For the Term of His Natural Life

_

, I take leave to dedicate this work to you, not merely because your nineteen years of political and literary life in Australia render it very fitting that any work written by a resident in the colonies, and having to do with the history of past colonial days, should bear your name upon its dedicatory page; but because the publication of my book is due to your advice and encouragement.

The convict of fiction has been hitherto shown only at the beginning or at the end of his career. Either his exile has been the mysterious end to his misdeeds, or he has appeared upon the scene to claim interest by reason of an equally unintelligible love of crime acquired during his experience in a penal settlement. Charles Reade has drawn the interior of a house of correction in England, and Victor Hugo has shown how a French convict fares after the fulfilment of his sentence. But no writer—so far as I am aware—has attempted to depict the dismal condition of a felon during his term of transportation.

I have endeavoured in "His Natural Life" to set forth the working and the results of an English system of transportation carefully considered and carried out under official supervision; and to illustrate in the manner best calculated, as I think, to attract general attention, the inexpediency of again allowing offenders against the law to be herded together in places remote from the wholesome influence of public opinion, and to be submitted to a discipline which must necessarily depend for its just administration upon the personal character and temper of their gaolers.

Your critical faculty will doubtless find, in the construction and artistic working of this book, many faults. I do not think, however, that you will discover any exaggerations. Some of the events narrated are doubtless tragic and terrible; but I hold it needful to my purpose to record them, for they are events which have actually occurred, and which, if the blunders which produced them be repeated, must infallibly occur again. It is true that the British Government have ceased to deport the criminals of England, but the method of punishment, of which that deportation was a part, is still in existence. Port Blair is a Port Arthur filled with Indian-men instead of Englishmen; and, within the last year, France has established, at New Caledonia, a penal settlement which will, in the natural course of things, repeat in its annals the history of Macquarie Harbour and of Norfolk Island.

With this brief preface I beg you to accept this work. I would that its merits were equal either to your kindness or to my regard.

I am,
 * My dear Sir Charles,

2em The Public Library, Melbourne

CONTENTS


 * Prologue

Book I: The Sea. 1827
1. The Prison Ship

2. Sarah Purfoy

3. The Monotony Breaks

4. The Hospital

5. The Barracoon

6. The Fate of the "Hydaspes"

7. Typhus Fever

8. A Dangerous Crisis

9. Woman's Weapons

10. Eight Bells

11. Discoveries and Confessions

12. A Newspaper Paragraph

Book II: Macquarie Harbour. 1833.
1. The Topography of Van Diemen's Land

2. The Solitary of "Hell's Gates"

3. A Social Evening

4. The Bolter

5. Sylvia

6. A Leap in the Dark

7. The Last of Macquarie Harbour

8. The Power of the Wilderness

9. The Seizure of the "Osprey"

10. John Rex's Revenge

11. Left at "Hell's Gates"

12. "Mr." Dawes

13. What the Seaweed Suggested

14. A Wonderful Day's Work

15. The Coracle

16. The Writing on the Sand

17. At Sea

Book III: Port Arthur. 1838
1. A Labourer in the Vineyard

2. Sarah Purfoy's Request

3. The Story of Two Birds of Prey

4. "The Notorious Dawes"

5. Maurice Frere's Good Angel

6. Mr. Meekin Administers Consolation

7. Rufus Dawes's Idyll

8. An Escape

9. John Rex's Letter Home

10. What Became of the Mutineers of the "Osprey"

11. A Relic of Macquarie Harbour

12. At Port Arthur

13. The Commandant's Butler

14. Mr. North's Indisposition

15. One Hundred Lashes

16. Kicking Against the Pricks

17. Captain and Mrs. Frere

18. In the Hospital

19. The Consolations of Religion

20. A Natural Penitentiary

21. A Visit of Inspection

22. Gathering in the Threads

23. Running the Gauntlet

24. In the Night

25. The Flight

26. The Work of the Sea

27. The Valley of the Shadow of Death

Book IV: Norfolk Island. 1846.
1. Extracted from the Diary of the Rev. James North

2. The Lost Heir

3. Extracted from the Diary of the Rev. James North

4. Extracted from the Diary of the Rev. James North

5. Mr. Richard Devine Surprised

6. In Which the Chaplain Is Taken Ill

7. Breaking a Man's Spirit

8. Extracted from the Diary of the Rev. James North

9. The Longest Straw

10. A Meeting

11. Extracted from the Diary of the Rev. James North

12. The Strange Behaviour of Mr. North

13. Mr. North Speaks

14. Getting Ready for Sea

15. The Discovery

16. Fifteen Hours

17. The Redemption

18. The Cyclone
 * Epilogue
 * Appendix