PORT ARTHUR VISITED.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9868, 21 October 1897, Page 2

PORT ARTHUR VISITED.

From " Stories of Australia in the Early Days," by Marcus Clirke. Published inllutehin on's Colonial Library.

"Weekly Press and Referee.

[Till* 'o',h:u in-; account was written in 1870. Trans. p.-!.'..:'.*nn '.. .1 i-.A.;cd in 1.53, but Port Arthur, it will !>r s•( ii, V..H still a penal settlement. To-day the t-'.vi.f-h'iii is mainly composed of buildings formerly tiv.■ 1v.M.m..:.. of the ofilcial staff, now occupied by sc.:;.!-', and the prison buildings are rapidly falling into di-i-ay. lon Arthur is distant fifty-one miles from Hobart.—Ed. W.P. akb R.]

" You will find it difficult to get down to Port Arthur unless you've friends there !'' said the genial but imperative landlady of the Ark Hotel. "Of course, I mean friends in the Government," she added, seeing that I looked askance.

We had friends in tlie Government, for Hacker, my companion, was a man of mark at the office of the Peacock,* and had hinted vaguely of column? of leaded minion to be snpplied by my eminent hand, while I had artfully expressed profound interest in the admirable structure of Castray's Parade. -' If you'll be at the wharf at six in the morning," said the Comptroller-General ; "you can go down in tho schooner, and I'll send word to the Commandant to bo ready to receive you. There's a young fellow from the barracks who wants to go ; so you can make a little parly." Arrived at the schooner in the misty dawn, wo saw the *' young fellow from the barracks." He was a slightly made, gentlemanly young fellow, who wore an eye-glass. " How do you do ?" said he. "Fellow-travellers? My name's Cool. Have a touch of this rum !" He produced from under his pea-jacket a black bottlo containing some "regulation," and affably handed it round. " Dear mc, it's very strong, sir J" coughed the skipper, who had taken a pull of some vigour. " Remarkably strong 1" spluttered I, accustomed to thinner potations. " Decidedly strong, bnt <_-— —d good I" said Hacker of tho Peacock. So we were all on a friendly footing without further ceremouy.

I have often wished my squeamish stomach had suffered mc to take more extended notes of our short voyago. There •ft/ere some four women—warder's wives, I {"think—and three ironed convicts aboard. ;3_beso latter poor devils roosted to leeward, Eke captive canaries, and sometimes gave a haul on a ropo and a melancholy Yo-ho. I had a sort of indistinct hope that thoy might do something romantic in the way of Basing ..the schooner, and carrying Hacker and myself off to bondage, or putting Cool, minus his rum bottle, ashore upon a desolate rock. But thoy did nothing of the sort, , being apparently but too glad to be allowed to take dog-sleep in the little forecastle. 'The passage which we were now making ' most in former days have been fraught with terror to many a poor soul. The same cliffs, the same green slopes, the same dull and dirty waves upon which I, the holiday mater, was gazing, had met the glances of many despairing wretches, had been yearned aver or- blasphemed at by men who bore with them I knew not what weight of sad 'and evil experience. The very bluff and jovial .captain, who, swathed in multiplicity of coat., pointed out to us the beauties of the harbour, had a store of strange learning, and talked as familiarly of murderers transported for life as " maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs." The little craft seemed tb bear about with her an atmosphere of villainy, to be saturated with convictism, and though I knew fall well that the only occupant of the cabin was a warder's wife, with a sick baby at her breast, I glanced towards the hatchway almost expecting to see, "emerge from it the sayago visage of Captain Swallow, the heads of the mutineers of the Cyprus, or to be thrilled by the appearanco in the flesh of one of those miscreants whoso fictional history I was then engaged in writing.

The approach to Fort Arthur has been often described, and always with rapturous enthusiasm. Doubtless upon a sunny morning, when tho leaping ' waves flash into showers of glittering spray, or during somo peaceful summer evening, when the sinking snn floods all the tender heavens with crimsoned gold, the rugged wilderness of the

rocky settlement may be called beautiful*

To mc, brooding over stories of misery and crime, Bitting beside the ironed convicts, and shivering at the chill breeze which whitened

the angry waters of the bay, there was no beauty in those desolate cliffs, no cheering picturesquenoss in that* frowning Bhore. I saw Port Arthur for the first time beneath a leaden and sullen sky ; and

its wo sailed inwards past tho ruins of Point Pner, and beheld barring our passage to the prison the low grey hummocks of the

Island of the Dead, I felt that there was a grim propriety in the melancholy of nature.

The jetty at the settlement L_ a fine * structure, built with that surprising excel-ience-which distinguishes the public wofks of Tasmania. It would be hard indeed if tlreToads, bridges, and breakwaters of the

lcoely island were not of admirable work- ' manship, considering how many able-bodied ratan have given their best blood and sweat

to* the building of them. The long white

Ijoe-of tho pior was spotted with groups of ]ui3oncrs. Some wore grey—these were fjgood-conc-Qct men. Some wore a parti-

•colour costume of yellow and black ; these

were prisoners for life. Some were dressed .all in yellow, these were the irreclaimables. iWe walked up tho pier amid respectful

salutes and a sort of stolid curiosity. A

gentleman named Dale (I hope that there is no one at P.A. of that name) met us. He

waa affable and easy. •- The Commandant Beat his compliments, and regretted that a fit-of the gout prevented him from attending personally to our comforts. Government

Qottage, however, was at our disposal, and

he (Mr Dale) had instructions to show us /•over the settlement." We bowed and 'followed our guide to Government Cottage, t a charming little wooden, wide-Yerandahed building, overlooking tho bay. Some halfdozen superannuated convicts were making a pretence of gardening, and took advantage of our arrival to suspend work altogether.

(These old fellows were the jetsam of the great transportation wave. Transported

years ago, they had run the dismal round of iprison diccipline—had been insubordinate and been flogged, had lost their "tickets,'' and been exiled to Norfolk Island, had perhaps joined with Jacky-Jacky in the mutiny of the copper kettles, or endured the ingenious punishments of the bridle and the stone, which were found so efficacious by .that noted disciplinarian Captain John Price. ** They don't seem to do much work," said Hacker, nodding at an old fellow who was Bitting on a fountain-basin, and rubbing it tenderly with his hand. "No," returned

Mr Dale, " they do not do much work, for they are all cripples, don't you sco; but they've no home but this, and the Commandant makes them do something." In the helpless o.d age of theso crippled criminals, the prison which had made such excellent use of them, gave them generous shelter ! The housekeeper of Government Cottage waa profuse in her apologies for lack of

accommodation. "If she had only known !

. His Excellency had been there lost week ! **•' Only to think of three gentlemen ! And the Commandant ill* too ! M Lieutenant Cool, who had. been" painfully uneasy, as with a nenafyioi duty unfulfilled, since we landed, a hurried toilet, produced tho f*u*awir IJottle, and said, screwing kt Mb eye glass with a fashionable air, " Mr Dale, have *tonbtStmUie_ltl\w_r_e__r_Hi.-_o,WA.aBAR.

a touch at this rum, and then, if you please, we'll call on the Commandant." We had a touch of rum, and we called on the Commandant. The Commandant received us with courtesy, apologised for his gout, informed us that he had ordered boats-crews innumerable to take us round the settlement and that if to-day we would visit the workshops and the barracks, we could start tomorrow overland for Eaglehawk Neck, cross the bay in a whalcboat, and so on to Kangaroo Point and Hobart Town. He showed us his curiosities, explained a map of the settlement made by a prisoner, and permitted us to examine the canoes of attempted absconders, "lam afraid that you will find but little to interest you," he said mournfully. " The place, is not like it used to be." This regretful allusion to past glories is common to Tasmauian settlers; and naturally so. JBut then they all pretend that they are so delighted to have ruined themselves by the abolition of transportation !

J The Commandant's house is a most picturesque and comfortable residence, overj lookin? the town. The approach to it is I contrived not without an eye to the resistance of assault, and beyond the entering arch, upon a terrace, paces (more aa a sign lof authority than a threat) a sentry with loaded musket. On the brow of the hill stands tho convict barracks, like a factory, and above all shoots into the air the gigantic semaphore. Volublo Mr Dale took us into the signal-house, and we looked through the glasses, despatched and received useless messages, and generally conducted ourselves after the intrusive and objectless manner of men out upon a holiday. The signalman was a fine handsome fellow—a sailor of course—and, upon the conclusion of our vagaries, Cool produced his pocket flask, and blandly suggested a touch of the inevitable rum. The swallowing of ardent spirits was against convict regulations, but Mr Dale suggested that the Commandant did not object to a small present of tobacco. So we all tobaccocd our friend, and departed into the township. "We will first visit the workshops, gentlemen," Baid Mr Dale, " and then the gaol; then we will see the church, and the quarters of tho stipendiaries." "Of the which ?" asked Hacker. " The stipendiaries, sir," said Mr Dale ; "I am a stipendiary." He said this with an air oF such dignity that a stipendiary might have been an archbishop.

I am afraid that my memory will not serve nic sufficiently to enable mc to accurately detail all the arrangements of the prison. I know that the saws in the workshops made a great noise, and that the tan-pits had a very strong odour about them —an odour, by the way, which Mr Dale (who incontinently fell into one during some enthusiastic explanations of tho doings of the Commandant), persisted in carrying about with us despite all hints. I know that the prisoners seemed all alike in feature, and that I could no more distinguish them the one from the other than I could swear to a Chinaman or a two-cooth wether. I know that a general scowl of depression seemed to be on the fellows' faces, and that the noise of the irons made my unaccustomed ears tingle. I know that I thought to myself that I should go mad were I condemned to such a life, aud that I caught one of the men looking at mc with a broad grin as I thought it. I know that there scei-led to nic to hang over the whole place a sort of horrible gloom, as though the sunlight had been withdrawn from it, and that I should have been ashamed to have suddenly met some high-minded friend, inasmuch as ifc seemed that in coming down to stare at these chained and degraded beings, we had all been guilty of an act of unmanly curiosity. Then turning from the almost, empty workshops to the huge batraeks, and hearing tho stipendiary's glib stories of escapes, and murders, and suicides to avoid the agony of living, I pictured the many windows of that hideously square and practical structure crowded with heads; saw the open ground before us once more dotted over with chaingangs, heard the cat hiss and swing, and caught the echoes of the awful mirth with which the doomed wretches cheered their lingering hours. How many sighs had gone up to Heaven from among those trim trees, how many tears had moistened those neatly chiselled flagstones ? The scene upon which we gazed had been the loathed life-long prospect of .many a poor scoundrel, who perhaps was not so much worse than I. I do not thirik that I have any maudlin sympathy for convicts, but as I looked round upon the seamed and sullen faces, I thought of the saying of the enthusiast, " There, but for the grace of God, goes John Newton !" and seemed for the first time to realise how thin is the planking of " favourable circumstances" which is between the best of us and such a fate.

.We made progress through the_gaol. We saw the kitchens and tasted the " skilly," and replied to the enquiry, "is not that remarkably good, sir? Many an honest poor man would bo glad to get that, eh _" by a-proper " yes, indeed," as is the etiquette to do on such occasions. The mess-room was admirably ordered. At one given signal, somebody says an orthodox grace, at another the 150 men who comprise the available force of able-bodied criminals sit down and eat, at another they rise up and return thanks for their daily bread, at a third they clank away to their dormitories. The dormitory was like nothing so much as the 'tween decks of somo huge ship. The bunks were railed off, and tho convicts lay with their heads to the ship's side. Lamps were kept burning all night and a watchman patrolled the space between the berths. . We viewed the baths where each day each man ha 3 five minutes' washing, and looked into the "old prison," where are the cells tor the refractory. This old prison is a frightfully gloomy spot. The walls are like those of a bastille, the air is damp and heavy, and the one unlucky man who was undergoing confinement crouched in a sort of yellow darkness, and came to the barred window to stare at us, like a wild beast in a cage. We saw tho " punishment yard," where men had in old times received. their 200 lashes, and regarded it with the same curious awe with which we peeped into the torture chamber at the Tower on some school holiday, or watched the genial beefeater imprison in the " gaoler's daughter " the dainty wrist of our pretty cousin from the country. Grass grew now in the interstices of the stones, and the turnkey shut the door with an air of relief—as though he was shutting up a haunted room. "We will now see the

* solitary ' prison," said Mr Dale, and so we perforce visited that ingenious contrivance for making madmen. Tho prison is like others of its kind. A central hall has radiating corridors ; on each side of these corridors are cells. The prisoner sentenced to " solitary confinement" is placed in one of these chambers, and from the moment the door closes upon him until his term of sentence expires is left alone with whitewash. His exercise is taken in a little yard into which his cell opens. The consolations of religion are administered to him in a box which is so constructed as to shut out from his view all other " miserable sinners " (save the officiating clergymen). His head is muffled in a helmet of cloth pierced with eye-holes, so that he is irrecognisable, and, his mind thus distracted from earthly things, his intellect is fed with tracts, for the most part expressions of sectarian opinion upon theological dogmas, or cheering promise, of an eternity of future of torment. An absolute silence reigns in this moment of official ctufiidity. The warders wear list

slippers, and from time to time the convict, meditating on the " worm that dieth not and the fire that i 3 not quenched," sees the peephole of his door slide noiselessly back, and meets the cold gaze of his gaoler's eye. "We find that a man who does more than twelve months' solitary," said Mr Dale, in a whisper, " becomes weak in his mind."

When at Hobart Town I had asked an official of position to allow mc to see the records, and—in consideration of the Peacock —he was obliging enough to do so. There I found set down, in various handwritings, the history of some strange lives—" John Doe, Marpelia, poaching, ten years, York Assizes, 1852 ; assigued, 1833, to Richard Roe, Esq., of Green Ponds ; May 4, 1833, insubordination, fifty lashes ; August 18, 1833, refusing to work, fifty lashes ; September 7, 1333. absconding from his hired service, ten years' penal servitude ; June 12, 1835, attempt at murder," &c.—and glancing down the list, spotted with red ink for floggings, like a well-printed prayer-book, had asked, " \Vho is the worst man you have alive now ? " The obliging official considered. " I think that Mooney is the worst. Let mc see. M., Mac, Mic, Moo. Here we are. Transported at thirteen years of age for poaching, flogged—but there, you can read it yourself. He was in the Jacky-Jacky business at Norfolk Island. He has drawn lots with another man for murder ; he has been a bushranger—oh, a terrible fellow !" " And where is he now ?" I asked. " Oh," said the genial official, with a calm self-satisfaction (so it seemed to mc) at the excellence of the system which he administered, " He's all right now; we've got him all right now ! He's a lunatic at Port Arthur now .'"

I requested to be shown this fortunate example of convict discipline, and Mr Dale obligingly directed his steps towards the asylum.

Tlie asylum was chiefly remarkable for the number of old men which it contained. Port Arthur, in the year in which we visited it, was a hospital for cripples, and decrepid, blear-eyed convicts basked in the suushine of the yard, or warmed their maimed limbs at the fire in the keeping-room, with a senile complacency that was almost as affecting as is the helplessness of an infant.

Having passed Smith O'Brien's cottage— pointed out to us with a reverence which spoke much for the gentle breeding of that rash but patriotic Irishman—we were conducted into the asylum. Visitors to Bedlam will remember Cibbers statues, "Melancholy and Madness." The living statues whom we saw were mere reproductions of the hideous stone. Some leant listlessly against the walls, some raved locked in cells. In ordinary lunatic asylums oue sees in one's melancholy progress a variety of character— the mad folks sing, laugh, relate anecdotes, imagine themselves to be endowed with good fortune, or to possess claims to reverence. Here were no such pleasurable emotions. The criminal lunatics were of two dispositions—they cowered and crawled like whipped fox-hounds to the feet of their keepers, or they raged, howling blasphemous and hideous imprecations upon their gaolers. I was eager to sec my poacher of thirteen years. The warder drew aside a peep-hole in the barred door, and I saw a grizzled, gaunt, and half-naked old man coiled in a corner. The peculiar wild-beast smell which belongs to some forms of furious madness exhaled from the cell. The gibbering animal within turned, and his malignant eyes met mine. "Take care," said the gaoler ; "ho has a habit of sticking his finger through the peep-hole to try aud poke someone's eye out!" I drew back, and a nail-bitten, hairy finger, like the toe of an ape, was thrust with rapid and simian neatness through the aperture. " That is how he amuses himself," said the good warder, forcing-to the iron slot; '* he'd best be dead, I'm think-

ing." From the asylum we visited the quarters of the stipendiaries, saw the neat theatre erected for the edification of those gentlemen, and examined the books in the library. " I will take you round by the church and the chaplain's house," said Mr Dale, " and it will be then time for you to return to Government Cottage." We saw the church, a handsome building, built in 1836, and heard the legend of the stolen money which was supposed to have been built into tbe wall of it. "A curious place I" cried Cool, when we reached ' our cottage. 'Very curious. ("Have a touch of tliis rum, Mr Dale.") Pray how many prisoners have you here now ? " " Mrs Glamorgan," says Dale, " oblige mc with a pen. By-the-way, there are goats in the garden, Mrs Glamorgan ; you know the Commandant's objection to goats. Here is the list, sir, as forwarded to Hobart Town by the schooner. Gentlemen, my compliments." And with a bow (and a touch of rum) he departed. The list was as follows: — Convicts .. - mm — 301 Do., invalids •. — — 13 Do., insane _ .. _ 8 322 raupers not under sentence „ 166 Lunatics do. _ — ___ 86 252 26th Jan., 1870 574 How shorn of its glories was Babylon . How ill had the world wagged with it since the days of the settlement of Port Phillip in 1835, when the prison owned 911 men and 270 boys, their labour for the year being valued at £16,000! As we slept beneath the hospitable roof of Government Cottage, we, travellers from despised Port Philip, were cognisant that over the doorway of our shelter was even then written the melancholy " Ichabod. Thy glory hath departed."

Next morning came the whale-boat to take us to Dead Man's Island, and we embarked under the noses of a guard. Cockney travellers, anxious to find foreign similes for their local inconveniences, have

long persisted in calling gondolas the hackney-cabs of Venice. Following the «ame humour, I may say that the whaleboats are the omnibuses ot Port Arthur. Six convicts of good character represent the horses, while a free coxswain, having loaded revolver in his belt and carbine ready to his hand, sits in the stern-sheets and represents the mild cad who is so careful of his sixpences from the Marble Arch to Bays-water. Dead Man's Isle, or LTsie dcs Moris, as tlie maps term it, is a foolish little sand island hummocked with graves. There many scoundrels mingle their dust with that" of more fortunate men. May (the murderer of the Italian image-boy) is rotting there ; so also is Robert Young, 51st Regiment, accidentally drowned; so also are three seamen of the schooner " Echo," together with many of the 21st, 51sl, and 63rd Regiments. I trampled over the graves in full humour to be orthodox, and to look with abhorrence upon the clay that Buffered in life beneath a yellow jacket, but decided upon the exercise of Christian charity when I found myself gazing with virtuous indignation at the headstone of one, the wife of Private Gibbins, 21st Hegiment, and who (poor woman) died virtuously in childbed.

From the Island of the Dead our whaleboat took us to Long Bay, aud landed us thereat the wooden pier. In the "good times" before mentioned, the isthmus between Long Bay and Norfolk Bay was bridged by the railroad of clever Captain Booth, and travellers like ourselves were dragged in waggons by harnessed murderers or burglars. In the decadence of convict discipline, however, this gratification was denied us, and we walked over sandy soil and through prickly scrub, while a taciturn convict of unprepossessing appearance drove a cart containing our baggage. In this happy manner we reached the corresponding pier at Norfolk Bay, where, tossing in the chill waves, lay another whaleboat with another convict crew and another armed coxswain. So embarking—not without a touch of the inevitable rum—we passed Woody Island, and made for the famed Eaglehawk Neck.

Eaglehawk Neck is a strip of sand some 500 yards across. On the western side of this isthmus lies Eaglehawk Bay, opening out into Port Bunche, and guarded by the signal station of Woody Island and the peninsula Of One-tree Point; on the eastern side the Southern Ocean breaks unchecked upon the rocky point of Cape Surville, rages iv white wrath upon the long length of Descent Beach, or burrows in treacherous silence beneath the honeycomb rocks that guard the southern horn of Pirates' Bay. Across the isthmus is built a plank-road, in the midst of which is a guard-house. patrol night and day, while tho eye of the new-comer is startled by tlie sight of dogs set out upon stages ex ('ending far into the shallows on cither side. To reach the further shore the escaping convict must—like the adventurous Cash and his companions—dare the sharks and swim tlie rapids of Pirates' Bay, but to land upon the barren sand of Iforrestier's Peninsula, blocked by another isthmus, which leads to civilisation and recapture.

Our boat, beached upon the further shore, was met by tlie sergeant in charge, who received us with military honours, turned out the guard in respect to Cool's forage cap, and conducted us to his house. In old days a commissioned officer, with a subaltern's guard (and a rationed shark, as legends go), looked after tliis important spot, and the line of neat white huts upon the sand testified to the presence of troops. At the time of our visit, Hezckias Macklewain was judged sufficient protection. To describe Sergeant Macklcwain is not my intention. Suffice it to say that he was an " old soldier," and that he fulfilled the promise of hospitality, artfulness, and discipline, which those two words imply. It is my'fortune to have many friends who hold the Queen's commission, and Macklewain seemed to have relatives in every regiment in the service. " The Fighting Onety-oneth 1' Mc cousin Tim was colour-sorgeanfc at Badajo.'." "Did ye say thft Princess's Plungers ? Mc brother was batman to the ould divil of a colonel, and mc wife's father knew your uncle well. Och—"

" Have a touch of rum," says Cool. " What's the motto of the Tearing Tentytenth—Risky, frisky, whiskey, eh ?"

"By wooden i__an, sir, but Sally's ©yiieefe, v_as —- ? '

" Oh, have a touch of rum," cried Hacker

"And so you're a grandson of General Barry, are ye ? Roaring Harry Barry, of Barry Ogc—him they called Barry Lyndon. Oeh-"

" Have another touch of rum," said Cool

I trust that I shall not bo misunderstood when I say that we spent a merry night— within tlie limits of becoming mirth, of course. We related anecdotes of moving accident, we told camp-stories—of a Shandean order, not unfrequently; we sang military songs, and that jolly sergeant and his wife danced a reel, or I am much mistaken, to the music of Cool's melodious whistle. Then, having been all bedded down, in the sergeant's be3t bedroom you may be sure, with all the good wife's blankets heaped above us, we slept the sleep of the just, lulled by the music of the murmuring waves, as they ran in upon the ocean beach.

At daylight the sergeant roused us. "To I the Blow-hole !" The Blow-hole is a curious J freak of nature. At the southern horn of I Pirate's Bay the sea has bored an enormous cavern, and having—in remote ages—forced j its way upwards through the roof of this | tunnel, there now remains an arch of rock, called by the fir&fc discoverers of it ■•'Tasman. s Arch." To this spot, by a I rough track, did our jovial sergeant lead us. We advanced through the scrub, and saw suddenly open at our feet an immense chasm, at the bottom of which the sea was lazilylapping. Beyond this chasm the scrub continued apparently unbroken, but upon skirting the enormous hole we felt the salt breeze lick our faces, and a few steps further placed us at tlie brink of the cliff. The morning was an exquisitely calm and bright one, and the tide was low. We looked down through a funnel nearly 200 ft deep, and saw at the bottom but wet and weed-girt rocks. Our sergeant informed us that in times of violent storm tho water, driven in with the full violence of the wave which breaks upon the cliflj is spouted up through the funnel into air! I was long inclined to-doubt this statement, until I found it coafirmed by Dr. Ross, who records that, visiting the place on a comparatively calm day, he saw " between mc and the light, little sparkles of spray rising up several feet into the air; " and, after staling that the impression of terror produced upon': his mind by the "awful depths of the * boilers of Bnchan' " was mauy degrees inferior to that induced by the Blow-hole, • he says that " the spectator could observe, at a depth of 150 ft or 200 ft, tho waters rolling in by a subterraneous channel, and dashing the spray in his face." The aspect of this spot during a gale must be as marvellous as that of the Douvres. The Blow-hole, in fact, repeats at the antipodes the marvels of the Channel Islands, for, , descending by a narrow pathway to the foot, of the precipice, we found ourselves on a ledge of rock which at high-water is covered by furious surf, and the huge cavern, inter-.I sected and bored into by several smaller I ones, bore an aspect sufficiently romantic i to have warranted its selection as the scene of a drama of the sea scarcely less wonderful than that one played at the order of Victor Hugo by Gilliatt and the pieuvre on the Mad-rock of Guernsey.

Cool and I bathed in a pool of water some ten feet wide, and heaven knows how deep, left by the retired sea at the base of the cliff. The sides of this natural bath were covered with sea-weeds, and its depths were inhabited by a variety of oceanic life, which the clearness of the water allowed to be distinctly seen. It was as though we had plunged into an aquarium. -Refreshed by our bath and a walk over the beach *to the guard-house, we breakfasted heartily, and took leave of our hospitable entertainers to embark in the ready whaleboat which was to convey us back to civilisation. TTie 'boat voyage was not remarkable for aught save weariness. The wind had freshened, and for some hours we laboured against the tide, beguiling the time with anecdote and story. The coxswain related to us the history of Cash and Cavanagh, told of the exploits of the "Jaguar," the.acuteness of Mr John Evenden, chief constable, and the unfortunate death of one "Hangman Thompson," who, being recognised at the diggings by some of his old prison mates, was dragged to pieces with bullocks. At these tales we laughed and shuddered by turns, but no expression of merriment or of disgust moved our stolid crew. They did not seem to listen, or, listening, did not appear to heed. We free men talked in the prescnoo of these

prisoners as if they had h_en dog". " You bathe in sight of your slaves," said someone to the Empress Theodora. " Well, they ar«> but slaves," was the reply. When we landed at Ralph's Bay, wailing for our cart to jog towards Kangaroo Point, I said to Cool, busy in distributing tobacco to the boat's crew, " What do yon think of it V Cool looked at the prisoners, at the sea, at the sky, and at Hacker. "I respect the power oi the press," said he; "have a touch of rum." " See," said I, reversing the flask, "it is empty!" "\Ay, only the smell of it left, your honour !" said a prisoner, breaking silence for the first time.

Tiiis exclamation of our prisoner's—rude, but true—is, in fact, an admirable summing up of the convict system. When, safeh* seated after supper in the comfortable coffee-room of the Ark, we began to compare ideas and impressions of our recent experiences, the remark of the convict oarsman recurred to mc again and again. Tlie frightful blunder hod become a thing of the past—the victims of it.were dead or insane. Everybody admitted that "mistakes had been made in the old times," and begged that the loathly corpse of this dead wickedness, called " Transportation," might be comfortably buried away and ignored of men and journalists. But "the smell of il" remained —remains. Cripples, self-maimed, lest worse might have befallen them, walk the streets of Hobart Town. In out-of-the-way corners, in shepherds' huts or roadside taverns, one meets "old hands" who relate terrible and true histories. In the folio reports of the House of Commons can be read statements which make one turn sick with disgust, and flush hot with indignation. Officialdom, with its crew of parasites and lickspittles, may try to palliate the enormities committed in the years gone by ; may revile, with such powers of abuse as are given to it, the writers who record the five's which it blushes for. But the sad, grim truth remains. For a century the law allowed tho vagabonds and criminals of England to be subjected to a lingering torment, to. a hideous debasement, to a monstrous system of punishment, futile for good and horribly powerful for evil; and ity is with feelings of the most profound delight that we view the probable abolition of the last memorial of au error fraught with so much misery.