"Very rarely," said the gentleman. "There were many runaways, but they were generally brought back and punished, and if their escape was accompanied with violence they were hanged or shot. In the bush they were liable to starve, and many a convict's bones are whitening where he perished of hunger; the natives were hostile, and if a runaway escaped recapture and starvation, he was very likely to fall before the spear of a black man.
"Some of the Irish convicts of 1798 were so struck by the similarity between the Blue Mountains, about eighty miles from Sydney, and the Connaught Hills of Ireland that they rushed off expecting to reach their homes without difficulty. One man who had tried on the voyage out to fathom the mystery of the mariner's compass felt sure that he could find his way home if he only had the thing to steer by. He stole a copy of a work on navigation, and tore out the first leaf, which had the picture of a compass upon it. His theft was detected and punished, and he never had an opportunity to try his system of paper-compass navigation.
"A goodly portion of the emigrants thought China was only a little way overland from Sydney, and many tried to reach it. There used to be a story of a runaway who had wandered for days in the bush, and suddenly came to a hut in which was an acquaintance. He anxiously asked how his friend had got to China, and was much astonished to learn that he had reached a farm a few miles from Sydney, and his acquaintance had been hired there as a laborer.
SENTENCED TO HARD LABOR.
"If you wish to learn how the convicts were brought from England to Australia," continued their informant to Frank and Fred, "how they lived when they got here, and how they were treated, read a story entitled 'His Natural Life,' by Marcus Clarke, an Australian journalist and littérateur. In the form of a novel he has preserved much of the history of the old convict days. It is not altogether agreeable reading, though it is instructive.
"All the colonists except the convicts themselves, and they had no voice in the matter, protested against Australia being peopled by these objectionable individuals, and protest after protest was made to the Home Government. These protests had their effect, and in 1840 transportation to New South Wales came to an end; an attempt was afterwards made to renew it, but was never carried out. It was continued later in Van Dieman's Land and other colonies, and in West Australia until 1868, when it was brought to an end, not so much at the wish of the people of West Australia as of those of the other colonies.
"And let me say in conclusion," he remarked, "that there are many prominent citizens of Australia whose fathers or grandfathers were transported, and nobody in his senses thinks any the worse of them in consequence. There are some gentlemen high in official position—of course it would not be polite for me to name them—who are thus descended, and so are some of the wealthiest and most prominent citizens in civil life. Everybody may be aware of it, but nobody talks of it in public.