Lord Mayo landed immediately after breakfast, and during a long day conducted a thorough inspection of Viper and Ross Islands, where the worst characters were quartered. Ample provisions had been made for his protection. A detachment of free police, armed with muskets, moved with the Governor-General's party in front, flank, and rear. The prisoners were strictly kept at their ordinary work; and on Viper and Ross Islands, the only ones where any danger was apprehended, the whole troops were under arms. One or two convicts, who wished to present petitions, handed them to an officer in attendance, without approaching the Viceroy; and the general feeling among the prisoners was one of self-interested satisfaction, in the hope of indulgences and pardons in honour of the visit. The official inspection was concluded about 5 o'clock. But Lord Mayo desired, if possible, to create a sanitarium, where the fever patients might shake off their clinging malady. He thought that Mount Harriet, a {193} hill rising to 1116 feet a mile and a half inland from the Hopetown jetty, might be suitable for this purpose. No criminals of a dangerous sort were quartered at Hopetown; the only convicts there being approved ticket-of-leave men of good conduct. However, the Superintendent despatched a boat to convey the guards to the Hopetown jetty. 'We have still an hour of daylight,' said Lord Mayo, bent on the sanitarium project, 'let us do Mount Harriet.' On landing at the Hopetown jetty he found gay groups of his guests enjoying the cool of the day, and had a smile and a kind word for each as he passed. 'Do come up,' he said to one lady, 'you'll have such a sunset.' But it was a stiff climb through the heavy jungle and only one recruit joined him. His own party were dead tired; they had been on their feet for six blazing hours, and Lord Mayo, as usual the freshest after a hard day, begged some of them to rest till he returned. Of course no one liked to give in, and the cortege dived into the jungle. When they came to the foot of the hill, the Viceroy turned round to one of his aide-de-camps, who was visibly fatigued now that the strain of the day's anxiety had relaxed, and almost ordered him to sit down.