'This was about the time of the agreement, between ourselves and Louis Napoleon, in reference to the invasion of the Crimea. It is conceivable, that the French Emperor took advantage of the opportunity to lay hands on New Caledonia. Anyhow, I feared that the alliance might counteract my despatch to London. Most likely it did, for I was instructed that the French were to be left in possession.' While sailing the Pacific, Sir George also called at Norfolk Island, then a prison house. The worst characters of the Australian penal settlements, those to whom perdition beaconed, were drafted to Norfolk Island. The whole scene shocked Sir George, as it rankled in his memory, a sombre nightmare. It saddened him, to think that so fair a place should be one of the black spots of the earth. 'Here,' he said, 'were nature and man meeting together, she at her best, he at his worst. How beautiful we found Norfolk Island; how well graced, with its pine and other trees! I suppose there is no tree, growing anywhere, which for beauty could be given preference over the Norfolk Island pine. It was an evidence of the bounteous garden, set by nature amid a fresh, crystal sea, and wooed by a loving climate. 'By contrast, the convict settlement! The stricken creatures worked in irons, and when evening came, they were turned into a great court where they slept. The irons being, in most instances, removed, the quarrelling and fighting began. I heard of a convict who had been tried for killing a fellow, during some fall-out. He appealed to those judging him: "I came here, having the heart of a man, and your convict system, with its brutal associations, has given me the heart of a beast."' England built in tribulations--nations! At first we had no better use for Australia than to moor hulks to it. That was an eddy in the nobler stream of tribulation which, like the Nile, bore all fertility in its waters. Sir George Grey sat upon a Mount Pisgah that commanded the past and the future. He saw the stream, beginning in far-away mist-crowned sources, roll down the ages. It was a flood of destiny. 'I suppose,' he submitted, 'we all recognise that there are certain driving forces behind the march of humanity. We may not see them, or we may merely get a glimpse of them now and then, but they are there, and always in operation. Providence; that is my word. The chief of these forces we have, as I hold, in the evolution of the Anglo-Saxon race.'