"But far be it from concealing the fact that there is a seamy side to life in Port Blair. It could not be otherwise; and it would be easy enough to paint a lurid picture of its inhabitants,--easy enough to preach a scathing condemnation of the envy, hatred, and malice, the uncharitableness, the evil-speaking, lying and slandering, the murder and the cruel death, of the amazing immorality, the callous depravity, the downright unabashed wickedness, that are so constantly forced upon the view. But such is not to the purpose. Human faults are easily seen and easily denounced, for such things lie on the surface. The difficult thing always is to perceive aright the good that there is in bad men, and bring that out, and that is the object that the Government is aiming at in the system just explained. "Any one observing the work of the English in the East may possibly be struck with the idea that the reason for the acknowledged capacity of the race for colonial enterprise and the maintenance of empire is the ability and the willingness of the average Englishman to put his hand to any kind of work that may come his way, without any special training, from framing suitable laws and regulations and creating suitable organisations to making roads and ditches, building houses, and clearing land and ploughing it. Here in Port Blair, the officers entrusted with the creation, organisation, and maintenance of the Penal Settlement, have, without any special training for the work, and without any special guidance and teaching, managed with the worst possible material to work upon--life and long-term convicts from every part of India and Burma--to create in little more than forty years, upon primeval forest and swamp, situated in an enervating, and until mastered, a deadly climate, a community supporting itself in regard to many of its complicated wants.