Thursday 1 September 1836

Thursday September 1. A foul wind with a heavy swell
from the South; we are now in the region of what sailors
call “baffling winds” and must be content to endure what
we cannot avoid. The Emigrants have expressed some
dissatisfaction on the substitution of cocoa for tea, and
in fact are not, upon the whole, made so comfortable as it
would be for the interest of the colony that they should
have been. I have exerted my influence with several
of them, and they consent to bear the disagreeables as well
as they can. Let full justice be done to the body of
Emigrants on board this ship; they have suffered without
much murmuring, though they have had several sufficient
causes for complaint. They have no place where they can
walk or breathe unpolluted air; the bulwarks of the
Buffalo are six feet high; on both sides of the main
deck are rows of filthy hogs kept in pens, generally in
a horrid state of dirt and uncleanness. The Emigrants
can only walk alongside of these animals and inhale
the stench from them: they are forbidden either side of the
quarter-deck although the officers and passengers have the
poop or what remains of it unoccupied by hay trusses
& hen-coops to themselves. These things make a deep
and ineffaceable impression on the individuals most
directly affected by their operation, and will tell
eventually. It has been a grand and radical error to
send out the Governor of South Australia in the invidious
and arbitrary character of Captain of the Ship: the
consequences of this act must be severely felt by him
if they be not in their result highly detrimental to the
colony. Common people have difficulty in separating
the acts of the Captain from those of the Governor, and
the trifling doings of the one are not likely to increase
respect when they shall be merged in the more important
functions of the other. A voyage like this calls for the
exercise of more philosophy than falls to the common lot
Zeno was never at sea in an Emigrant ship.