Page 132 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

mouth of this inhospitable river, called Sarah Island.
Though now the whole place is desolate, and a few rotting
posts and logs alone remain-mute witnesses of scenes of ag-
ony never to be revived—in the year 1833 the buildings were
numerous and extensive. On Philip’s Island, on the north
side of the harbour, was a small farm, where vegetables were
grown for the use of the officers of the establishment; and, on
Sarah Island, were sawpits, forges, dockyards, gaol, guard-
house, barracks, and jetty. The military force numbered
about sixty men, who, with convict-warders and constables,
took charge of more than three hundred and fifty prison-
ers. These miserable wretches, deprived of every hope, were
employed in the most degrading labour. No beast of burden
was allowed on the settlement; all the pulling and dragging
was done by human beings. About one hundred ‘good-con-
duct’ men were allowed the lighter toil of dragging timber to
the wharf, to assist in shipbuilding; the others cut down the
trees that fringed the mainland, and carried them on their
shoulders to the water’s edge. The denseness of the scrub
and bush rendered it necessary for a ‘roadway,’ perhaps a
quarter of a mile in length, to be first constructed; and the
trunks of trees, stripped of their branches, were rolled to-
gether in this roadway, until a ‘slide’ was made, down which
the heavier logs could be shunted towards the harbour. The
timber thus obtained was made into rafts, and floated to the
sheds, or arranged for transportation to Hobart Town. The
convicts were lodged on Sarah Island, in barracks flanked
by a two-storied prison, whose ‘cells’ were the terror of the
most hardened. Each morning they received their breakfast

1 1