after threatening her master, suddenly spat in his face. Another, when sentenced to ten days on bread and water, was so insolent that the punishment was increased to thirty. "Oh! thank you," she said coolly; "couldn't you make it thirty-one?"--knowing perfectly well that thirty days was the limit of the magistrate's power. No wonder that, with such material to choose from, decent people refused to receive convict maid-servants into their families. As a rule their characters were so bad, they gave so much annoyance, and disturbed to such an extent the peace and quiet of households, that the settlers would rather be without their assistance altogether. "They make execrable servants," says a Mr. Mudie, speaking from long experience. In many years he had only met one or two who were well behaved. Some were exceedingly savage, and thought nothing of doing serious mischief to any one. The most flagrant case of this was the assault on Captain Waldron, a retired officer and settler. Having reason to find fault with a woman for not cleaning his veranda, he threatened to send her back to the factory. "If you send her, you must send me too," cried another woman coming forward directly. High words followed; after which the two women threw themselves without warning on their master, got him down, and mauled him so seriously that he died of the injuries he received. Other servants, convicts also, were within earshot, but not one stirred a finger to help their master. Not a pleasant picture this of the actual consequences of female transportation. Perhaps all the women were not originally bad, but the voyage out was a terrible ordeal to those who had still some faint glimmering left of the distinctions between right and wrong. Another observer remarks that the character and condition of these women was "as bad as it was possible for human beings to be; they were shockingly dissolute and depraved, steeped to the very core in profligacy and vice." But I will now leave them and return to the men, who formed the bulk of the convict population.