and interesting contrast to the other sections of
the planet, the sections that are known to us all,
familiar to us all. In the matter of particulars—a
detail here, a detail there—we have had
the choice climate of New South Wales’ seacoast;
we have had the Australian heat as furnished by Captain
Sturt; we have had the wonderful dust-storm; and we
have considered the phenomenon of an almost empty
hot wilderness half as big as the United States, with
a narrow belt of civilization, population, and good
climate around it.
Everything human is pathetic. The secret source
of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There
is no humor in heaven.
—Pudd’nhead
Wilson’s New Calendar.
Captain Cook found Australia in 1770, and eighteen
years later the British Government began to transport
convicts to it. Altogether, New South Wales
received 83,000 in 53 years. The convicts wore
heavy chains; they were ill-fed and badly treated
by the officers set over them; they were heavily punished
for even slight infractions of the rules; “the
cruelest discipline ever known” is one historian’s
description of their life.—[The Story of
Australasia. J. S. Laurie.]
English law was hard-hearted in those days.
For trifling offenses which in our day would be punished
by a small fine or a few days’ confinement,
men, women, and boys were sent to this other end of
the earth to serve terms of seven and fourteen years;
and for serious crimes they were transported for life.
Children were sent to the penal colonies for seven
years for stealing a rabbit!
When I was in London twenty-three years ago there
was a new penalty in force for diminishing garroting
and wife-beating—25 lashes on the bare
back with the cat-o’-nine-tails. It was
said that this terrible punishment was able to bring
the stubbornest ruffians to terms; and that no man
had been found with grit enough to keep his emotions
to himself beyond the ninth blow; as a rule the man
shrieked earlier. That penalty had a great and
wholesome effect upon the garroters and wife-beaters;
but humane modern London could not endure it; it got
its law rescinded. Many a bruised and battered
English wife has since had occasion to deplore that
cruel achievement of sentimental “humanity.”
Twenty-five lashes! In Australia and Tasmania
they gave a convict fifty for almost any little offense;
and sometimes a brutal officer would add fifty, and
then another fifty, and so on, as long as the sufferer
could endure the torture and live. In Tasmania
I read the entry, in an old manuscript official record,
of a case where a convict was given three hundred
lashes—for stealing some silver spoons.
And men got more than that, sometimes. Who
handled the cat? Often it was another convict;
sometimes it was the culprit’s dearest comrade;
and he had to lay on with all his might; otherwise
he would get a flogging himself for his mercy —for
he was under watch—and yet not do his friend
any good: the friend would be attended to by
another hand and suffer no lack in the matter of full
punishment.
