An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1: With Remarks on the Dispositions, Customs, Manners, Etc. of The; Native Inhabitants of That Country. to Which Are Added, Some; Particulars of New Zealand; Compiled, By Permission, From; The Mss. of Lieutenant-Governor King.Collins, David
History
An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1: With Remarks on the Dispositions, Customs, Manners, Etc. of The; Native Inhabitants of That Country. to Which Are Added, Some; Particulars of New Zealand; Compiled, By Permission, From; The Mss. of Lieutenant-Governor King.
Collins, David
New South Wales -- Description and travel
Charles Gray, a man who had rendered himself notorious in the registers
of this colony by repeated acts of villainy, exhibited himself again to
public view at the close of this month, and at a time when every one
thought him a reclaimed man. He had been sent to Norfolk Island as a
place where he would have fewer opportunities of exercising his predatory
abilities than at Sydney; but the law having spent its force against him,
he returned to this settlement as a free man in September last. On his
declaring that he was able to provide for himself, he was allowed to work
for his own support, and for some time past he had cut wood and drawn
water for a drummer in the New South Wales corps, a man who, by much
self-denial and economy, had got together and laid up thirty-three
guineas, for the prudent and laudable purpose of hereafter apprenticing
his children; but having unfortunately and most indiscreetly suffered
this man to know, not only that he had such a sum, but where he kept it,
Gray availed himself of a convenient opportunity, and carried off the
whole sum, together with a shirt which lay in his way. On being taken up
(for suspicion was directly fixed on him) he readily acknowledged the
theft, and either was, or pretended to be, very much in liquor. On being
urged to restore the property, he sent the watchmen to search for it in
different places, but without directing them to the spot where he had
concealed it. At last he was taken out himself, when accidentally meeting
the lieutenant-governor he threw himself on the ground, pretending to be
in a fit; on which he was directly ordered to be tied up and punished
with one hundred lashes. After this he would not make any discovery, and
was sent to the hospital. The drummer who had suffered so materially by
this wretch, although the object of pity, yet, knowing as he must have
done the character of the man, was certainly entitled to no small degree
of blame for trusting with a secret of such importance to his family a
man who he must have known could not have withstood so great a temptation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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