But an encampment amidst the rocks and wilds of a new country, aggravated by the miseries of bad diet, and incessant toil, will find few admirers.
Nor were our exertions less unsuccessful than they were laborious.

Under wretched covers of thatch lay our provisions and stores, exposed to destruction from every flash of lightning, and every spark of fire.

A few of the convicts had got into huts; but almost all the officers, and the whole of the soldiery, were still in tents.
In such a situation, where knowledge of the mechanic arts afforded the surest recommendation to notice, it may be easily conceived, that attention to the parade duty of the troops, gradually diminished.

Now were to be seen officers and soldiers not "trailing the puissant pike" but felling the ponderous gum-tree, or breaking the stubborn clod.

And though "the broad falchion did not in a ploughshare end" the possession of a spade, a wheelbarrow, or a dunghill, was more coveted than the most refulgent arms in which heroism ever dazzled.