ent and unprincipled; although the censorship of public morals
and political measures was unsuited to their civil condition.

Among those thus employed was Savary, once an opulent sugar baker at
Bristol, who in 1824 was convicted of forgery, and his life spared by an
exercise of mercy then novel. Happier far, had he died! He wrote for
the press--on the right side. On the accusation of a colonist, his
ticket-of-leave was withdrawn; but he was spared the usual penalty of
banishment by the kindness of his patrons, who granted him another form
of liberty. This man was followed by his wife; but on her arrival, her
affection was seduced, or exhausted, and she returned to England. Savary
attempted suicide, recovered, and again fell into crime: he was tried by
Judge Montague, convicted of a colonial forgery, and afterwards died at
Port Arthur--an awful instance of the effects of transgression; and of
the proneness of men to repeat a crime they have once committed.[203]

It having been resolved to abandon Macquarie Harbour (1832), the
government fixed on Port Arthur, on the east coast, as the site of a
settlement where the rigour of discipline might be preserved. This
district is situated on a peninsula within a peninsula, and contains
about 100,000 acres of woodland--barren, but not repulsive. A neck of
450 yards broad, divides Tasman's and Forrestier's Peninsulas: there
lamps are set on posts, to which fierce dogs are chained; and to close
the passage by the shore, when opened by the recession of the tide,
others are kennelled on a floating platform. Sentinels, guard-boats, and
telegraphs, are the precautions employed to prevent escape; which few
have attempted, and fewer still accomplished.

The first commandant was Surgeon John Russell; an office subsequently
confided to Captain O'Hara Booth, a gentleman whose administration has
been the subject of great eulogy. A minute code of government
regulations defined the duties of all on the station. Hither all
convicted of colonial crimes, or of more serious misconduct as assigned
servants or in the road gangs, or who were separated to more than
ordinary punishment by the secretary of state, or of the educated class,
were sent. The degrees of punishment were, however, varied; and the more
severe was exhausting and dangerous. The carrying gang, with a massive
balk on the shoulders, resembled a huge centipede. The laborers,
sometimes thirty together, groaning beneath a weight of man