It is a grim record. Let those who are inclined to doubt it turn to the originals, especially to the report of the House of Commons Committee of 1837-38, and they will find facts which the creator of Rufus Dawes, with all his supple fancy and delicacy of language, could not bring himself even to indicate. There are episodes which the more matter-of-fact historians barely mention, but do not take advantage of their great privileges to describe. For example, there were times during the first thirty years of the century when the open and general lewdness of the officials on some of the principal settlements, in their relations with the female convicts, rendered them totally unfit for the positions they held. Clarke in his researches obtained abundant knowledge of this, but made no use of it save in adding a few luminous touches to his portrait of Dawes' passionate and licentious cousin. In reading the novel for its historical interest, it is necessary throughout to remember the limitation that the writer has specifically put upon himself. He did not undertake to illustrate any of the good effects of exile upon a section of the first offenders sent to the colonies, and scarcely touches the travesties of justice so often wrought by that lottery in human life known as the assignment system. His purpose is to describe 'the dismal condition of a felon during his term of transportation,' and to show the futility of a prison system loosely planned at one end of the world and roughly executed at the other by men who found it easier, and in some cases more agreeable, to their undiscerning hearts to coerce than to ameliorate. The Parliamentary Committee defined transportation as 'a series of punishments embracing every degree of human suffering, from the lowest, consisting of a slight restraint upon freedom of action, to the highest, consisting of long and tedious torture.' It was with the latter part of the definition in mind that Clarke told his story. He chose to represent servitude in the chain-gangs of Van Diemen's Land and Norfolk Island as the condition of slavery which Sir Richard Bourke and Sir George Arthur admitted it to be, as the utter failure described by the experienced Dr. Ullathorne, and as the system recommended by the House of Commons Committee to be abolished as incapable of improvement and 'remarkably efficient, not in reforming, but still further corrupting those who undergo punishment.'