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Sable Island
August 5/59
Sir
For some time past James Hawkins, the cook on the Island, had been giving a good deal of trouble, and latterly would not get up in sufficient time to cook the breakfast. I had therefore to order him to sleep up stairs with the other men, that he might be called, and made to get up when they did, he refused to remove from the room he there occupied and I had his bed taken out, and put into another apartment this was on the second of the month, and on the third he ran – away. I then sent to warn the outports not to harbor him, and on the night of the fifth he returned and slept in the Barn. In the mean time having some suspicion of his honesty in consequence of there having been found articles belonging to the Island concealed under his bed, I examined the room he had formerly occupied, and found packed away in a sea chest among his clothes, a tub of lard, and a chisel, I had him then brought forward, and ordered him to open his chest but he said he had lost the key, and that there was not any thing in the Chest but what belonged to him – I then had it opened, and then found, a crock of brown sugar, a can of lintseed oil, six knives & forks, and six spoons, the two first articles, he declared were sent to him from the Main, but as I could identify the spoons and knives & forks, as Island property he confessed they were, and I had not