received grants of land and other advantages; but it is well known that soldiers are not famous as colonists, and amongst the many pensioners who lived near us, only two or three, whose wives were exceptional patterns of industry and thrift, could give us any counsel in our farming, or had been able to make any profit out of their own. The younger and still able-bodied pensioners who compose what is called the "Force," are envied by the older and less useful men on account of the extra pay which they receive whilst thus enrolled. In return for this additional stipend, the members of the "Force" must hold themselves in readiness to assist in all emergencies, such as extinguishing fires upon Government property, re-capturing runaway prisoners, mounting guard at the several gaols, and the like services. Between pensioners and convicts existed a very rancorous feeling, originating no doubt in the relative positions occupied by the two classes on board ship; the convicts protesting that the pensioners were quite as bad as themselves, only that they had not been found out, an assertion no ways weakened by the drunken habits in which some of the old soldiers were apt to indulge, and by the very low character of the women that many of them had married.
The convict depôt from which our little town derived its chief importance, was situated in the close vicinity of the pensioners' houses. At irregular intervals throughout the colony depôts of this kind are scattered, to which convicts are drafted after serving a portion of their sentence in the Fremantle gaol. On being thus transferred from the gaol to the depot, convicts, who are then "probation prisoners," are distributed in gangs to work upon
