Before the prisoners marched soldiers with mounted bayonets, and behind, bringing up the rear, were other soldiers carrying revolvers on the full cock. The chain-gang was being thus escorted back to the "Establishment" after working on the road, and the sight was most painful, for though each individual had probably deserved hanging, one could not help feeling that the present condition of most of the prisoners was in all likelihood the inevitable result of bad early training.
When we first went to Western Australia it was customary for convicts who had served a portion of their sentence to receive what was called a conditional pardon, by which they were free to leave the colony, and to land in the ports of any part of the world, those of Great Britain and Ireland alone excepted; but this licence naturally causing a migratory flow of convicts to Melbourne and Adelaide, rendering necessary to those colonies a great and expensive police force, they, by their inter-colonial laws, have refused to recognize the validity of conditional pardons, and compel all persons who come from Swan River to show certificates of having entered the latter place as free men, before permitting them to step ashore.
Even when the passports are pronounced satisfactory the owners of them think it best to say as little as may be, after landing, of ever having been in Swan River. I learned this by reading a letter which an emigrant had received from a friend in Adelaide, warning him, in case he came there, not to speak of any acquaintance with Western Australia. The truth is, the neighbouring colonies are justified in suspecting that a good deal of contraband
