Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/259

( 234 ) list of four hundred convicts was sent to the surgeon of that ship, from which he was to choose three hundred. In this selection, he, of course, regarded merely health and age, for he was to receive 10l. for every convict landed in health in New South Wales. Of their characters he could have no knowledge, and he had no instructions respecting peculiar trades, in preference to others.

The dreadful mortality which has, in several instances, taken place among the convicts on board transports going to New South Wales, must proceed chiefly from a want of attention to cleanliness, both in the persons of the convicts and the ship herself; for, in every instance where proper precautions were taken, no such mortality has taken place. The convicts, in general, being equally indolent and careless, as well as unused to a ship, will in many instances be found so negligent