unnecessary ornaments. Most of the convicts
have been, in one place or other, prisoners
from childhood. They have been three times
convicted at home; first of all, whipped,
perhaps, in the Parkhurst prison for juvenile
offenders. After being exposed to the
contaminating influence of many more depraved
than themselves they have been pardoned,
and sent adrift on the world, worse than
when they entered it. Again apprehended and
convicted they have been sent to Pentonville,
or some other prison. Liberated after years,
again following a course of crime, and once
more apprehended and convicted, they have
been transported to Van Diemen's Land, or
Norfolk Island. At each of these places, and
in all their prisons, at home and abroad, the
pet system of penal training and reform in
use at the period has been tried, and all have
failed. Obtaining their conditional pardons,
after a certain number of years in Van
Diemen's Land, or Norfolk Island, they have
had it in their power to go with their ticket
of leave to any of the Australian colonies. Of
course they have made directly for Melbourne
—first to the gold region of the diggings,
and next to the more fixed gold region of the
wealthy community in the town. Most of
the crimes of these men—that is to say, ninety
per cent. of them, have originated in England.
They had their chief experience and training
at home. They have committed every crime
here, to obtain gold, which their previous
knowledge, skill, and depravity could suggest
—and here they are at last.

It is night; a cold wind blows and a
drizzling rain falls. An iron tongue, that is
to say, a large bell in the Stockade, now
announces that the time has arrived for all
the prisoners to go to bed. A jingling of
chains is heard as the several gangs pass
across the yard, then a sound of the drawing
of bolts, then silence. I cannot help speculating
on the different sorts of suppressed
ferocity in the faces of all these subdued
human tigers, as they sit up on their wooden
pallets, or look out from beneath their
blankets.

Dining with the Superintendent, and the
chief officer in command of this department
(an old army captain), we are waited upon by
one of the aborigines, whose black face is
without a single tint of negro brown. He
is a prisoner of the Stockade, but in reward
for a long period of good conduct, is
entrusted with this comparative degree of
liberty. He understands enough English—
chiefly nouns, with a few morsels of verbs—
to wait very well; and though in his training
he let fall or otherwise demolished a fearful
amount of plates, glasses, and other strange
and wondrous domestic articles which were
previously unknown to his hands or eyes, he
has now attained sufficient skill to avoid all
such disasters. But he has his many old
misfortunes of this kind in constant memory,
and is full of dreadful apprehensions at every
feat he performs. When he places a
decanter of wine on the table, he remains a
second or two with glaring eyes, and slowly
withdrawing his open hands from both sides,
ready to catch it in case it should take a fit
of tumbling over as he walks away. He has
an awful look of care in handing me a large
dish of smoking potatoes. It seems like a
solemn rite to an idol. I do not dare to
glance up at his face. His constant care and
watchfulness are extraordinary, and he
obviously possesses far more intelligence than
the aborigines of Australia are generally
believed capable of acquiring. Mr. Barrow
informs me that he is really in all ordinary
respects a very good and trusty servant, and
that he has never been known to tell an
untruth.

But the picture I have formed in my
imagination, of all those fierce convicts in their
chains—which are not taken off even at
night—sitting up in their dens, or scowling
up from beneath their blankets, still haunting
me, I feel obliged to communicate my wish
to Mr. Barrow to be permitted, if not
contrary to rules, to pay them a passing visit
forthwith. My wish being courteously
accorded, I accompany the captain to the gate
of the Stockade, and having passed this, and
the armed sentinels, I find myself in a sort of
barrack-yard, to appearance, with store-
rooms at each side, having strong narrow
doors, immense iron bolts, and an iron grating
above for ventilation. The captain informs
me that the stores are not thus protected to
prevent anybody from walking off with them,
but to render it almost impossible for the
stores themselves to escape. These strong
rooms are, in fact, the wards, or dormitories
of the convicts. Being invited to look in upon
them, I approach one of these bolted doors.
A square shutter is unfastened and pushed
aside by the captain, and displays an iron
grating through which I look at the
irreclaimables in their lairs. How absurdly
different is the reality from the picture I had
framed in my imagination! Over a large
room are distributed on stretchers, or other
raised surface, and all so close together as
only to allow of space for passage round each,
a number of bundles of bedding, apparently,
each enveloped in a grey and blue chequered
coverlid of the same pattern. The bales or
bundles are without motion or sound; no
voice is heard, no head or foot is visible. Each
bundle contains the huddled up form of a
convict, who adopts this plan to obtain the
greatest degree of warmth. Some are, no
doubt, asleep; many wide awake, and full of
peculiar thoughts: and perhaps even of fresh
plans, should they ever again get a chance.
What a volume of depraved life, what a
prison-history lies enfolded in each of those
moveless coverlids! There is absolutely
nothing more to be seen, and we pass on to
the next door. It is very much the same.

A third ward, however, presents a difference,