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passage to Rio de Janeiro, the first port at which we could hope for a further supply. The reader will allow that half a pound of bread was little enough for a man's daily ration, (being just two biscuits) but ere we had been six weeks at sea, it was found necessary to reduce the allowance to one-third of a pound; and, in a few weeks more, it was lowered to one quarter, that is, a biscuit a day! The necessity of these reductions arose from a discovery that the rats, cockroaches, and other vermin, with which the ship was infested, had made a most destructive devastation in the bread-room, besides which, a leak in the side had admitted so much salt-water, that a great many bags of biscuit were totally spoiled, thereby adding to our distress, which was before sufficiently great. Even the small portion of bread we did receive, was scarcely eatable, most of it being very old stores, and full of maggots, and what was baked in the colony being of a very coarse quality, and every biscuit more or less excavated by the vermin before-mentioned. The Buffalo, as I have before shewn, was detained several months, for the purpose of being properly victualled, and after all, the purser had been obliged to take a quantity of wheat in casks, for consumption in some shape or other, as it was found inexpedient to wait longer for a further supply of biscuit. This wheat, when the crew were tired of rice, was boiled in lieu of pease, and
