THE PASTORALIST AND THE CONVICT 99 



tinction behind it, open up to them. Far harder it 

 must appear to the transported convict, who knew not 

 what fresh horrors awaited him when he was sent on a 

 six months' voyage to Austraha a century and more 

 ago. His worst anticipations were at first more than 

 reahsed. Through the judicious and energetic prior 

 supervision of Captain Philhp comparatively few deaths 

 occurred during the voyage of the First Fleet, but the 

 voyages of the Second and Third Fleets were funeral 

 processions across two oceans. The filthy persons and 

 clothes of the convicts, and the diseases thus engendered 

 in the crowded ships, carried off scores of convicts and 

 not a few free immigrants. The accounts given of the 

 arrival of these fleets at Sydney are sickening and 

 harrowing, and the sufTering experienced during the 

 voyages must have been immeasurable. Things doubt- 

 less improved in later years, but the voyage to Australia 

 can never, under such circumstances, have been any- 

 thing but a horror. 



^'Vhen the first convicts arrived in Australia, experi- 

 ences of a new sort broke on them. Their food in an 

 English gaol had been prison fare, but it was sufficient ; 

 in the newly -founded settlement grim and gaunt Famine 

 was an ever-threatening visitor, and the allowance of 

 food was often reduced to a point at which the bodily 

 strength could not be maintained. The Colony was 

 governed like a prison, even by the humane Phillip, 

 and the crack of the lash was ever heard. They were 

 soon set to till the soil and engage in mechanical occu- 

 pations ; and this alone greatly improved the situation 

 of the convict. They reared buildings of many descrip- 

 tions, and the sombre architecture of some old struc- 

 tures survives to tell its origin. A still more durable 

 monument to the memory of the convict has been laid 

 in the roads. To the north, south, and west of Sydney 

 and across the Blue Mountains the massive roads re- 

 semble the mighty highways which the iron genius of 

 the Romans formed for the legions. 



Worse things almost than foul conditions and m.ortal 



