WO hundred and twenty years ago

To Dutchman was wandering about

the lone Southern seas. He discovered a new land in that region of westerly gales. He found it a spot favoured by Nature with a charming climate, productive soil, and pleasing landscape. He gave it the name of Van Diemen's Land, after his Dutch friend the governor of Batavia. A lonely little isle that was sparkling with beauty near he called after the most attractive object known to him- Maria, the pretty daughter of the governor. Too far removed from other Dutch settlements to promise any commercial advantage, the countrymen of Tasman took no heed of the discovery. Beyond a visit by Captain Cook one hundred and thirty years after, nothing was thought of the very southern land until the settlement of Port Jackson, the Botany Bay of convictism.

The home ministry afterwards contemplated another penal establishment. The report of Captain Flinders upon the suitability of Port Phillip harbour led to the expedition being sent there in October, 1803. The party located themselves upon the sandy coast near the mouth of the port, a spot utterly unavailable for the purposes designed, being barren and waterless. Instead

of seeking for a better position in the neighbourhood, Colonel Collins, the commandant and lieutenant-governor, remained but three months, and then removed to the banks of the Derwent, on the southern side of Van Diemen's Land, of which he had heard a favourable account. With a noble cove for shipping, bright streams from the mountains, timber forests for buildings, fertile nooks for agriculture, and a climate sunnier than that of England, but as invigorating and as healthful, this most southern of settlements did promise to be most suitable for the isolation of the convicts, and the carrying out of prison discipline, as well as the preservation of health and the furnishing of the means of subsistence.

As in the early times Van Diemen's Land was essentially a penal colony, it is quite necessary to give some sketch of the mode of treatment the exiles of Britain received.

For the first few years the settlement was nothing but a camp: the

people, free and bond, were rationed from the public stores. Works of public utility were commenced, and gave employment to the male convict population. The female portion were few in numbers, and had no engagements but as servants to the civil and military officers, or were attached to their quarters in a less honourable capacity. As sentences expired, or pardons were given, an intermediato class sprang into existence. Gradually all the machinery of a civilized city was set in motion, and Hobart Town ceased to be a camp. As prisoners kept coming in in excess of the requirements of Government, or, rather, from a shameful neglect of provision for their arrival, it was customary for a ship to be discharged, and the poor creatures to find lodgings for themselves wherever they could, penniless and strangers to the town. This inhumanity caused the weak and decent to suffer great hardships, and gave occasion to the stronger and more reckless to indulge their old habits of pillage and attack. It was many years, in fact, before the erection of what was called a penitentiary, but better known in the place as the tench,' for abbreviation. This was simply an enclosed barracks for the reception of new arrivals, and the home of the town gangs.

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The difficulty of finding suitable government employment necessitated the origination of the assignment system. By this a settler could obtain the loan of male or female convist labour on certain terms. He was at first only expected to find them food and clothing: the particular quantities of each were appointed. quently the ration was retained, but a sum of money from five to ten pounds a year was to be paid for cach, so that clothes or other wants might be supplied by the individual. Complaints were made that the clothing was not properly furnished, either by the master in private service, or by the authorities when on public works.. Men went about with pieces of old rugs tied about them for garments.. Of others, the more active, goodlooking, or unscrupulous, it was said that they were dependent on their sweethearts for the supply of this necessity.

necessity. How the women procured the means for their fellow-convicts may be supposed.

The assignment system had its bright and its dark side. With a good master a man acquired a knowledge of a trade, was kept in a state of almost comfortable independence, and had a favourable future open to him. With a bad employer he was neglected in person, and subject to much tyranny and even cruelty. The slightest complaint would procure only increased trouble. His life would be a burden; and many decent men were thus driven to commit atrocities who would otherwise have been reformed. By good behaviour in service indulgences of partial freedom were procured. By ill conduct the period of prison discipline was extended. Many unable to endure the ignominy of domestic slavery, especially with the arbitrary and often unjust infliction of the lash, preferred the dangers and privations of the wild bush life. Subsisting necessarily upon the produce of robbery, as the forest gave few means of livelihood, they brought themselves not only to the condition of bolters, so called, but the more terrible name of bushrangers: they who thus took to the woods with arms were by that very act outlawed, and exposed to condemnation of death.

Bushranging was quite an institution of Van Diemen's Land. Usually it was conducted upon the Dick Turpin principles, and comprehended the various crafts of footpads, highwaymen, and burglars. It has sometimes been the solitary exercise of these arts of villany, and at other times it has assumed the importance of organized and mounted bands, worthy of the condottieri or banditti of the Apennines. The singularly hilly nature of the country, its vast morasses to the westward, its deep jungle-like scrub, and its almost interminable forests, afforded admirable shelter and concealment to the rogues, and great facilities for their operations. Not recognized as robbers, in the vulgar sense of the term, by a large portion of the community, but receiving their sympathy as objects of tyranny and wanderers in distress, they often got warning of the approach of justice, and were aided in escape when in danger of capture. In some cases there was a collusion between the convict servants and the outlaws, which

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assisted in robbery, and prevented surprise. More than once the little island was so completely in the hands of these bushrangers that travelling beyond the precincts of townships was quite unsafe, and commerce received a serious check.

It is not for us here to enter into a history of crime, and detail the performances of the Turpins and Sheppards of the colony; but as a remarkable illustration of the early social state, we may allude to a solemn compact once entered into between the representative of his Majesty King George III., the autocratic governor of the island, and a desperado of the bush, a runaway convict:-A certain atrocious fellow, named Michael Howe, had taken to the course of bushranging with such success as to fill the country with terror. He was singlehanded, but bold in attack, and rapid in movement. In the year 1813, however, he found himself exposed to extra trouble by the desertion of his aboriginal partner, Mary, and her active co-operation with the constables in pursuit, from a desire of revenge for his cruelty toward her. But still formidable from his prowess, he resolved to enter into a treaty with Government. He sent a letter by a trusty messenger, offering to come to town if assured of protection and forgiveness. Governor Davey sent one of his military officers to negotiate this singular piece of colonial diplomacy. The correspondence of Howe was in grand terms. It was addressed, To the Governor of the Town,' from The Governor of the Ranges.' Terms being arranged, the forest hero came to Hobart Town, and for a time enjoyed the comforts of civilization, the plaudits of admirers, and the respect of the authorities. As he tired soon of these soft delights,' he broke his parole, and returned to his bush pursuits. Through the treachery of a comrade he was betrayed, and the capturer of his head received a handsome reward.

It was at the close of the early times that the penal establishment of Macquarrie Harbour was formed for the worst of offenders. It has been thus described by the writer, in one of his colonial works :- The harbour is on the western side of the island. The ever-rushing westerly breezes easily carry the mariner inwards, but oppose

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an obstinate resistance to his exit. The shores are rocky and gloomy, and the almost perpetual rains add no cheerfulness to the atmosphere. The scenery is wild and repulsive, and the soil hopelessly barren. The cathedral-pinnacled sandstone ranges rise against the more sombre and rounded hills of slate, while the quartzose seacliffs glare painfully in the sun. The hills are scantily covered with a coarse, wiry grass; the gullies are either choked with tangled brush, or, as a fairy scene, adorned with the umbrageous and elegant fern tree. The scrub is almost impracticable on the steep banks of the mountain streams. Separated from the settled parts of the colony by impervious forests, rapid rivers, dangerous marshes, and almost inaccessible acclivities, and reached only at sea by a tempest-tossed voyage along an iron-bound coast, the locality seemed a fitting Tartarus for the worst of criminals. Those defiant and irreclaimable ones who pester society with their presence, might there be safely confided to the guardianship of forbidding Nature.' This was the place selected for the most barbarous and frightful course of prison discipline that has, perhaps, ever been known, and to which the dungeon life of Naples may fairly be compared. Well might one say of it, 'There man lost the aspect and the heart of man.'

The wretched convicts had to cut down the pine for the Hobart Town market, construct their prison houses, and build vessels. Their food was scanty in quantity and wretched in description. Ill clad, wet, cold, half famished, overwrought, brutally treated, often mercilessly flogged, consorted with ruflians, and governed by irresponsible despots, their lives were torture. Some idea of the Macquarrie Harbour hell may be formed from these two statements :-In 1822, out of 182 men there, 169 received the awful amount of 7,000 lashes; and of 85 persons who died in a certain time, 27 were drowned, 8 killed accidentally, 3 shot by soldiers, and 12 murdered by their comrades. It is surely a matter of thankfulness and congratulation that that era of suffering and revengeful justice has passed, that social science has since been recognized and developed, and that the offender against the laws of the land has some prospect of leaving this

prison sojourn a better and a happier man. But we must be astonished that the philanthropists and Christians of Britain could allow such a state of things to last from 1822 to 1833.

It would not be right, in an account of the early social state of the island, to omit allusion to the aborigines.

These unhappy people were, in all probability, some thousands in number at the settlement of the colony. There was some expectation that the natives might have been turned into slaves; but, unlike the negroes, and more like their fellow foresters, the Indians of America, the Tasmanians and Australians would never bow the neck in servitude.

The

In the commencement of the penal establishment an outrage was committed upon the blacks. In the days of famine, when the prisoners were scattered through the bush, hunting for kangaroos, further assaults were made, and ill-feeling aroused. only cause of attack and bloodshed was the whites' conduct towards the females of the tribe. Coarse, brutal, and lustful, even toward their own country. people, our exiles were especially so when in contact with the dark-skins. They seized and inhumanly treated the women. They were equally ready with their formidable weapons to resent the complaints of husbands and fathers. The stock-keepers and shepherds, who lived on the borders of civilization, were the deadliest foes to these unhappy creatures. Bribed by the offer of European food, or worse, by the offer of European strong drink, the Lubra was seduced to the hut of the white savage for his prey. Sometimes the bribe was for the male protector, who led the weeping victim to the lair of the beast. As may be expected, great cruelty often followed the satisfaction of other demoniacal passions.

The bushrangers-men at large for war against their own race-were constant objects of dread to the simple ones of the bush. Well-armed, desperate, outlawed, these brutal men were often guilty of the foulest crimes against the Tasmanians. Seduction, torture, and murder are chronicled as their deeds. But they were often little worse than their fellow convicts who acted as out-station servants. Many took a savage delight in shooting the 'black crows,' as they called them; and some boasted of roasting the young black

'black pigs.' Personally acquainted with men whose exploits thus outsavaged savages, we have heard from their own mouths their tales of violation and slaughter; their sole apology was that they were but brutes after all. Not satisfied with the bullet, they murdered by the slower death of the disease of vice, and taught the suicide of alcohol.

Can it be wondered, then, that, when the tribes saw themselves shot down as vermin, their women rendered barren by a loathsome disorder, and their country monopolized by these murderous whites, they should turn like the beast at bay, and inflict wounds in despairing ferocity? Thus it was that the early days of Van Diemen's Land became associated with the terrible Black War. For several years the conflicts were numerous and bloody. The Europeans sought revenge for one death in the slaughter of a whole tribe, and most atrocious cruelties upon helpless women and children. The natives, regarding the whites as members of one family, and sharers in one system of spoliation and cruelty, were indiscriminate in their attacks, and assaulted alike the quiet farmer and the ruffianly stock-keeper, the innocent wife and the guilty bushman.

The early days were darkened by these sad events. The intricacy of the forests, the defence of the scrub, the wildness of gullies, which had served bushrangers so well in their contest with authority, were equally protective to the aborigines in their outrages. Their attacks were sudden and unexpected. A man was ploughing in the field, and a spear from an unseen foe entered his back. Another, passing along a road with his team, would receive the blow before the sound of a footstep reached him. Mothers were brained with the wooden club, and children mangled with the stone tomahawk. Huts were set on fire by winged spears with lighted bark. The whole of the interior was disturbed. Property was of little value where life was so unsafe.

This bloody conflict, provoked by the whites, could not be expected to result in anything but annihilation to the blacks. We have heard old natives tell the story of those dreadful times, but this is not the occasion to expatiate upon such horrors. We have but just glanced at this chapter, one of the

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most eventful and singular of the early social state of Van Diemen's Land.

The social history of the colony is most darkly shadowed forth in the drinking system among its inhabitants.

When we regard the origin of the settlement, the character of the guardians of that island-gaol no less than of the convicts themselves, we cease to be surprised at the enormity of intemperance. Most were expatriated for offences directly or indirectly occasioned by drink. Arrived among scenes even more debasing than those to which they had been accustomed, it was not to be expected that their appetite for liquor would be lessened. Miserable in condition, and hopelessly dejected, they gladly fled to the only comfort open to them-the momentary excitement of pleasure in rum. Even their officers felt exiled from civilization, from society, from humanizing influences, and, in many instances, rapidly sunk, even to the low moral standard of the very prisoners themselves.

Rum, from the first, was the difficulty of the colony. It was the source of the social disorders of the early times. As at New South Wales, it was the medium of exchange. Articles were bought and sold for so many gallons of rum. A property, since valued at several thousands of pounds, was exchanged for five gallons of rum. Sometimes the payment was a return of merchandize and so much rum. Labour was paid for in rum. The mechanic received his wages in rum. He had to exchange some for food, but was naturally tempted to consume most himself. The very police, convict constables, had a stipend of rum from the paternal government. Provided with rations and clothes, they were allowed for private expenses a quart of rum weekly. But as this was administered in quarterly quantity, the recipients usually made merry with their companions till the stock was exhausted. Among other commercial transactions with this medium of exchange, the early annals furnish us with a curious story. A man was tired of his wife. She might have left him on terms of mutual understanding, and could easily have found a protector. A time or two she had deserted him for the home of another; and rough measures seem to have wearied out the husband. But he could not engage to part with her, or rather, not to leave her unmolested

with another, unless he got an equivalent. A neighbour was willing to bargain. After some debate, the article was knocked down to him for twenty ewes and a gallon of rum.

We were informed by an eye-witness of a most extraordinary state of affairs; for the space of nearly six weeks everybody in the island was drunk from the governor downwards! The occasion

was a singular one. Soon after the colonization a terrible famine raged for two years. Supplies were not forthcoming from England; Sydney could not spare any, and cultivation was in its infancy. The French war engaged too much of the thoughts of the British ministry to induce them to regard the wants of a penal settlement at the antipodes. Fortunately there were kangaroos, if not flour; and the establishment lost its little show of discipline in this hunting existence. When the tide of suffering turned, and the commissariat stores were filled to the joy of all who loved low prices of drink as well as biscuits, the governor expressed himself marvellously pleased with the conduct of the convicts. The fact is they had been little trouble, because they were usually scattered about in the bush, hunting for kangaroos-there were no country settlers to rob-and there was no rum to drive them to insubordination or to crime. It was said that the officers sought an occasion for a jubilee, as they called it, or a spree, in modern nomenclature. Any how, a license was proclaimed. There was to be freedom from public work, and a liberal grant of rum per day during the carnival. The consequence was, the total subversion not only of temperance, but of those common notions of decency and propriety to be found among

savages.

Colonel Davey, who reigned some fifty years ago, was a consistent exponent of the primitive order of virtues. He was esteemed a jolly good fellow' by the prisoners. He would sit in public, with his long pipe and glass of rum-punch, to the envy of passers-by, with whom, however, he had always a friendly word or vulgar joke. By no means harsh as a disciplinarian, he was anxious, he said, that the poor wretches should enjoy themselves as well as himself. He was the first to establish a sort of drinking court. Though by no means a teetotaller at other times, he relaxed once or twice a month, and

held a convivial meeting out of town with his officers and their ladies, which was not quite upon a par with the institution of the drawing-room of majesty. Surrounded by choice spirits, he indulged in the wildest merriment, and threw off the cares of state as he quaffed the bowl. To add to the sports of the occasion, the town gang would be introduced, who sought by the lowest buffooneries and other excesses to amuse this viceregal court. Strange to say, some fastidious merchants, alias shopkeepers, chose once to decline an invitation to one of these orgies, and were well punished for their disloyalty. Soon after, the governor had a more becoming celebration at the Hobart Town Palace, and specially invited the malcontents. They felt flattered with the attentions of his honour, and resorted in due course. The old colonel was bland in the extreme, and most courteously led his mercantile guests into the dining-room. The table was spread with tempting viands, and the gentlemen sat themselves down smilingly before the smoking dishes. Just then, according to previous arrangement, at a wink of the merry lord of the feast, the aforesaid convict gaol gang rushed into the apartment, scized upon the spread in spite of the resistance of the guests, and left a naked board for the repast.

The officers of government themselves held no mean position in the liquor-traffic of the early times. Favoured with privileges in obtaining the article, they were not slow in turning their good fortune to mercantile account. Unfortunately, the demand usually exceeded the supply, and made their toil easy and their profits large. As it was not quite according to the rules of official etiquette to be seen vending themselves, they found active agents in the ladies attached to their establishments, as their previous habits and existing sentiments presented no obstacles in the path of trading delicacy. Though the customs of the day sanctioned their left-handed alliance with gentlemen, they were none the less able to be porteresses of rum to the ruffians of society.

In those rude times it was not thought essential to a debauch that men should be furnished with the luxurious refinements of modern civilization. A party, intending to treat themselves, would empty the liquor into a bucket,

and,