Captain Carns, arrived in the River Derwent (Van Diemen s Land) early in 1825, from England. On the passage out a dispute arose between a certain gentleman and a Doctor Crowder, which ended in the latter heartily horsewhipping the former, who did himself justice by instituting an action at law against the Doctor at Hobart Town, and recovered from him fifty pounds damages. A few days subsequent to that on which this assault was committed on board the Cumberland, the Captain, who was a leviathan skipper, observed the poor Doctor on the poop, and without any previous warning seized him by the back of the neck between the finger and thumb, and flung him upon the quarter-deck, breaking two of his ribs by the fall. For this assault, Doctor Crowder, seeing himself worsted in a legal prosecution by Mr. also sought reparation by the same means from the Captain, and recovered damages; but how much? Forty shillings! Now, reader, peruse the law report here presented to you, and determine, if you can, for I cannot, what degree of equality there exists between the decisions in the cases Crowder v. Carns, and Tytler v. Dillon. The one defendant in an unprovoked manner breaks two of the plaintiff's ribs, who recovers at the rate of twenty shillings per joint, and goes free; the other, after having previously received much provocation, and not until the safety of his ship was endangered, was obliged, in self-defence, to arrest and confine the plaintiff closely for two hours, who recovers fifty pounds damages! and obtains a further award of two months imprisonment against the defendant, and also compels him to enter into sureties to keep the peace, for acting in the maintenance of good order and discipline in the ship of which he was commander, I could not think that the latter decision was surreptitiously obtained by Dr. Tytler-no; the impartiality and caution of Chief Justice Pedder forbids the idea; but such was the award, and it has been delivered, no doubt, with a view to preserve from further assault, a man, who in the course of his life has been severely handled as many times as he has hairs on his head. This truly admirable trial cost me five hundred and twenty-one pounds sterling!

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

January 16th 1828.

PETER DILLon.

(From the SYDNEY GAZETTE, Jan. 23, 1828.) We are quite amazed, after we had succeeded in proving to the colonial world, that the enterprize in which Captain Dillon, of the Hon. East-India Company's cruiser Research, has been

crowned with the most undoubted success, that one of our contemporaries should at last deign to follow in our wake, and bespatter Captain Dillon with its empty praise. If the Monitor, or any other colonial journal, had possessed proper feelings towards Captain Dillon, they would long since have come forward with their support, and with their meed of praise; but no, not one of them would give this gallant and enterprising man the least credit for having solved the mystery of almost half a century, in dragging to the face of day, -in extracting from the bowels of the deep,-in rescuing from the hands of savages those valuable relics, which are lamentable guarantees of the hapless destiny of the immortal Count La Pérouse. We are not sorry that any of our contemporaries begin to awaken from those slumbers into which they had fallen on so interesting a theme; one that will attract the attention, and enkindle the liveliest interest, of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America; and we, who happen to be in the fifth part of the globe, for such Australasia is termed by some of the geographers of the present day, are the first to feel interested in so important a discovery. We say we do not regret our contemporaries doing justice to Captain Dillon, but it would have been a little more opportune, and perhaps equally as liberal, if not much more honourable to their character as faithful journalists, had their feeble commendation not been so late in the day. We feel that we have established the enterprising and maritime character of Captain Dillon, upon a basis which needs not the support of any subsidiary journal.

(From the SYDNEY GAZETTE, Jan. 25, 1828.)

The Research, though at so great a distance from the town, is daily thronged with visitors; who are laudably anxious to witness and examine those remains of the wreck of the two French ships, under the command of the unfortunate La Pérouse. Captain Dillon has a cabin set apart, as a depository of those valuable articles, which, the moment they are seen, strike conviction into the mind of the most sceptical, and satisfy all those who are privileged to examine them, of their undoubted identity, as forming a part of the wrecked ships. Of all the articles that chiefly engaged our attention, that of the decayed part of the stern was most interesting. It is impossible for any one, whilst beholding that piece of decayed timber, not to be occupied with the most interesting thoughts. The mind is insensibly led to a retrospection of forty years, and the wood itself wears all the appearance of forty years old. The fleur-de-lis are very plain, and there can be no doubt, but the piece of timber formed a part of the ornamental work of the stern of one of

the ships, though whatever gold might have been upon it has vanished during the vicissitudes of nearly half a century. We have a small piece of this decayed relic, which we took the liberty of seizing upon, for the purpose of placing it amongst numberless other curiosities that we intend to hand over to the Colonial Museum, as soon as it is organized. We hope Captain Dillon will not prosecute us for the larceny, as we acknowledge it was any thing but given. It appears to us to be a piece of fir, and must have been, from that circumstance, purely ornamental. We confess we could not manage to secrete the bell, with the word "Bazin m'a fait," that is, "Bazin made me," else we should much like to have enriched the contemplated Museum with that article also; but we have no doubt that, with hundreds of others also, it will be recognized by some of the old Frenchmen, who may have been fortunate enough to have escaped the guillotine æra, or the conscriptions of the immortal Napoleon. The broken China betrays all the antiquity of our first parents, and one might naturally suppose that Adam and Eve had often participated in the luxury of a comfortable cup of tea, from the circumstance of these articles being without the pale of any thing we can recollect. The pattern is old-fashioned, and the shape and thickness are as old-fashioned as the culinary articles, of which we never saw such patterns before; indeed if we had seen La Pérouse himself. we should not be more convinced of the reality of these articles having been on board the ships which he commanded. The silver bottom of the candlestick, the sword handle, the silver salver, the Spanish dollar, are all indubitable proofs of the fate of this regretted navigator. From the French gentleman on board the Research, who seems to be in every sense of the word a perfect gentleman, we were casually informed that the utmost praise is due to Captain Dillon, for the coolness, intrepidity, and skill, which he displayed at the island of Mannicolo, as it was with the greatest difficulty, and unabated attention, that the Research was saved from being lost on some of the many reefs, which render the island dangerous to approach. Captain Dillon's attention to his crew, too, at the time when sickness and death began to stare them in the face, was more like that of a pater familiaris, than that of a tyrannical and imperious commander. The reefs were carefully examined, and correctly laid down by Captain Dillon, though the latitude and longitude of Mannicolo continue a secret, but which, no doubt, at a future day, will be exploded, with many other interesting facts appertaining to this expeditionone that has been crowned with such extraordinary success, and one that will not fail to diffuse universal interest throughout the civilized and scientific world. Captain Dillon has

certainly conferred honour upon the Honourable Company of which he has proved himself so enterprising and valuable a servant; and, if any man is entitled to praise for elevating himself by merit, we feel satisfied Captain Dillon merits all the commendation that we can tender him; and we only hope that propitious breezes may quickly waft the Research to her destined haven.

Remarks of the Editor of the New South Wales Monitor, Jan. 21, 1828.

A LATE trial at Hobart Town, has not at all tended to correct our fears for the wisdom of Colonel Arthur and Judge Pedder's administration of the sister isle. The Sydney Gazette of Wednesday last has published a report, copied from one of the Hobart Town newspapers, called The Tasmanian, (a journal edited by a loyal barrister of the Supreme Court of Van Diemen's Land), of a trial there, Rex (on the prosecution of R. Tytler, M.D.) versus Peter Dillon, Esq. commander of the Honourable East-India Company's cruiser the Research. This last gentleman, the world has lately been informed, has been supplied by the princely Company in question, with a vessel, fitted out at an immense expense, to proceed upon an expedition, whose object warms the hearts of the brave, and fires the imagination of the romantic; we say, the enviable commander of this expedition, raised to his present post of honour by the force of his own talents and enterprise, for placing his surgeon in close arrest two hours, and in open arrest, or in confinement at large, for the rest of the voyage, had a sentence passed upon him by Judge Pedder, of two months' confinement in the common gaol, besides being fined in the sum of £50.

The Sydney Gazette, our government official newspaper, has announced these facts to the public of New South Wales; where, thanks be to God, and honour be to Chief Justice Forbes, there is yet a free press to record the wisdom and the folly, the virtues and the vices, of our Australian and Tasmanian authorities respectively.

By the report of the trial in question, the public are informed, that the surgeon of the Research, Dr. Tytler, was so forgetful of the discipline of a ship, of his duty as an officer, and of his own character as a gentleman of common prudence, feeling, and courtesy, as to tell Captain Dillon, at his own table, in the presence of his officers, where a man likes the least to be made to look little, that his vessel, the Research, had been pronounced by a naval gentleman in India, "fit only for a rice hulk; and that she would go down in a gale of wind, or be lost on the rocks of Tucopia.'

We do conceive, that to speak to a man at his own table, and in the presence of his officers, in such contemptuous terms of his vessel (a matter in which all commanders take a pride, from the Duke of Clarence down to the master of a humble schooner), is equally unwarranted, uncalled-for, impertinent, and in every respect, ungentlemanly. Captain Dillon, it seems (which we almost wonder at), did not strike Dr. Tytler for the language he used: he merely left the table under powerful feelings of indignation. The next day, Dr. Tytler took upon himself a new title, if not a new office; he now styled himself, at the foot of a certain document, which he had been in the habit of signing diurnally, "Recorder of Proceedings to the Supreme Government." This act, to say the least, was very ill-timed. It of course put Captain Dillon into extreme rage. In the midst of his paroxysm, he called for his pistols, accused the Doctor of mutiny, and told him, if he ever dared to lower him in the eyes of his officers again, by speaking of "rice barges and Tucopia rocks," as he had done the preceding day, he would have him chastised.

This language cannot be defended. It was beyond Dr. Tytler's insolence. Still however, considering the previous provocation, we do not think that it at all justified the letter which Dr. Tytler wrote the evening of the same day, and which the Doctor acknowledged on the trial.

As Captain Dillon's subsequent conduct clearly proved his anger and expressions were not, as Doctor Tytler insinuated in this letter, the effect of a diseased mind, but the mere temporary ebullitions of nervous irritability, we cannot consider the said letter in any other light than direct mutiny. In the first place, it was holding out a very powerful temptation to the officer, the artful knave would have rejoiced to slip into the enviable post filled by Captain Dillon; and if such an one's villainy had been seconded with a sufficient degree of courage and address by the other officers, we have little doubt Captain Dillon would have died on board in confine. ment under the insult, (for a little would kill such a man as Captain Dillon in a hot climate), or have been landed in Van Diemen's Land, a real lunatic; there to end his days, the victim of mischance and treachery.

Some time before the voyage was concluded, a quarrel occurring on board between the first-officer and Mr. Dudman, the latter informed Captain Dillon, there was a mutiny going on in the ship, fore and aft; and for proof appealed to the above letter: which being inquired for, was found to have been destroyed. Captain Dillon then observed to his officers, "I must put a stop to this;" and accordingly, putting his hand on the shoulder of Dr. Tytler, he ordered him into close arrest. At the end of two hours, however, Captain Dillon,