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I was indeed liable to pay dear for geographical discovery when my honour and character were delivered over to convicts, on whom, although I might confide as to courage, I could not always rely for humanity.
"You thought you were clever, I suppose," he said in a growl-like tone that certainly fitted his face. "What are you doing here, I'd like to know?" "Tottering angels!" said Van, "didn't that experience do you any good after all? No wonder the convicts wouldn't have you!" Beth was afraid for what Bostwick might have heard.
When I first landed on the island, the convicts were kept at day-work, having stated times for their dinners and other meals: this method answered very well whilst there were few to look after; but when their numbers increased, I had not people of confidence to overlook them and keep them at work: I therefore judged it would be more eligible to task them, taking the opinion of those whom I thought most conversant in the different kinds of work that were going forward.
The South, prior to the rebellion, kept bloodhounds to pursue runaway slaves who took refuge in the neighboring swamps, and also to hunt convicts. Orders were issued to kill all these animals as they were met with. On one occasion a soldier picked up a poodle, the favorite pet of its mistress, and was carrying it off to execution when the lady made a strong appeal to him to spare it.
Disturbing reports of marauding expeditions on the part of the convicts, still at large, came with insistent frequency. Altogether the week had been a trial to her nerves. It had also been a vexation. No man had a right, she told herself, to do and say the things that Van had said and done, only to go off, without so much as a little good-by and give no further sign.
Scarcely any one is about in the streets this afternoon, except a gang or two of convicts dragging their heavy chains along, sweeping and mending the streets. This is a punishment much approved of by the Mexican authorities, as combining terror to evil-doers with advantage to the community.
After the flour has been consumed the sack is cut up into quarter sections, washed, hemmed and used for handkerchiefs. No better handkerchief can be invented. They are stout, stiff and durable! They will bear all manner of nasal assaults! There is no danger of blowing them into atoms, and the officials are not afraid to give them out to convicts sent there charged with the use of dynamite!
Two convicts, whom I had given leave the preceding day to take an excursion into the interior part of the island, returned this day at noon quite naked: they had several cuts in different parts of their bodies, some of which were deep, occasioned by the entangled state of the woods, and the sharpness of the briars: they had not been an hour from the settlement before they lost sight of the sun from the thickness of the woods; this caused them to wander about till eleven o'clock, when they heard the noise of our church bell, which was a man beating on the head of an empty cask, and presently afterwards they returned to the settlement.
But there was a very spirited and vigorous effort to eliminate liberty, by means of an entirely new crop of crude regulations and interferences. But it was not the Socialist State regulating those whom it fed, like children or even like convicts. It was the Capitalist State raiding those whom it had trampled and deserted in every sort of den, like outlaws or broken men.
The feelings of a brave but humane British officer, surrounded by difficulties, with very few except convicts under his command, annoyed by natives, yet anxious not to injure them, and just about to turn back from the journey of discovery which he had hitherto successfully pursued; the feelings of Major Mitchell under the circumstances so touchingly described by him can scarcely be imagined.
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