Excursion to Port Arthur . 
269 
journeys and back, thirty miles a day, conveying thus 
half a ton per man either way. It jars harshly against 
the feelings to behold man, as it were, lowered to the 
standard of the brute—to mark the unhappy, guilty 
creatures toiling and struggling along, their muscular 
powers exerted to the uttermost, and the perspiration 
bursting profusely from every pore. It is a harrowing 
picture ; and yet a little calm reflection will show that it 
is rendered more peculiarly so by place and circumstance. 
Let us but tax our memory, and we shall find hundreds 
of free British labourers whose drudgery is fully equal 
to that of the Tasmanian tramway : I need but instance 
lumpers, coal-heavers, bargemen, dock-men, and the 
like. This tends in some degree to dissipate the revolting 
idea, which, nevertheless, still usurps possession of the 
imagination, and shocks the heart. And yet the tram¬ 
way is a step of the probationer’s advancement—Captain 
Booth arguing justly, that the convict who cannot resist 
the greater facility which it affords of pilfering or abscond¬ 
ing, is unfit to be trusted in the less restricted parts of 
the Island. 
By noon, Major Robertson, Holman, and myself had 
traversed the tramway on foot—no passenger vehicles 
were to be had at the moment, owing to the few in use 
being engaged to convey Captain Sullivan, of H.M. 
sloop Favourite , and a party to the Coal Mines. Trans¬ 
ferring the soldiers and their baggage to a launch, we 
embarked in a fine four-oared whale-boat; and, after a 
short pull, Port Arthur opened its capacious basin to 
our astonished and delighted gaze. “What! this the 
pandemonium—this the terrific repository of the worst 
of guilt!” was the natural exclamation bursting from 
our lips. Whatever the core, the outside is a goodly and 
enchanting one. What lovely bays ! what noble basins! 
what splendid anchorage!—an anchorage not wholly 
