About the year 1839 the gang had completed the first road, and the lame, the blind, and those with wooden legs were furnished with a clean bed in honor of the occasion. These cripples were employed principally in taking goods to the settlers without payment, and the poor wretches often went short when their journey's end was reached. When not employed, they used to lounge about on the hills overlooking the sea sunning themselves, and it was not infrequent that they had quarrels amongst themselves. Just picture to yourself a man with wooden legs offering to "fight any b---- man on timber" as they used to put it. When these wooden-legged men had a quarrel in a boat they sat on the seats, with a man propped against the back of each, and in this fashion they would fight away in great style. I saw two of them on one occasion fight till they could not see each other. There were also one-armed men amongst them; these were employed in breaking stone, and they had a Jew for a boss, who was also a wooden-legged man. One day he went to sleep in the sun on one of the hills above the harbour, and another Jew named Lewis collected a quantity of old maize stalks and other fuel, and set fire to his wooden legs whilst he was asleep. They were not burning long, however, before he awoke and found one to be shorter than the other; and it was a sight for sore eyes to see him walking down to the Old Broken Barracks, singing out to everyone that he met--"That Jew-looking b---- down there has burnt my legs nearly off." Just after this a poor fellow died in the barracks. A coffin was made for him, and his remains were being carried away for interment by four of his fellow-prisoners. After they had proceeded some little distance, two of them had a quarrel, when they threw the coffin down, and it burst, and out rolled the corpse on to the ground. They fought their quarrel out, and after receiving satisfaction at each other's hands, they picked the body and coffin up and carried it back to the barracks, where it was tacked together again, and four other men were sent to bury it. The making of roads in the streets of the Settlement was now being actively proceeded with, and in some instances the hills which had to be cut through were so steep that a man could not comfortably ascend one of them without irons on his legs, let alone with them--but the hills had to be broken down by men with sore backs, and if one man happened to collide with another who had been recently flogged, it would be--"Oh, G----! mind my sore back." These were hard times; hard worked and half starved.