of their guard, to
the wood-cutting stations, where they worked without food, until night.
The launching and hewing of the timber compelled them to work up to
their waists in water. Many of them were heavily ironed. Those who died
were buried on a little plot of ground, called Halliday's Island (from
the name of the first man buried there), and a plank stuck into the
earth, and carved with the initials of the deceased, was the only
monument vouchsafed him.

Sarah Island, situated at the south-east corner of the harbour, is long
and low. The commandant's house was built in the centre, having the
chaplain's house and barracks between it and the gaol. The hospital was
on the west shore, and in a line with it lay the two penitentiaries.
Lines of lofty palisades ran round the settlement, giving it the
appearance of a fortified town. These palisades were built for the
purpose of warding off the terrific blasts of wind, which, shrieking
through the long and narrow bay as through the keyhole of a door, had in
former times tore off roofs and levelled boat-sheds. The little town
was set, as it were, in defiance of Nature, at the very extreme of
civilization, and its inhabitants maintained perpetual warfare with the
winds and waves.

But the gaol of Sarah Island was not the only prison in this desolate
region.

At a little distance from the mainland is a rock, over the rude side
of which the waves dash in rough weather. On the evening of the 3rd
December, 1833, as the sun was sinking behind the tree-tops on the left
side of the harbour, the figure of a man appeared on the top of this
rock. He was clad in the coarse garb of a convict, and wore round his
ankles two iron rings, connected by a short and heavy chain. To the
middle of this chain a leathern strap was attached, which, splitting
in the form of a T, buckled round his waist, and pulled the chain high
enough to prevent him from stumbling over it as he walked. His head was
bare, and his coarse, blue-striped shirt, open at the throat, displayed
an embrowned and muscular neck. Emerging from out a sort of cell, or
den, contrived by nature or art in the side of the cliff, he threw on
a scanty fire, which burned between two hollowed rocks, a small log of
pine wood, and then returning to his cave, and bringing from it an iron
pot, which contained water, he scooped with his toil-hardened hands a
resting-place for it in the ashes, and placed it on the embers. It was
evident that