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may be well to say in the opening of this book that many of the scenes therein shown are taken from a land blessed by God and blighted by man,—a Penal Colony. Western Australia, the poorest and the loveliest of all the Australias, has received from the mother country only her shame and her crime.

I cannot write excuses for the many faults and crudities in this first book: if nobody else can prize the volume, I myself can. Not for its literary worth, indeed; but for many hours of pleasure which its composition has given to me. Whatever merit it may be denied, it must certainly possess that, if merit it be, of realism. Many of the scenes shown are memories, not imaginings,—things which clamored for recognition, and I have written them here.