The governor also
signified his determination, if any of the natives could be detected in
the act of robbing the settlers, to hang one of them in chains upon a
tree near the spot as a terror to the others. Could it have been
foreseen, that this was their natural temper, it would have been wiser to
have kept them at a distance, and in fear, which might have been effected
without so much of the severity which their conduct had sometimes
compelled him to exercise towards them. But the kindness which had been
shown them, and the familiar intercourse with the white people in which
they had been indulged, tended only to make them acquainted with those
concerns in which they were the most vulnerable, and brought on all the
evils which they suffered from them.
In the evening of the 16th, his Majesty's ship _Supply_ arrived from
the Cape of Good Hope; from which place she sailed about the middle of
last month, with a quantity of young cattle on board for the settlement.
She had met with much bad weather on her passage, and, being exceedingly
infirm, her pumps had been kept constantly at work.
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