This account has reference to the respectable parts of the town of Sydney; but there are other divisions of that place which would be difficult of description. In those portions designated the _Rocks_, scenes of drunkenness, shameless debauchery, and open profligacy are so frequent and disgusting, that they cannot be seen without abhorrence; and such is the absolute want of common decency, that even in the day time a person of respectable appearance is there liable to be abused and maltreated; but at night it would be extremely imprudent to attempt passing through even the extreme parts of this fortress of iniquity, as there is a hazard, or rather a certainty, of being stripped and plundered. The ruffians treat one another in the same manner; hence broils and boxing-matches are perpetually occurring in that quarter. The low public-houses, many of which are permitted in those purlieus, present a ready way of converting the plunder into means of intemperate jollity; whilst the occasion is commonly heightened by the presence of one or more of those degraded females, who minister to the mischief of the moment, and are thereabouts constantly resident in great numbers. The condition and conduct of those last-mentioned graceless wretches are a constant theme of animadversion to those inclined to draw comparisons unfavourable to female convicts generally, an inclination which unfortunately prevails very much at Sydney, even among persons who should at least have learned charity from a sense of misfortune. Is it then matter of surprise, that the unhappy women transported to the colony under those disadvantages of comparison, should continue so depreciated and despised as they are at present? A recollection of similar circumstances such as must ever have attended the same state of degradation, though still fresh in the memory even of many of themselves, produces hardness of heart towards these children of affliction; and, strange to say, some even of their own sex who have become wives out of the same situation, and now are further advanced in life, and live in circumstances of comfort and opulence, are among the first to vilify and asperse their convict servants for the slightest deviation from rectitude, exacting from them more than would be expected from female circumstances in more respectable stations, whose characters had never been tainted by judicial sentence.