158 TA8MANIAN STATE RECORDS, 



These documents establish with authority, not only the 

 exact date of the Settlement's birth, but the more important 

 fact that at least in the beginning it was not designed as 

 the ultra or super-penal station into which it afterwards 

 developed, and from which it has derived its somewhat 

 unenviable fame. The dates and facts given in these 

 documents are explicit, and though their detail is not as 

 full as might be desired, they afford a sufficient ground on 

 which Port Arthur's story may be accurately based. They 

 establish the fact that Port Arthur was primarily designed 

 as a timber station, which might indeed be worked by 

 prisoners more suitable (owing to their bad conduct) for 

 life away from convicts of better dispositions. But Russell's 

 testimony is clear: — 



"Port Arthur," he writes, in the first Despatch 

 referred to, "forms a fine capacious harbour, and from 

 "the quantity of good Timber with which its Coast 

 "abounds, I have no doubt but that it will answer the 

 ^'-main object of its establishment as a settlement." 



Therefore, Port Arthur was designed and opened as a Timber 

 station such as others then in existence at Birch's Bay and 

 elsewhere. 



Take another instance, that of Drake, England's greatest 

 adventurer. Old Fuller, in his immortal Woy^thies, thus 

 describes Drake: "A very religious man towards God and 

 "His Houses, chaste in his life, just in his dealings, true of 

 "his word, and merciful to those under him." Truly a model 

 panegyric. Yet Drake had been accused not only of being 

 a Pirate, but of being the murderer of his friend, that 

 courtly gentleman Thomas Doughty. And but for the acci- 

 dental discovery of a 16th Century Record, Drake's name 

 might never have been freed from this suspicion. A lady, 

 Mrs. Zelia Nuttall, student of Mexican Archaeology, a few 

 years ago, was pursuing her researches in the National 

 Archives of Mexico, when she chanced on a dust-covered 

 tome. On examination this proved to be the declaration of 

 Nuno da Silva concerning his compulsory association with 

 "Francisco Drac," who, it will be remembered, captured da 

 Silva, and used him as a Pilot while on the Spanish Main. 

 In his Declarations to the Spanish Inquisitors da Silva stated 

 that Doughty challenged Drake's authority to behead him, 

 and that Drake in reply, produced 



"some papers, kissed them, raised them to his forehead, 



"and read them with a loud voice." 



