ays a
plentiful supply on hand? What from the servants of a master who neither
pays any attention to the Sabbath himself, nor makes those under him
observe it; who, on the slightest provocation, drags his men before the
magistrate, and swears literally to any thing, to have them flogged; who
never affords them the slightest indulgence, and whose whole aim is, to
get the greatest possible quantity of work out of them for the smallest
possible outlay? Nothing tends more directly to promote the good order
of a farm, than mustering everybody on it at noon on Sunday, for the
purpose of reading Divine service to them. Setting aside the moral
benefit that this practice may be supposed to produce, it puts an
effectual stop to distant wandering on that day. A man who has to appear
cleanly dressed on Sunday at noon, cannot stray far from home either
before or after that hour. On farms where this custom is not kept up,
the convict starts at daylight for some haunt where spirits are to be
had, to pay for which he has most probably robbed his master; there he
spends the day in riot and ribaldry, and reels home about midnight in a
state that renders him very unfit for resuming his work on Monday
morning. The convict-servant soon finds out what sort of a master he has
to deal with, and, to use their own slang, after trying it on for a bit,
in nine cases out of ten, he yields to circumstances. Two of mine tried
a few of their old pranks at starting; but a timely, though moderate
application of "the cat," put an entire stop to them. It is, however,
useless to say more on this subject, as the system of assigning servants
to private individuals has been done away with by orders from the Home
Government. The female convicts are much more difficult to manage than
the men, and often set their masters at defiance: they are generally of
the lowest and most wretched class of women.

The summer sets in in October, and wheat harvest begins in November. The
weather then becomes exceedingly hot, and the heat is occasionally
increased by the hot winds that blow from the north-west. These
generally (I speak of what I have observed on the Paterson) blow for
three days successively, with considerable violence, and do no small
injury to the farmer: they are very dry, make the lips crack, and the
skin feel as if about to crack; and should they come across a field of
wheat just shewing the ear, they would blight it to a certainty. After
expending their fo