The _Mercury_ was bound to
the north-west coast of America, and her master purposed quitting this
port as soon as his people, who were all afflicted with that dreadful sea
distemper the scurvy, should be sufficiently recovered.
The period of probation which had been allotted by the late governor to
the services of William Stephenson (one of the people serving in the
stores) expiring this month, his pardon was delivered to him accordingly.
No one among the prisoners could be found more deserving of this
clemency; his conduct had been uniformly that of a good man, and he had
shown that he was trustworthy by never having forfeited the good opinion
of the commissary under whom he was placed in the provision-store.
From the Hawkesbury were received accounts which corroborated the opinion
that the settlers there merited the attacks which were from time to time
made upon them by the natives. It was now said, that some of them had
seized a native boy, and, after tying him hand and foot, had dragged him
several times through a fire, or over a place covered with hot ashes,
until his back was dreadfully scorched, and in that state threw him into
the river, where they shot at and killed him. Such a report could not be
heard without being followed by the closest examination, when it appeared
that a boy had actually been shot when in the water, from a conviction of
his having been detached as a spy upon the settlers from a large body of
natives, and that he was returning to them with an account of their
weakness, there being only one musket to be found among several farms.
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