Part 4 (1/2)

”We drove to the resident portion of the city and saw a goodly nureat deal of taste has been displayed in the construction of these houses, and we derived the impression that Adelaide was a decidedly prosperous city The wheat-growing industry of South Australia is a very large one Many of the great farmers have their residences in Adelaide and spend only a s all details to theirmachinery finds its way to South Australia, where it has attained a well-deserved popularity”

While our friends were at breakfast the next , he would like to see one of the Australian prisons containing convicts that had been transported froland

The doctor shed

”Oh, you are all wrong, Harry,” said Ned ”They gave up that business long ago I was under the same impression that you are, but learned better froers I e my mistake,” said Harry ”We are all liable to make blunders, and that is one of them”

”Quite true,” Dr Whitney ree to hi is to acknowledge it”

”The gentleman who corrected my blunder,” said Ned, ”toldlanded once in Sydney, fresh fro in him, and before he was an hour on shore he asked the clerk of the hotel where he could go to shoot Sydney ducks He had heard of the a few brace”

”What is the point of the joke?” said Harry; ”I confess I cannot see it”

”That is exactly what I said to my informant,” replied Ned, ”and then he went on and told me that in former times Australian convicts were spoken of as Sydney ducks”

”Oh! I see,” said Harry, ”that is a very good joke when you come to know all about it What did the clerk of the hotel say to the inquiring stranger?”

”I don't know,” replied Ned, ”but I presuone out of fashi+on, and were not being shot any ently as possible”

”How did the convicts come to have the name of Sydney ducks?” Harry asked

”I can't tell you, I am sure,” said Ned, ”you will have to ask the doctor about it”

”The name came, no doubt,” said Dr Whitney, ”froht to Australia were landed at Sydney, and for a good many years Sydney was the principal depot of these involuntary erants The adoption of Australia as the place for convict settleht about by events in America, a statement which ,” Harry remarked ”How did it happen?”

”It came about in this way,” the doctor continued; ”when Aland, offenders of various kinds, whether political or criminal, were sent to the American colonies, principally to the Southern States and the West Indies, where they were chiefly employed in the cultivation of tobacco The consue, and the revenue derived froland was able to kill two birds with one stone; she got rid of her crie profit on their work

”When the Aained their independence eight years later, England found herself deprived of a place to which she could send her convicts, and she looked around for another She tried the coast of Africa, and found it too unhealthy for her purpose Captain Cook had recently visited Australia and given a glowing account of it, and the governht that this new country would be an excellent one for cri out a fleet of shi+ps for that purpose; and, accordingly, eleven vessels, carrying more than one thousand people, sailed for Portsmouth in the month of March, 1787, with orders to proceed to Australia”

”If England had knoas to happen,” said Harry, ”she need not have been at the trouble of sending her criht have kept on with A us her crinate them properly when she shi+ps the the sa to prevent it, but I don't believe we succeed to a very great extent”

”Did they send a thousand convicts to Australia in this first batch?”

queried Ned

”There were about one thousand people altogether,” said Dr Whitney, ”including 757 convicts, and ahteen children They had 160 soldiers to guard the prisoners, with a sufficient number of officers, and forty of the soldiers were accooodly quantity of cattle, sheep, horses, pigs, and goats, and a large quantity of seeds from various parts of the world was sent out It was not expected that the colony would be self-supporting for soed that supply shi+ps laden with flour and other provisions should be sent froular intervals A year or two after the colony was founded one of these shi+ps recked on its way to Australia, and the colonists suffered greatly for want of food A the supplies taken by each shi+p there was usually a fresh batch of convicts, and quite regularly convict shi+ps were despatched froht a convict shi+p would not be a pleasant craft to travel on A goodthe Atlantic on cattle shi+ps, but he thought the cattle shi+p would be far preferable to one laden with convicts

”And so it is,” replied the doctor ”According to all accounts, the life on board a convict shi+p froland to Australia was terrible Rereat harshness; they were not supposed to have any feelings and were never spoken to kindly, and in many instances an order was usually accoe the prisoners were allowed on deck one hour or possibly two hours of each day, care being taken that only a small number would be there at any one time

”For the rest of the twenty-four hours they were shut up in close, stifling pens or cages, generally with nothing but a little straw to sleep on, and they were fed with the coarsest and poorest food Coffee and tea with hard bread formed their breakfast; dinner was the same, with sometimes the addition of a piece of heavily salted beef, so hard that it was no easy matter to cut it into mouthfuls Supper was the same as breakfast, and this was kept up with hardly any variation

”The slightest infraction of the rules was punished with the lash, but this did not deter the cri trouble Constantly the boatswain and his assistants were kept busy in perfors that were ordered, and sometimes the cat-o'-nine-tails was in steady use from sunrise to sunset The arded by his superiors, and if he occasionally hanged a few ood land to Australia, partly in consequence of their scanty fare and the great heat of the tropics; but, according to tradition, a very large proportion of the mortality was the result of brutal treaters on the convict shi+p,” said Harry, ”seem to have been treated pretty much like those on slave shi+ps”