or other officials of the time; but to show that it is a practice "more honoured in the breach than the observance," we have merely to contrast the fine euphonious native names that have been retained, such as Woolloomooloo, Paramatta, Illawarra, &c. with such commonplace appellations as the Hunter, the Murray, the Patterson, Gipps' Land, Spectacle Island, Cockatoo Island, Goat Island, Pinchgut, the Bottle and Glass, the Hen and Chickens, and the Sow and Pigs!

The principal feature in the illustration, however, is Cockatoo Island, which is still used as a prison house and house of correction for those reckless and misguided men, who having been originally transported to this colony for offences against the laws of England, are now undergoing the penalty of a second conviction for having outraged the laws of Australia. The buildings on the island are the work of the prisoners. Those seen on the left are the soldiers' barracks, capable of accommodating fifty men; to the right of these stand the convicts' barracks, with suitable accommodation for three hundred prisoners; and further to the right is the residence of the superintendent and his assistant. In addition to the erection of these buildings, and of some cells for solitary confinement, the labour of the prisoners has been

directed to the excavation from the solid rock of several extensive siloes, for the preservation of grain. These siloes are air-tight, and so spacious as to cover nearly 100,000 bushels of wheat. The experiment has proved quite successful; for the grain has been found sweet, and in nowise deteriorated, after two years' exclusion from the light of day.

The island has a bare, desolate appearance, since the trees that had flourished upon it for centuries have been cut down, and their places supplied by white walks, and sand-stone buildings, which, with the barren rocks on which they stand, now glare in the sunbeams, and afford no cool refreshing shade for the eye of the spectator. Only a few of its ancient inhabitants, those lofty tufted gum-trees to the right, are left standing as melancholy records of the ruin that has been wrought by the hand of civilization, on the pictorial appearance of the island.

Soon after the discovery of the eastern part of New Holland, by the immortal Cook, the British Parliament determined to establish a penal colony on that coast, at Botany Bay. The object which the government had in view confessedly was, to rid the country of the load of criminals that was accumulating in her gaols, to find a suitable station for the safe custody, the

punishment, and reformation of these criminals; and from such materials, as well as from the emigration of free settlers, to form a British colony, a new dependency of the British Crown. A fleet of eleven sail was accordingly fitted out, and put under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, R. N., Governor of the new colony, which was established, as we have mentioned, at the end of Sydney Cove, on the 26th day of January, 1788. During the administration of Governors Phillip, Hunter, King, Bligh, and Macquarie, or from 1788 to 1821, the system of convict discipline in the colony was, in its leading features, very much the same. With the exception of those retained as domestic servants for government officers, the rest of the prison population were employed in government buildings, experimental farms, or road making. The great abundance of free labour at the disposal of government, during the long administration of Governor Macquarie, is sufficiently attested by the incredible number of public buildings which he erected, and the extensive lines of communication which he opened to some of the principal agricultural districts of the colony.

The era of free emigration, which commenced to flow steadily in the early part of the government of Sir Thomas Brisbane, altered in some

measure the prevailing system of discipline. Then commenced the judicious and beneficial assignment system, which at once relieved the government of the burden of supporting a large number of its superabundant prisoners, and furnished the free settler, at a cheap market, with abundance of labour, to clear and cultivate his land, to manage his stock, and supply his establishment with domestic servants. This system, which continued in operation till within the last few years, like all human systems, had its evils as well as its benefits. It was certainly beneficial to the government and the settler; but it did away with the uniformity of discipline that formerly prevailed; it left the punishment of the assigned man too much to the caprice of his employer; and accordingly, while many criminals, by mild and humane treatment, have been thoroughly reformed, many, it is to be feared, if we can believe their own dying confessions, have, by tyrannical treatment, been driven to the bush, to prey upon their fellowmen, and finish their career on the scaffold.

While on the subject of the convict population, it will, perhaps, be considered a grave omission, if we do not allude to the existence of a deep and wide-spread feeling, that these colonies should no longer be made the receptacle for the scum of our gaols. This feeling has

developed itself in the most energetic manner. A league has been formed on a similar principle to the Anti-Corn-Law League, and called the Anti-Transportation League. Meetings have been held in all the three south-eastern colonies, and in Van Diemen's Land, and resolutions passed breathing loud war against the home government, should they persist in corrupting their society longer against the will of the colonists, and reproaching it with "holding out the word of promise to the ear, and breaking it to the hope." Money has been extensively subscribed to carry on the agitation, and thirty citizens of the city of Melbourne put down their hundred guineas each to promote the cause to which they have set their hands. There can be no question that the labour of the convicts in making roads, and constructing other public works, in the early years of the colony, was of essential service to its progress; but there can also be no manner of doubt that the colonists themselves are the best judges of the time when they can afford to dispense with this contaminating and pestiferous assistance; and due intimation of this having been given to the authorities at home, and the latter having recognised the validity of the argument by promises to abstain, and yet continuing in spite of their promises to send ship load after ship