Prices of fresh meats, except pork, were almost nominal. Beef could be bought at a penny a pound, mutton at three farthings; for this was long before the gold discoveries in Australia or California. No flood-tide of emigration had yet set in that direction; no yellow-metal fever had yet raged to inflate prices to a fictitious standard. Australia possessed peculiar advantages as a grazing country, and stock could be raised almost without trouble or expense. Thousands were slain merely for the hides, horns and tallow, and extensive shipments of these articles, as also of wool, were made to the mother country. Several large ships were loading at the time of our arrival, forcing the bales of wool into their places with jack-screws, much after the manner of our cotton-droghers in southern ports. Sydney impressed us as rather a handsome town, though not showy or glaring in appearance, most of the buildings being of a crumbly sandstone, which is quarried in the immediate neighborhood, and worked out by convict labor. We inferred, from what we saw, that stone might be cheaper than lumber for building purposes. The convicts who worked in quarrying stone appeared to be the most finished illustrations of laziness reduced to a system that I have ever met with, and to accomplish the least amount of work that it was possible for men to perform who kept steadily at it all day. This was what they called "working government stroke;" and they might have all taken diplomas at the great Circumlocution Office in the science of, How not to do it. They were not allowed to stop work entirely, nor were they ever hurried up. Sentinels in scarlet paced back and forth near them, but this was merely to preserve order and to prevent escape. The convicts themselves were all in uniform of stout, coarse cloth, with the name of the gang or division to which they belonged conspicuously stenciled on the leg of the pants, and across the back of the frock-shirt. Thus some were labelled "Chain Gang," others "Hyde Park Barracks," and so on. They were scarcely ever called convicts here, I observed, being spoken of either politely, as "government men," or else, in slang phrase, as "lags."