NEW SOUTH WALES. 241 



in an emigrant ship, concealing her name, and 

 was hired by the thief as his servant, for he had 

 bettered his condition. It afterwards turned 

 out that this woman was his own wife, who 

 brought the box of gold with her, the contents 

 of which enabled her husband to become a rich 

 and prosperous man in the colony. So much 

 for roguery. Many convicts acquire large for- 

 tunes, but chiefly by gin-houses, which detestable 

 spirit is one of the curses of the country, espe- 

 cially in the towns, where drunkenness is carried 

 on to a great extent. At the gold diggings, 

 also, a set of hard-working men will, perhaps, 

 find a valuable nugget of gold. They will take 

 it to a gin- booth and give it to the landlord, 

 saying that they will drink the value of it. In 

 this way they exist in a state of brutal drunken- 

 ness for a few days, when the landlord tells them 

 they have had the value of the nugget in gin, 

 although only a small portion of its worth has 

 been drunk, and then they have to go to work 

 for more. Now, had these men taken care of 

 their earnings, they might have returned to this 

 country rich and respectable. Such are the 

 results of gin-drinking. It is said that at Wei- 



