TASMANIA. 151 



easy is the navigation that vessels very rarely have to employ pilots. Reefs 

 and shoals are unknown. 



A two or three hours' trip seawards to the south-east enables one to reach 

 the famed Port Arthur, in a land-locked bay hedged by bluff promontories 

 whose aspect is so stern that the beneficent calm within is made the more 

 beautiful when they are passed. Port Arthur was the centre of convictism 

 for many years, and the prisons stand now, though the place has long since 

 been given up as a penal settlement. It is on the southern point of a 

 peninsula, which is connected with the mainland by a narrow strip, not more 

 than one hundred yards wide, called Eaglebank Neck. This was, and is, the 

 only means of communication by land with the outer world, and the authorities 

 devised stringent if inhuman means to prevent the escape of prisoners. 

 Fierce dogs were chained at such intervals that it would be impossible for a 

 man to pass between them, and they kept watch by night, while armed men 

 were on guard by day. It was a straight and narrow path, but no one ever 

 passed that way. To swim through the water on either side was equally 

 hazardous, because of the risk of being attacked by sharks, and consequently 

 the number of escapes was extremely small. The only authenticated break 

 away from bondage was performed by three men — Martin Cash, Cavanagh, 

 and Jones, who swam Pirates' Bay in the night, reached a farm-house before 

 morning, equipped themselves for highwaymen's work, and defied arrest for 

 some years. The last prisoners were removed from Port Arthur in 1876, 

 and the magnificent buildings, than which there are none better in the world, 

 have been allowed to decay, the rich fields and meadows, which were pictures 

 in the busy days of the establishment, are fast becoming obliterated, and 

 desolation promises to encompass all. Slowly but surely Nature is reclaiming 

 her own, and is effacing the memorials of an infamy which none care to 

 look back upon. Chapter after chapter might be written upon the annals of 

 Port Arthur, but they would be inconsonant with the tone attempted to be 

 given to these pages. 



On the west of the mouth of the Derwent is a magnificent channel 

 forty-five miles in length, deep and beautiful. It is called D'Entrecasteaux 

 Channel, after an early French navigator, and is a passage-way to Hobart 

 for ships coming from the westward. It is lined with fine harbours, and 

 among other rivers receives the Heron, which comes down through dense 

 forests from the region referred to in the remarks made concerning the view 

 from Mount BischofT. This is indeed a wild country, but hardy adventurers 

 have made homes among the giant trees and slowly cleared patches for fruit- 

 gardens and farms. Far back on the west coast is Macquarie Harbour, 

 which was a convict station before Port Arthur, and whose history is willingly 

 being forgotten. 



Tasmania contains an area of 26,300 square miles, so that she is a little 

 smaller than Scotland, and a little larger than Greece. Her population on 



