And now behold our hero marched ashore with his fellows; reeling like a drunken man, the strange effect of firm earth under foot after months of heaving seaway; examined, ticketed and numbered, clad in Her Majesty's livery, and sent to a near-by country station, where he is put to work under savage overseers at carrying stone for road-building; and thus began five years of unmitigated suffering for Robert Marsh in that detestable land. There were about 43,000 convicts on the island at the time, 25,000 of whom were driven to daily work in chain gangs, on the roads, in the wet mines or the forest. The rest were ex-convicts; had served their sentences and counted themselves among the free population, which all told did not then exceed 60,000. Conceive of a free community, nearly one half of whom, men and women, were former convicts, but not regenerate. For years the brothels of London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, were emptied into Van Dieman's Land. A reputable writer has said that at this time female virtue was unknown in the island. The wealthy land-owners, under government patronage, were autocrats in their own domain. The whipping-post, the triangle—a refinement of cruelty—and the gallows were familiar sights. The slightest failure at his daily task sent the convict to the whipping-post or to solitary confinement.
Official iniquity flourished under Sir George Arthur's reign of eleven years. He was Franklin's predecessor, and his minions were still in control when Marsh came under their power. He was shifted from station to station; fed like a dog, lodged in the meanest huts and worked well nigh to death. The worst characters were his overseers, and the day began with the lash. A convict's strength would give out under his load; he would lag behind, or stop to rest. At once he would be taken to the station, stripped to the waist—if he chanced to have anything on—strung up to the post or triangle, and flogged. As an additional measure of reform, brine was thrown into the gashes which the lash had made. These were the milder forms of daily punishment. Sir George Arthur's prouder record comes from the executions. Travelers to-day tell us that Tasmania is really a second England; in its settled portions it is a land of pleasant vales and gentle rivers, rich in harvests of the temperate zone. "Appleland," some have called it, from its fruitful orchards; but no tree transplanted from Merrie England ever flourished more than the black stock from Tyburn Hill. Sir George hanged 1,500 during his stay. Marsh tells of a compassionate clergyman who was watching with interest the erection of a gallows. "Yes," he said, "I suppose it will do, but it is not as large as we need. I think ten will hang comfortable, but twelve will be rather crowded."
It is small wonder that our hero tried to escape. He took to the bush—which means the unexplored and inhospitable forest—with a band of friends; was captured, punished, and thereafter dressed in magpie—trousers and frock one half black, one half yellow; and in this garb, which advertised to all that he had been a bush-ranger, he worked on until the spring of 1842, when Sir John Franklin made him a ticket-of-leave man. This relieved him from the overseers, and gave him permission to work, for whatever wages he could get, in an assigned district.
And now again, of this new phase of his misadventures, a long story could be made. At that time the best circumstanced ticket-of-leave men got about a shilling a day and boarded themselves. But there was little work and many seekers. They roamed over the country, turned away from plantation after plantation, and in many cases became the boldest of outlaws. Escape from the island was well nigh impossible; but after many hardships, utterly unable to get honest work, Marsh was one of a party that determined to try it. Making their way eighty miles to the seashore, they hid in the woods, where for a week or so they gathered firewood, buried potatoes and snared kangaroo. One of their number reached a settlement and returned with the word that an American whaler was coming to take them off. After six days more of waiting the vessel hove in sight. As she tried to draw near and send boats ashore a storm came up and she narrowly escaped the breakers. At this critical moment a British armed patrol schooner rounded a point down the coast and the American made her escape with great difficulty, leaving the score of runaway convicts at their precarious lookout, hopeless and despondent.
They were soon arrested, Marsh among them. He was tried for breaking his patrol, and sent to an inland district, 100 miles through the bush and swamps. "It was all punishment," he says pathetically, in describing this journey on which he nearly perished. So down-hearted and distressed were they, so appalled by the war of nature and man against them, that one of Marsh's companions, with fagged-out brain, came to the conclusion that they were really in hell and that the devil himself was in charge of them. But there is always a turn to the tide. They trapped a kangaroo and did not starve. Marsh reached his district and this time found work, which had to be light, for he was weak, emaciated and troubled day and night with a pain in his chest. And finally the glad word came that he was gazetted for pardon and could go to Hobart. There, on January 27, 1845, after ten months in Canada prisons, four and a half months in a transport ship, and five years in a convict colony, he went on board the American whaler Steiglitz of Sag Harbor, Selah Young, master, a free man.
The Steiglitz was bound out on a whaling voyage. No matter, she would take Marsh away from that hell. She cruised for whale off New Zealand, then made north, and in April anchored off Honolulu. King Hamehameha III., on hearing the story of the convict Americans, welcomed them ashore, and there Marsh stayed for four months, exploring the islands and waiting for a chance to get home. At last it came in the welcome shape of the whaler Samuel Robertson, Capt. Warner, bound for New Bedford. She touched at the Society Islands and Pernambuco, and on March 13, 1846, after seven years four and a half months absence, Marsh stepped ashore in his own country again. The people of New Bedford helped him and a few others as far as Utica. There one of his comrades in exile left him for his home in Watertown, and others went their several ways. Marsh was helped as far as Canandaigua, where his brother met him and took him to his home in Avon; and after a time of recuperation there, they came on to Buffalo, where he met his father, his mother and sister. He soon crossed the river, visited Toronto, and probably looked over the scenes of his early cracker-peddling and subsequent campaigning, up and down the Niagara. He had traveled 77,000 miles, but here his journey ended; and here the Patriot exile told his story, which I have drawn on in an imperfect way, for this true chronicle of old trails.