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SKETCHES IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA.
CHAPTER XIV.
Swan River immigrants begin to see their position—Valuable commercial products of Western Australia—Scanty means of turning them to account—Settlers decide upon asking Home Government for convicts—Suitability of colony as vast jail—Rations—Schemes for improving circumstances of colony—Superior class of prisoners in early convict ships—Long sentences—Government expenditure required in West Australia for many years to come—Frequent allusion to Government—Government men—Proposal scouted for introduction of Government women—Difficulty of procuring female immigrants—Women disheartened on landing—Bigamy—Situation of convicts' wives—Ultra-Protestantism—Child surreptitiously carried out to be christened—Matrimonial disputes—Social inequalities—Small number of respectable women—A convict's wedding—Shifting nature of population—Glazier cannot come—Effect of familiarity with crime—Causes assigned by convicts for being transported—The tax-cart, and other anecdotes—Convict geologist—"Addicted to sharpening of a knife"—Convicts in church—No rule without exception—Religious instruction of convicts on road parties much overlooked formerly—Present position of chaplains—Impossibility under existing circumstances of chaplains' visits being of much benefit to road parties—Books craved for—Warder's disappointment on examining box—Convicts' notions on week-day and Sunday services—Sort of books preferred by convicts—Sitting near the pulpit—Effect on personal comfort produced by convict servants—London pickpocket—Preference for machinery in place of convict labour.
Having now concluded the episode of the Australind settlement, I must turn back to the history of the Swan River immigrants and their brave buffetings with evil fortune. The discovery that not only would all the garden vegetables thrive in Western Australia, but that its climate was also splendidly adapted for producing corn, did not, unluckily, put a period to the disappointments of the
