The Indian government long practised transportation beyond the seas as a punishment for the most determined criminals. The terrors of crossing the “black water” were very potent to the native mind, although the effect of the penalty as a deterrent was never marked and the practice gradually fell into desuetude. But it was revived in 1857 as a solution of the difficulty in dealing with the great body of rebels and mutineers in custody charged with participation in the great Indian Mutiny, a special commission was despatched to visit the Andaman Islands and report upon their fitness for the establishment of a great penal settlement. To the student of penal science, the results achieved in the Indian Ocean, or more exactly, the Sea of Bengal, must be extremely interesting. The system of transportation has succeeded better there than anywhere else, whether in the Australian colonies, where it resulted in the creation of a great nation at the cost of much human misery, or in the French experiment in New Caledonia. Russia has also tried transportation on a gigantic scale with the most deplorable results in Siberia and on the island of Saghalien. The settlement on the Andamans, or more precisely upon the northern and principal island, has by this time accomplished a very distinct work in penal colonisation. Many causes, natural and artificial, have contributed to this gratifying result: a fertile soil, a good, albeit tropical climate; an intelligent administration, which has been backed up by the willing efforts of convict labourers, alive generally to their own benefit in making the best of the system in practice. The force available for the cultivation and development of the main island has always been large. It is an industrious, self-supporting and for the most part peaceable population, where good order and a quiet demeanour are enforced by stringent discipline, although the inherent evil nature of so many criminals cannot be invariably held in check, and ghastly occurrences have from time to time been recorded in almost every nook and corner of Port Blair, the headquarters of the penal settlement. The Andaman convict has committed some heinous offences; he is a murderer in some form or other, deliberate, vindictive, or moved by sudden ungovernable passion; he has been a highway robber or persistent Dacoit; he has forged notes or securities on a great scale. He has betrayed a serious trust, has been a wrecker and desperado, and has more than once deserved the extreme penalty of the law. Beneath the surface the community is a seething mass of depravity, of wickedness, generally latent, but breaking out often in the most violent and bloodthirsty excesses.