Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/37

( 12 ) various as their situations, their prospects, or their characters; yet the general sentiment seemed to be, that of entire indifference: a few women alone, whose birth and education had promised them a far different fate, were; affected by this heart-rending, though voluntary exile from their native country; and

Among the convicts on board, were some who, by prodigality, and its attendant vices, had degraded themselves from a respectable rank in society, and were indebted to the lenity of their prosecutors alone for an escape from the last sentence of the law. Some of these men were accompanied by their, wives, who had married them in the sunshine Of prosperity, when the world smiled deceit-