"Settlements were formed at several places along the coast of Australia and in Van Dieman's Land (now Tasmania). The first convict settlement in Tasmania was on a peninsula, and a row of bull-dogs was chained across the narrow isthmus that connected the peninsula with the main-land, so close together that it was impossible for a man to pass between any two of them."
"I suppose the prisoners rarely managed to escape?" said Frank.
"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.
"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.