rections with astonishing precision. They take
great pride in showing visitors their own work. It is an interesting
though sorrowful sight to see these poor fellows--some of them deprived
of their liberty for life, perhaps for crimes into which they have been
driven by the treatment they receive from those who have deprived them
both of their land and of their liberty. Many, if not most of them, are
in some measure unconscious of guilt; and they are almost incapable of
appreciating the relation between what they have committed and the
punishment which has fallen on them. Their minds are plunged in the
darkest ignorance; or if they know anything beyond the means of
satisfying their immediate wants, it is that they have been deprived of
their rightful possessions by the men whose chains they wear. Surely this
reflection should now and then present itself to the white man who is
accustomed to treat them so harshly, and induce him to judge more
leniently of their acts, and instead of confining himself to coersive
measures for protection, make him resort to the means which are within
his reach of raising the despised and oppressed savage more nearly to a
level with himself in the scale of humanity.

The native prisoners at Rottnest collect salt from the lagoons, cut wood,
and at present almost grow sufficient grain to keep them, so that in a
short time they will be a source of profit rather than of loss to the
crown. Some of them pine away and die; others appear happy. Generally,
however, when a fresh prisoner comes among them, great discontent
prevails; they enquire eagerly about their friends and families; and what
they hear in reply recalls vividly to their minds their wild roving life,
their corrobories, the delights of their homes; and of these, too, they
are sometimes compelled to think when a blue streak of smoke stealing
over the uplands, catches their restless eye, as it wanders instinctively
forth in that direction from their island prison. They will often gaze on
these mementos of their former free life, until their eyes grow dim with
tears and their breasts swell with those feelings which, however debased
they may appear, they share in common with us all. On these occasions
they naturally turn with loathing to their food. Those who suffer most
are the oldest; for they have ties to which the younger are strangers.

The rapidity with which the young ones grow up and improve in appearance,
in consequence of their re