To the voyage out and the internal management of convict ships I intend to devote a special chapter. Let us imagine that the anchor is dropped in Sydney harbour, and that the surgeon superintendent has gone on shore to make his bow to His Excellency the Governor of New South Wales and its dependencies. There is already plenty of excitement in the town. The ship had been signalled in the offing, and there are numbers of good people on the look out for useful hands from among its cargo. The days when convict labour was a drug in the market are past and gone; the rush for "assigned" servants is now so great that requisitions far in excess of the number available crowd the office of the assignment board. All sorts of tricks have been put in practice to get early information as to the qualifications of those on board: although the indent bearing the names of the new convicts goes first to the governor and then to the assignment officers, the cunning old stagers--not a few of them themselves emancipists--have found out privately from the surgeon or the master of the vessel whether there are upon the list any men likely to be useful to them. Thus a watchmaker seeks to obtain a watchmaker; an engraver, an engraver; printers, compositors; merchants want clerks, as doctors do assistants, or as the genteel folk--"ancients" they love to style themselves--do cooks, butlers, and ladies'-maids. Many got convicts assigned to them who were distinctly unfit and unworthy of the charge. Cases were indeed known of settlers, outwardly honest men, whose only object in asking for servants was to get assistants in thieving, cattle stealing, and other nefarious transactions. All who lived inland came off second best in the general rush: unless they had some friend on the spot to watch their interests they had to take their chance later on. But these too are in want of skilled labourers: one requires a carpenter to complete a new shed or roof to his house; another a blacksmith for the farm forge; and all would be glad of men with any agricultural training or skill. If the newly-arrived ship carries female convicts, there is similar anxiety. At one time governesses were frequently got from among these outcasts; but the practice of confiding the education of innocent children to such teachers appeared so monstrous that it was soon altogether discontinued. But nursemaids and other household servants were in eager request, and it must be confessed that the moral condition of the colony was such that many of the better looking female convicts were obtained without disguise for distinctly immoral purposes.