On the evening of the 25th, which had been duly observed as Christmas Day, the _Nautilus_ arrived from the southward. She had been at Preservation Island, where, and among the neighbouring islands, she had been tolerably successful in seal-catching. The master left 14 of his people on the island of Cape Barren, to provide as many skins and as much oil as they could against his return. Those with which he now arrived were in a few days sold by auction. The two whalers, the _Indispensable_ and _Britannia_, which had been fishing on the coast, returned on the 29th for a few days to repair some defects and refresh their crews. They had cruised chiefly from the latitude of 32 degrees 00 minutes to 35 degrees 00 minutes, and not farther from the coast than from 20 to 30 leagues, and thought themselves rather successful for the time (only two months), the one having got 54, and the other 60 tons of spermaceti oil. The _Eliza_ (more wisely) put into Botany Bay, to wood and water. She, although much longer at seal had not been so successful, having got only 45 tons of oil. The master of this ship stated, that he saw off the NE part of New Caledonia a ship on shore upon a reef, the lower masts of which were above water, and one of the tops was on the mast. The weather was thick and hazy, and blew too fresh to allow him to send to examine her; but a piece of a boat, which he took to be part of a whale boat, floating near him, he judged the wreck to be that of a whaler. He also fell in with a very dangerous and extensive shoal, lying NNW about 40 leagues from Sandy Cape, upon the coast of New South Wales. It was so large, that, finding himself entered upon it, and unable to get back, it took him from nine in the morning until six in the evening, going at the rate of six knots (or miles) an hour, before he ran through it. Thus already did the settlement and the public at large derive some advantage from the fishing on the coast, by the discovery of this shoal. There happened three deaths in this month which were out of the common way: a woman at the Hawkesbury died of the bite of a snake; another woman was drowned in attempting to land at Norfolk island; and on the 19th died, very suddenly, Mr. Stephenson, the store-keeper at Sydney. As his death was not exactly in the common way, so neither had been the latter part of his life; indeed, all that part of it which he had passed in this country; for, by an upright conduct, and a faithful discharge of the duties of the office with which he had been entrusted, he secured to himself the approbation of his superiors while living, and their good name at his death. Stephenson had been emancipated for his orderly behaviour, and to enable him to execute the office of store-keeper.