Page:The Catalpa Expedition (1897).djvu/73

Rh of the town, as it is blighted by the sight and defiled by the touch of the great criminal establishment."

Then the convicts heard the appalling code of rules, with the penalty for violation, which was usually death; and then they were assigned to the road parties, and from daylight to dark, in the heat which made the cockatoos in the trees motionless and the parrots silent, they blazed their way through the Australian bush and forest.

The present was made horrid by the companionship of desperate and degraded men, "the poison flower of civilization's corruption," and the future seemed hopeless.

Meanwhile James Wilson sent out an appeal for rescue. He sent it to John Devoy in America.