fourteen years the lonely community dwelt--about a thousand
twice-convicted prisoners, and a party of soldiers and officials to keep
them in order. No free person was allowed to approach within fifty miles
of the settlement, unless with special permission, which was very
sparingly granted. The place was a convict settlement of the harshest
type; and stern were the measures of that relentless commandant, Captain
Logan, who flogged and hanged the unfortunate people under his charge
until he became hated with a deadly hatred. He was an active explorer,
and did much to open up the interior country, till at length, on a trip
in which he was accompanied only by some convicts, they glutted their
vengeance by spearing him and battering his head with a native tomahawk.

#3. The Squatters.#--For thirteen years the settlement was not affected by
anything that went on in that outside world from which it was so
completely excluded. But in 1840 the onward progress of squatting
enterprise brought free men with sheep and cattle close to Moreton Bay.
That fine district, discovered by Allan Cunningham in 1827, and called
by him the Liverpool Plains, had almost immediately attracted
squatters, who by degrees filled up the whole of the available land,
and those who were either new-comers, or who found their flocks
increasing too fast for the size of their runs, were forced to move
outward, and, as a rule, northward. It was about the year 1840 that
the pioneers entered that fine tableland district called by Allan
Cunningham, in 1829, the Darling Downs, and when the year 1844 was ended
there were at least forty squatters over the Queensland borders, with
nearly 200,000 sheep and 60,000 cattle, and with many hundreds of
shepherds and stockmen to attend them.

#4. A Free Settlement.#--Whilst the squatters were gathering all round, a
change took place at Brisbane itself. We have seen that about 1840 the
English Government had resolved to discontinue transportation, except to
Van Diemen's Land. The word, therefore, went forth that Brisbane was no
longer to be a place of exile for criminals. It was to be the home of
free men and the capital of a new district. In 1841 Governor Sir George
Gipps arrived from Sydney, and laid out the plan of what is now a
handsome city. Blocks of land were offered for sale to free settlers,
and eagerly bought. The Governor also laid out a little town, now called
Ipswich, farther inland. Meanwhile the township o