Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/212

( 187 ) of the woodmen were erected beneath the sheltering branches of the lofty trees; the "busy hum" of their voices, and the sound of their axes, reverberating through the woods, denoted the exertions of social industry, and the labours of civilization. At other times, sitting on the carriage of a gun, in front of the camp, I have contemplated with succeeding emotions of pity, laughter, and astonishment, the scene before me. When I viewed so many of my fellow-men, sunk, some of them from a rank in life, equal or superior to my own, and by their crimes degraded to a level with the basest of mankind; when I saw them naked, wading to their shoulders in water to unlade the boats, while a burning sun struck its meridian rays upon their uncovered heads, or yoked to and