commandant, addressing us, asked, "Has
any man any complaint to make of the
doctor?" but no complaint was made. The
agricultural labourers were sent to a station
called Longridge, about two miles inland, the
rest being retained in the settlement. When
the commandant and the medical superintendent
retired, the chaplain paid us a visit.
He was an intelligent, and, as I subsequently
found, most benevolent man.

In the course of the two days' rest, I had an
opportunity of inspecting the dormitories of
the prisoners, and other parts of the
establishment. I saw a body of men called the
"chain gang." These were incorrigible offenders.
Their legs were chained together, so
that as they went to and fro to their work,
they could step but a few inches at a time.
Their appearance was abject in the extreme.
The police were a smart-looking set of fellows,
selected from the finest-looking men among
the prisoners, very clean, and wearing striped
shirts, blue jackets, and white duck trowsers,
with leathern belts, and hats made from the
cabbage-tree, which nourished on the Island,
strips of which, woven and plaited, looked
like straw. The police, however, either from
negligence or connivance, or perhaps from
sympathy with the prisoners, being
themselves convicts, were very inefficient; for
robberies were constantly committed in open
day, in the heart of the settlement.

On my visit to the gaol, I had opportunities
of observing some remarkable features in the
conduct of that establishment. I was surprised
at witnessing a pitched battle in the court-
yard, under the eye of the governor of the
gaol. Two men were brought out of the same
cell; their chains were knocked off, and
they had a set pugilistic encounter, until one
of them avowing himself beaten, their chains
were put on again, and they retired together
into their cell. I was much struck with this
novel feature in prison discipline, and ventured
to ask the gaoler about it. He said, "Oh!
they've been quarrelling for some time, and
I thought it better they should fight it
out." Shortly after, the dinners were taken
round to the prisoners; and as the wardsman
took the supply to each cell, he was
vigilantly guarded by two soldiers with bayonets
fixed, and the food was hastily and stealthily
thrust in at the door, apparently with more
alarm than the keeper of Wombwell's
menagerie ever felt in feeding the most ferocious
of his wild beasts. I found, upon inquiry,
that these precautions were by no means
superfluous, instances having occurred of
most savage assaults upon the wardsmen
by unhappy wretches, who had been rendered
almost maniacs by sentences of solitary
imprisonment for life in chains.

The sudden change from the ship ration to
that of the Island, of which the homminy was
the chief feature, gave at least a third of our
men, myself included, an attack of dysentery,
and I was thereby introduced to the medical
superintendent of the Island, an able and
humane man. Those who were well enough
to work were all employed, either in trade, in
husbandry, or as writers, according to their
previous pursuits and qualifications, although
access by convicts to the records of the Island
was expressly forbidden by a regulation of the
Home Government. I, with several others,
was compelled to go into the hospital, where
one of our party, an athletic Sussex farming
man, died of the epidemic superinduced by
the homminy. The illness of the men was
attributed by some to the change of climate,
but that theory was negatived by the fact
that not one of the free officers, who landed
with us, suffered at all. It is beyond doubt
that dysentery and death were in numerous
instances solely attributable to the diet.

The hospital was a low stone building close
to the sea. Into the ward in which I lay, ten low
pallets had been crammed with difficulty, and
the heat was excessive; but there was a stillness
about the place, and a gentle manner
with my sick companions, subdued by suffering,
which were strange after the noise and
coarse brutality to which I had been so long
accustomed. At night-time a cooler air came
through the half-opened window, and it was
a pleasure to lie awake and listen to the
roiling of the sea upon the beach. But, as
might be expected, there was little there to
soothe the sufferer in the weariness of long
sickness, much less to strengthen his soul in
that last moment which is so terrible in its
mystery even for the wisest and the best.
Many of the most daring of the convicts have
wrung a kind of respect from those over
them by the terror of their vengeance—some
ruffians indeed, to my knowledge, have even
struck those high in command, and been
suffered to go unpunished; but the sick and
helpless could expect little consideration.
Several deaths occurred while I was there,
and the sense of the suffering around me
depressed iny spirits and retarded my
convalescence. How different was this from all
that I had previously known and associated
with the idea of the sick-bed, the hushed
and darkened room where you alone are ill,
and every one about you is in good health,
and you are the sole object of their pity and
attention! Feverish and weary with long
lying on my hard bed, the knowledge that
there were many about me whose sufferings
were greater than mine, instead of
consoling me, seemed to shut me out from all
compassion, and to make my misery still
more unendurable. Nothing was there to
remind me that sickness was an exceptional
state, no token of health or cheerfulness which
I too might hope one day to regain;—the
greatest wretchedness of that wretched spot
brought together where I lay, all life seemed
to me sickly and overshadowed with death.
And where were they who, the last time I had
been ill, had sought by a hundred ways to
make my sufferings lighter? Whose cares,