses, and scratched jaws, occasioned by the spirits that my late officer had distributed among them previously to quitting the ship, with the intention perhaps of stimulating them to assault the officer who superseded him. Having post-office packets to deliver at Port Jackson, and being now in want of a naturalist and second officer, to supply the place of those who had deserted the expedition or been dismissed, I determined to proceed thither to procure them.

At 1 P.M. we cleared the Derwent, which I believe to be one of the most corrupt spots on the face of the globe. On beholding this scene of iniquity and oppression sinking in the distance, I could not refrain from exclaiming, "Van Diemen's Land I bid you adieu! Land of corrup

tion and injustice, farewell! Adieu to the place where the crackbrained antiquarian and noisy polemic of India, the redoubtable and learned naturalist, botanist, historiographer, geographer, and doctor of all arts and sciences (if we believe his own account of his literary acquirements), Robert Tytler, so easily succeeded in impressing a belief of his worth and excellencies on the minds of a governor, secretary, preacher, acting attorney-general and judge, who looked up to this visionary pedant as a second admirable Crichton."

I cannot but lament that I had not at first sailed to Port Jackson: there I should have met with no obstruction in refitting; there I should have enjoyed the right of trial by jury, and my case would have been adjudged by honest and upright men whom no whining cant nor fear of offending a military governor, could bias. Had my case been tried there the decision would have been quite the reverse of what it was. Dr. Tytler's assumed pretensions would not have imposed on any one. He would have been compelled to concert his plans unaided by the ministers of government, unassisted by the administrators of that law which rigidly punishes the crimes of mutiny and desertion. The surgeon, naturalist, botanist, mineralogist, and recorder of proceedings to the supreme government, as