scores, deserted by their crews, lay at anchor motionless and tenantless as that of the Ancient Mariner. Their owners were too happy to sell at any reasonable price. The idea was approved--not sooner approved than acted upon. The _President_, the _Success_, the _Sacramento_, the _Deborah_, were purchased and forthwith proclaimed to be, and to be considered, Her Majesty's gaols. They became from that day floating prisons. There were those long after who did not hesitate to designate them as floating hells. One of the leading ideas connected with the scheme was the compulsory labour of the convicts, who, it was thought, might be employed beneficially to themselves and to the state in building at Williamstown--then a chief port of Melbourne--wharves, lighthouses, and docks. There were millions of tons of blue-stone--a species of volcanic trap--to be had near the shore for the quarrying. Harbour accommodation was miserably insufficient. The labour of a thousand men was a valuable consideration in that day of dearth of every kind of manual labour. Long afterwards the navvies employed in the construction of the Yan Yean aqueduct received one pound sterling per day. At this time double the wage would not have furnished the labour these convicts performed, and in many instances performed well. The _President_ enjoyed the bad eminence of being styled and worked as a strictly penal hulk--an abode for refractory and desperate criminals. Many of these were, in the prison slang, 'long-sentence men,' incorrigible felons serving a life sentence for repeated offences; men who could not be trusted to work even in the iron-gangs--so skilful and determined were they in all methods of escape. Many of these were doomed never to leave the _President's_ gloomy cells but for the coffin and the shroud. Others again, after performing the allotted form of strictly penal and reformatory discipline, were drafted on board the _Success_, where they underwent the more popular and varied experience of working in the quarries on the main-land--in irons, it is true, but having the excitement of a daily voyage to and fro in one of the barges used for the purpose. * * * * *