erally the worst
behaved and most drunken," and, consequently, most liable to punishment
in the public gangs.

[190] See Mr. Montgomery Martin's New South Wales for further
particulars on this subject, pp. 168-177.

By way of introducing the reader to the kind of life led by those
unhappy beings who labour in Australia at the public roads, and to give
him also some idea of the spiritual work which the ministers of Christ's
Church in a penal colony may be called upon to perform, the following
sketch from a private letter will be not unacceptable:--"In a few
minutes I am at the stockade where more than 60 men are immediately
mustered; the [Roman] 'Catholics'[191] are sent back to their boxes, the
'Protestants' assemble under a shed, open on two sides, and filled with
a few coarse boards for tables and forms, where the men get their meals.
Their boxes are wooden buildings of uniform structure, in which the
prisoners are locked up from _sundown_ to sunrise. The roof is shingled,
the sides are weather-board, the door in the middle is secured by a
padlock, and above the door is a grating to admit the light and air,
a similar grating being placed exactly opposite to it. The internal
arrangements are simple in the extreme, where you see a gangway in the
middle, and two tiers of hard planks or dressers for the men to lie
upon; their bedding being, I believe, only a blanket. As there is no
division to form separate bed-places, the four-and-twenty or thirty men
who share these boxes lie like the pigs, and make the best of it they
can. When a prisoner has served his time in irons, he is removed to a
probationary gang; that which I am describing is an ironed gang. These
men are dressed in a motley suit of grey and yellow alternately, each
seam being of a different colour; and the irons being secured to each
ancle, and, for the relief of the wearer, made fast from the legs to the
waist. The whole stockade is sometimes enclosed with high palings, and
sometimes open. The service of the Church is performed under the shed
where the men assemble for meals. The men behave well or ill as the
sergeant in charge takes an interest in it or not. Here the sergeant
and a dozen young soldiers are constant at prayers. The responses are
given by all that can read, our blessed societies having furnished
Bibles and Prayer-books for all. Every change of position is attended
with the clank of chains, which at first harrows your soul: but time
does