taken; he made interest with so many of my people to run away from me, that it has distressed me very much. He has carried six of them out of this bay at one time in his vessel, notwithstanding I had forbid him receiving or harbouring them in the presence of several respectable witnesses. I took two of them out of his vessel one morning after they had been some weeks absent. He still holds a number of them, and articles that have been stolen There has been so from me, or I am very much deceived. many impositions practised by this Morril, and his accompli ces, that I can only satisfy your Excellency by refering to the persons on board the Pilgrim, and wish they may be examined, that you may be satisfied as to evidence.

On my part I think as I ever shall, it is a very delicate affair to commence a quarrel between the citizens or subjects of any two nations, but I will candidly say, that I do not think one of my countrymen out of an hundred would pass over so many insults and injuries as I have done under similar circumstances, purely from motives of delicacy, on account of his being of another nation. I beg you will have the goodness to order an examination of the persons on board the Pilgrim schooner, and favour me with a few lines, making me acquainted with your Excellency's opinion on the subject. Any civility shown the commander of the Pilgrim, will be very grate. fully acknowledged.

By your Excellency's most obedient,

(Signed,)

and very Humble Servant,

AMASA DELANO."

The above letter was delivered by my brother; but as governor King was out of health, and had recently been put out of temper by some false representations that had been made to him by the same description of men that I was complaining of, respecting some American captains that were in these straits before my arrival; from

which causes he did not seem disposed to do any thing towards giving me satisfaction for the injuries we were daily receiving. But he gave my brother permission to purchase any provisions or necessaries we might want, and in all other respects treated us well, except the grievances as stated in the letter, and forgetting to answer it, although he promised my brother repeatedly that he would. The Pilgrim returned, and made a report of the proceedings at Port Jackson; not having effected the object of the visit to that place, I ordered her back with all possible dispatch, my people growing more dissatisfied every day.

In the absence of the schooner this time, an affray took place between our people and those of the convict cast; they being on a small island, ten or twelve miles from the ship, waiting for some seals to be drove up by an easterly wind, that were lying on that side of the island, too near the water to be taken; and the convict people finding that they were watching an opportunity to take them, contrived to frustrate their plan. Fourteen or fifteen of them went to a point near the island on which about twelve of my people had lived, who were then watching the seals. Morril, the head man of the gang, ground his cutlass on our grindstone, and loaded two or three old muskets. He told a lad who was left to take care of their houses on the point, "that he should make his sweet lips do its duty on the present occasion, kissing his old cutlass ⚫ repeatedly." When they had got all things prepared, they pulled over to the island, directly against a law they had made themselves, and had more than once put it in force with my people, by presenting their loaded and cocked muskets to their breasts, obliged them to abandon their pursuit, when their object in landing was to look for some runaway men, whom we had certain knowledge of being secreeted at the place. When Morril with his party arrived at the island where our people were, they were asked by them, what they wanted. They were answered,' that is our own business.' They were then told that they certainly could not come with an intention of getting seals, as they were so near the water that it was impossible to get at them before they could get off the shore; and that it was well known to them that they had been watching there a number of days, sleeping on the rocks at night, waiting for an easterly wind to drive the seals up on land, so as to ena

ble them to get between them and the water; and that they could` have no other object than to defeat them in their plans, by frightening the seals away. They also told them that it was a law of their own making that neither party should land on an island where the people of the other might be placed for the purpose of sealing; and that under these circumstances they forbid them coming on shore. On this the Port Jackson men shoved their boat in, and attempted to step out of her, when they were met by our people armed only with their sealing clubs, and a battle ensued. The other party could not make their guns give fire after snapping them several times at our people, who wrested the muskets out of their hands with their clubs, and the fracas ended by throwing at each other clubs, sticks, stones, and every thing they could get hold of. The result was that Morril and his party got worsted; and they afterwards came to me with a complaint against my men ⚫ for their conduct towards them. Four or five of them had their heads, legs, and arms so maimed that they were unable to do their duty. I asked them what they wished me to do. Their answer was, that if I should punish my people, and give orders that they should not do the like again, they would be satisfied. I expostulated with them, and tried to reason them into a principle of justice, setting forth the necessity of mankind's treating each other with more propriety. I promised them that my people should use them as well as they were treated themselves. They left me apparently with a disposition to do better in future; but it lasted only for a short time, as the first opportunity that offered they took the advantage of it to do us injury, and other difficulties took place. About this time the Pilgrim returned the second ney, and we made preparations to leave the straits. Three or four days previous to our sailing, the people went on shore early in the morning with an intention, as I afterward learnt, to settle some old grievances with the Port Jackson men; but it was without my consent. They landed and took Morril, with two or three of his men who had been foremost in doing them injustice, tied them up to a tree and flogged them, giving them one or two dozen lashes each, with a common cat o' nine tails. It must be understood that every one of the people so punished was a convict that had been ransported to New South Wales for crimes committed in England.

time from Sid

One thing took place that I very much regretted. While they were giving Morril his quota, the convict-cast of men rallied to attack our people, who left him to defend themselves, and drove the assailants off. Morril took the advantage of this, and loosed himself from the tree, and run. Our people followed him, and one of my Sandwich Island men overtook, and struck him with a stick on the arm. The blow, falling lengthwise on the part of the arm between the elbow and the wrist, was so heavy as to cause the flesh to burst open.

When I went on shore they again came to me to make their complaints. Morril shewed me his arm; I told them that I was very sorry they had sustained such injury, but they must bear in mind that when they imposed upon, and insulted any description of men in the manner they had mine, they must expect something would be done in retaliation. I dressed Morrill's arm from my own medicine chest, and supplied him with salve and other necessaries for dressing it until it should be well. I have been particular in the statement of what took place in New South Wales and its vicinity, with the government and people of that colony, on account of its causing considerable talk in that part of the world at the time; but I assure the reader that I have told to the extent of all that was done by my people, which could be considered as bad; and that I have not noticed all the causes of complaint on our si `e.

After mentioning one material incident more, I shall take my leave of this country. On the 1st of July, (answering to our January,) a piercing wind blowing from the south east, which is a very cold quarter, I undertook to go on shore in the moses boat, belonging to the Pilgrim, with a number of barrels of fish that our men had caught with the seine, and pickled for the purpose of smoking on shore, in a house that we had previously built for that end. The men who went in the boat with me were two midshipmen, namely, William Delano and Nathaniel Luther, the armourer, and two seamen. The Perseverance and Pilgrim were at the same time moored within one hundred yards of each other, about two thirds of a mile from the nearest land, to where we were bound with the fish; both having their sails unbent, with their yards and topmasts down. We set out from the Pilgrim, with one of her boats, as before stated, where out of seven that I had belonging to

the ship and schooner, six of them were as much as ten miles from us, gone in different directions in pursuit of seals, and of course could not render us any assistance in case any accident should happen to the boat we were then in. About midway between the Pilgrim and the shore, while crossing a horse market, (a sailor's phrase for a rough irregular sea, the waves rising all in a heap, occasioned by two tides meeting,) the water rushed so rapidly into the boat, that in less than two minutes she sunk like a stone to the bottom, leaving us floating on the surface. I soon found that the weight of the fish had immerged our only support too far to render us the least assistance, for I had contrived to keep my stand on the gunwale until she fairly sunk below my depth. I then began to consider the perilous situation we were in, and looking round, saw all my people heading for the shore; I called to them, but the moment was too urgent for my authority to be heeded. My motive in calling them to stop, was to consult about getting the oars together, that we might with them mutually assist each other to weather this more than ordinary calamity. But this proved totally ineffectual, as every individual was too much engrossed in his own imminent danger to think of any judicious means of mutual preservation. I myself began to despair of ever escaping a watery grave, as no succour from either of our vessels could be expected, when it occurred to me that a Mr. Vose had a boat lying a little way up a creek near to where we intended to land; and that his people were building a new one in a small cove at some distance off. I accordingly hallood and called for help, successively repeating Vose's name, and, as may readily be supposed, used all the force of articulation I could muster to give the alarm. No man, perhaps, ever displayed stronger lungs, or made more noise than I did on this emergency. The people, upon whom our whole salvation depended, were at this time eating their breakfast in their hut. They all heard the sound of our distress, but were some time conjecturing what it might arise from, until at last Mr. Vose, concluding it could not be without some important cause, left the table and ran across a small point to where he had a view of the two vessels, and observed them making signals of distress. Seeing no boat, he looked atten'ively towards the part he heard the cries come from, and at length discovering our heads above the water, he imme,