a delicious air, clear sky, and the sharp outline
of every light feather of the foliage picked out
against it.

There used to be oranges; but, once upon
a time, there lived in Norfolk Island a wise
commandant, who voted oranges too great a
luxury for convicts, and caused the trees that
grew them to be extirpated. They are now,
however, being reintroduced. In a garden
belonging to the commandant, called Orange
Vale, sight, taste, and smell enjoy a paradise.
Delicate cinnamon grows by the rough
stout old English oak. Tea, coffee, tobacco,
sugarcane, banana, figs, arrowroot and lemon
grow in company with English fruits and
vegetables that have been forced by the
climate into an ecstatic, transcendental state.
The spirituality of a carrot gets to be
developed when it grows up in such good
company as that of sweet bucks and bananas.
Sweet bucks are sweet potatoes, which are
very kisses to the palate;  and are served out
daily as rations to the evil and the good, the
convicts and the officers.

But truly there is need of a fine climate to
make compensation for the other details of a
residence in Norfolk Island—I do not mean
to the convicts who are cut off here from all
the rest of mankind, and whose case is
deplorable;  but to those who guard and
govern them. The members of the local
staff form but a limited field of social
intercourse for one another. The  "Lady
Franklin"  is the only regular trader to their
little coast from Hobart Town  (one thousand
three hundred miles away);  she makes but
four trips in the year.  A convict ship is not
often sent on from England.  When a ship
does arrive on lawful business at Norfolk
Island, great is the sensation. The coming in
of a ship on business causes, apparently, all
business to be at an end. Letters from home
bless the temporary exiles; for they have to
be enjoyed and answered. All in the ship who
are entertainable are hospitably to be
entertained. In private and in public life, who is
alive and who is dead in England; who is up
and who is down; what bubbles have burst,
and what new bubbles have been blown, have
to be learned over the dinner-table. The
highest virtue of a visitor, is untiring
loquacity.

The dark scenes of convict life, of which I
have already given some examples, do not
now fill Norfolk Island with their ancient
honours. Here also the good old times have
given way to better new times. Captain
Macconochie, under all the difficulties against
which he had to contend when he was
governor, utterly broke down the old ferocious
system.  Under the temperate, strict, and
judicious control of Mr. Price, the present
commandant, a system of discipline has been
established; which, while it does not make
the probation of the convicts other than
a term of punishment, accords to them such
wholesome management, and such fair
treatment, as has humanised their conduct
among one another, and towards those set in
authority over them.  Formerly, in the blaze
of noonday, it was dangerous for any one
to walk alone beyond the precincts of the
settlement.  Violent crimes and murders
were common among the gangs while at their
work—convict quarrelling with convict.  The
resident was clouded with a daily sense of
insecurity, a dread for the safety of his wife
or children when they left his sight.  For
then the incessant lash made hard hearts
harder;  and wretches made to grovel in dark
cells, chained by ring-bolts to the floor, and
wearing sixty pounds of iron on their arms,
were degraded even lower than they had been
forced at home below the feelings of humanity.
Then convicts were driven at night-fall,
besmeared and dirty with the day's toil, into
the barrack, and were locked up till morning
in neglected rooms, to prey upon each other.
No officer who ventured there among them
would come out alive; but, in front of the
open grated windows sentries paced, whose
orders were to fire promptly into any room
from which the sound of tumult or the
cry of murder should proceed, if the
disturbance did not cease at his command.
Whether the shot went into the body of
the right offender, was a lottery which
rendered it the interest of all, if possible—
but among men so brutalised, how was it
possible?—to check the violent.

Now, this is all changed for the better.
Still the discipline is very strict;  and so
works, that it is to the most hardened the
most severe in punishment. The sleeping-
rooms are now well lighted and well
ventilated. The two hours between supper
and rest have been spent in the school, and
the day has been closed with prayers. The
two clergymen, Messrs. Batchelor and Ryan
—one Protestant, one Roman Catholic—
each in his sphere work without intermission.
The schools are well-conducted; and,
where they awaken, as they do in most, a
desire for knowledge, they beget a mutual
confidence between the well-conducted, who
now form by far the chief proportion of
the convicts.  Locks and bolts are falling
out of use upon the doors of the residents;
and, because there are few female servants,
pretty children—children thrive and look
unusually pretty in a climate such as this—
may be seen carried on the arms of house-
breakers, or drawn in their small carts
through the lemon groves and gardens, by the
brown, rugged hands that had grown hard in
deeds of violence.

It is no miracle that has been here performed;
men bred to crime in England by
the ignorance and filth we cherish, are bred
out of crime again in Norfolk Island, by
a little teaching and a little human care.
Almost all the men who return to Hobart
Town after fulfilling their term of probation
here, are in demand as servants, and are