Page:Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies.djvu/30

2 payment; nine women, chiefly pensioners' wives; six children, and a young man, whom one of the pensioners had befriended. These, with the crew, amounted to above eighty persons.

On the 5th, some of the pensioners received a part of their advance from the Government, to enable them to purchase necessaries for the voyage, for which purpose some of them went on shore; but they wasted their money in strong drink, and returned on board so much intoxicated, that the necessity of preventing others doing the same, was obvious. The men became very unruly, but were appeased by the women being allowed to go on shore to make purchases, and by a boat with supplies of clothing, bedding, &c. being sent off to the ship.—In the evening we proceeded further down the river, and, on the 6th, dropped anchor off Deal. Here the men were determined to go on shore, and were taken from the vessel by Deal boatmen, in spite of remonstrance and threats from the captain: many of them came back intoxicated, but one returned no more.

We sailed from the Downs on the 9th, and from that time till we reached the Cape of Good Hope, few days passed without some of the pensioners being intoxicated and quarrelling: sometimes but few were sober; and, occasionally, the women were as bad as the men. Three times the captain was seized by different men, who threatened to throw him overboard. One man was nearly murdered by one of his fellows, and all kinds of sin prevailed among them. A fruitful source of this disorder was a daily allowance to each person of about five liquid ounces of spirits. Some saved it for a few days, and then got drunk with it: some purchased it from others, and so long as their money lasted, or they could sell their clothes, were constantly intoxicated. The general excitement produced by this quantity of spirits, made them irritable in temper, and seemed to rouse every corrupt passion of the human mind. To all expostulation, the constant reply was: "We are free men, and it is our own: we have paid for it, and have a right to do as we please with it."

From having been long accustomed to act in obedience to military discipline, instead of upon principle, these men