Among other circumstances which he mentioned was one which deserved notice. The _Royal Admiral_ East Indiaman, Captain Bond, was lying on the 19th of last December in the Tigris. She sailed hence on the 13th of November, and, admitting that she had only arrived on the day on which she was stated to a certainty to be at anchor in the river, she must have performed the voyage in thirty-seven days from this port. This ship, it may be remembered, made the passage from the Cape of Good Hope to this place in five weeks and three days; a run that had never before been made by any other ship coming to this country. From the length of time which the _Britannia_ had been absent, our observation was forcibly drawn to the distance whereat we were placed from any quarter which could furnish us with supplies; and a calculation of the length of time which had been taken by other ships to procure them confirmed the necessity that existed of using every exertion that might place the colony in a state of independence. When the _Sirius_ went to the Cape of Good Hope in 1788, she was absent seven months and six days. The _Supply_, which was sent for provisions in 1789, returned herself in six months and two days; but the supplies which had been purchased for the colony were two months longer in reaching it. The _Atlantic_ sailed hence for Calcutta on the 26th of October 1791, touching at Norfolk Island, from which place she took her departure on the 13th of November; and, calculating her passage from that time, she will be found to have been seven months and one week in procuring the supplies for which she was sent out. The _Britannia_ too was eight months absent. From all this it was to be inferred, that there should not only be always provisions in the stores for twelve months beforehand; but that, to guard against accidents, whenever the provisions in the colony were reduced to that quantity and no more, then would be the time to dispatch a ship for supplies.