h.--There is a place enclosed between high walls adjoining the
convict barracks, called the Lumber Yard. This is where the prisoners
mess. It is roofed on two sides, and contains tables and benches. Six
hundred men can mess here perhaps, but as seven hundred are always
driven into it, it follows that the weakest men are compelled to sit on
the ground. A more disorderly sight than this yard at meal times I
never beheld. The cook-houses are adjoining it, and the men bake their
meal-bread there. Outside the cook-house door the firewood is piled,
and fires are made in all directions on the ground, round which sit
the prisoners, frying their rations of fresh pork, baking their hominy
cakes, chatting, and even smoking.

The Lumber Yard is a sort of Alsatia, to which the hunted prisoner
retires. I don't think the boldest constable on the island would venture
into that place to pick out a man from the seven hundred. If he did go
in I don't think he would come out again alive.

May 16th.--A sub-overseer, a man named Hankey, has been talking to me.
He says that there are some forty of the oldest and worst prisoners who
form what he calls the "Ring", and that the members of this "Ring" are
bound by oath to support each other, and to avenge the punishment of any
of their number. In proof of his assertions he instanced two cases
of English prisoners who had refused to join in some crime, and had
informed the Commandant of the proceedings of the Ring. They were found
in the morning strangled in their hammocks. An inquiry was held, but not
a man out of the ninety in the ward would speak a word. I dread the task
that is before me. How can I attempt to preach piety and morality to
these men? How can I attempt even to save the less villainous?

May 17th.--Visited the wards to-day, and returned in despair. The
condition of things is worse than I expected. It is not to be written.
The newly-arrived English prisoners--and some of their histories
are most touching--are insulted by the language and demeanour of the
hardened miscreants who are the refuse of Port Arthur and Cockatoo
Island. The vilest crimes are perpetrated as jests. These are creatures
who openly defy authority, whose language and conduct is such as was
never before seen or heard out of Bedlam. There are men who are known
to have murdered their companions, and who boast of it. With these the
English farm labourer, the riotous and ignorant mechanic, the victim
of perj