ur, chief amongst them St.
Andrew's Cathedral, a palace for the Governor, and most of the
roads. The ticket-of-leave convicts were said to be a
well-conducted, industrious lot of men, who very rarely
committed fresh crimes, who all earned an honest livelihood,
and were regarded as respectable members of the community
amongst whom they dwelt. The public works were creditable
examples of prison industry and skill St. Andrew's Cathedral,
built under Major McNair from plans prepared by Colonel
MacPherson entirely by convict labour, struck me as one of the
finest specimens of ecclesiastical architecture which I had
seen in the East, and I believe there exists in no other
country a more remarkable example of the successful industrial
training of convicts."

We are not of course greatly concerned in this treatise with the
original crimes committed by those Indian convicts, and for which they
had received a sentence of transportation. Suffice it to say that their
warrants showed generally that, in the case of convicts for life, the
crimes were for the most part those of Murder, Thuggee, and Dacoity;
while those sentenced to a term of years had been tried and convicted of
frauds and forgeries, robbery with violence, and such like
misdemeanours. "Thuggee," we all know, though it will bear repetition
here, was in full operation all over India from very early times, but at
the beginning of this century it engaged the serious attention of the
Indian Government; and it was found to be an hereditary pursuit of
certain families who worked in gangs--the Hindus to satisfy their
goddess Bhawani, and other sects the goddess Devi--and they committed a
countless number of murders all over the country. Thugs were a bold,
resolute set of men, and as a rule divided themselves into groups
consisting of a leader, a persuader, a strangler, a scout, and a
gravedigger, but all the gangs, happily for India, were finally broken
up under Colonel Sleeman about 1860. Some of the men were hanged, and
many transported to our penal settlements in the Straits of Malacca.
Dacoity was in some parts of India akin to Thuggee, for the leaders
carried with them in the same way a sacred implement, which was devoted
to Bhawani. In the case of the Thugs this was a pickaxe, but with the
Dacoits it was an axe with a highly-tempered edge.

In the early days we talk of, it was the common practice of the
authorities t