I have lingered thus long over Norfolk Island because it was the starting-point and centre of the new scheme of penal legislation. In actual truth the picture I have drawn is painted with colours far less sombre than the subject deserves. I have shown how, beyond the absolute isolation and exile, the punishment was not severe, the work light, food plentiful, and discipline a mere farce. I have shown how the most criminal were banded together to defy authority and exercise a species of awful tyranny over the timid and weak; I have shown how these malefactors who were supposed to be expiating their crimes swaggered about, armed, and with knives in their hands, insulting their keepers with vile abuse, lording it over their weaker fellows, using violence whenever the spirit moved them to murder a constable, beat a comrade to death, or make a mouthful of his nose. I have said that when matters went too far firearms and the halter were called into play, and for a time worked a certain cure; but from this, the relapse was worse than the original disease. On other points I have not touched, because I do not care to sully my pages with reference to other atrocities perpetrated in that loathsome den--atrocities the existence of which was not and never could be denied, and for which those who inaugurated the system can hardly be held blameless. Regarding these, it must suffice that I refer to them thus vaguely and pass on. (_b_) But Norfolk Island was not the only penal settlement: that at Port Arthur, on Tasman's Peninsula, was also included by the new scheme as one of the first-stage depots. Being within easy reach of Hobart Town, and not like Norfolk Island, hundreds of miles away, Port Arthur was under the more searching supervision of the supreme authority. The peninsula was separated from the mainland by a narrow isthmus, across which, as I have said, sentries and fierce dogs forever kept watch and ward, and escape thence was next to impossible. At the southern extreme of the peninsula lay Port Arthur, having an excellent harbour, of difficult entrance but wide within, and with plenty of deep water. To Port Arthur were sent all convicts in the classes little less criminal than those of Norfolk Island, their number being some 1,200, their work chiefly what is called in the Western Hemisphere "lumbering," or procuring wood for the sawyers and shipbuilders, who were also convicts. Every now and then a ship of decent tonnage was launched, and much coal and timber were also exported. There was a trade-wheel and a corn-mill, and the settlement was to a certain extent self-supporting. The convicts were lodged in hut barracks, in association with each other, but not in great numbers. On the whole, the establishment at Port Arthur was as well managed and the discipline as good as could be expected with such insufficient prison buildings. The conduct of the convicts was generally good, and punishments few and far between.