The governor's garden had been the object of frequent depredation; scarcely a night passed that it was not robbed, notwithstanding that many received vegetables from it by his excellency's order. Two convicts had been taken up, who confessed that within the space of a month they had robbed it seven or eight times, and that they had killed a hog belonging to an officer. These were the people who were ordered by the justices to work in irons. A soldier, a man of infamous character, had been detected robbing the garden while sentinel in the neighbourhood of it, and, being tried by a court-martial for quitting his post, was sentenced and received five hundred lashes. Yet all this was not sufficient: on the evening of the 26th, a seaman belonging to the _Sirius_ got into the governor's garden, and was fired at by a watchman who had been stationed there for some nights past, and wounded, as it afterwards appeared, but so slightly as not to prevent his effecting his escape; leaving, however, a bag behind him, filled with vegetables. On close examination it was fixed upon him, and, being brought before a criminal court, he was sentenced to receive five hundred lashes; but at the same time was recommended to the governor's clemency, on account of a good character which had been given him in court. The governor, as it was his garden that was robbed, attended to the recommendation, remitting four out of the five hundred lashes which had been ordered him*. Being, after this, villain enough to accuse some of his shipmates of crimes which he acknowledged existed only in his own malicious mind, he received, by order of the justices, a further punishment of fifty lashes. [* Sixty pounds of flour, which had been offered as a reward for bringing to justice a garden-thief, were paid to the watchman who fired at him.] So great was either the villainy of the people, or the necessities of the times, that a prisoner lying at the hospital under sentence of corporal punishment having received a part of it, five hundred lashes, contrived to get his irons off from one leg, and in that situation was caught robbing a farm. On being brought in, he received another portion of his punishment. Among other thefts committed in this season of general distress, was one by a convict employed in the fishing boats, who found means to secrete several pounds of fish in a bag, which he meant to secure in addition to the allowance which was to be made him for having been out on that duty. To deter others from committing the like offence, which might, by repetition, amount to a serious evil, he was ordered to receive one hundred lashes. At Rose Hill the convicts conducted themselves with much greater propriety; not a theft nor any act of ill behaviour having been for some time past heard of among them*. [* They had vegetables in great abundance.]