ous liquors, of
gunpowder, and of diseases more inimical to them than even slavery, may
be counteracted.

OF THE CONVICTS.

The prisoners who had hitherto formed the bulk of all the exploring
parties previously led by me into the interior of New South Wales, were
chosen chiefly from amongst men employed on the roads, who had acquired
good recommendations from their immediate overseers; but, on this last
occasion, the men forming the party were for the most part chosen from
amongst those still remaining in Cockatoo Island, the worst and most
irreclaimable of their class.

The concentration of convicts in that island was intended, I believe, to
follow out the Norfolk Island system, keeping the men under rigorous
surveillance, and making them work at their respective trades, or as
labourers. Even there, so near to Sydney, that labour, so available to
lay the foundations of a colony, might have been employed with great
advantage, in constructing a naval arsenal and hospital for our seamen on
the Indian station, with a dry dock attached to it for the repair of war-
steamers. Such a dock has been long a desideratum at Sydney, and private
enterprize might, ere this time, have embarked in a work so essential to
an important harbour, had not the Government always possessed the means
of cheaply constructing such a work by convict labour, and been thus able
at any time to have entered into such competition as might have been very
injurious to a private speculator. At Cockatoo Island, blacksmiths,
shoemakers, wheelwrights, were at work in their various avocations; all
the shoes, for both the men and horses of the expedition, were made
there; also one half of the carts, which proved equally good as the other
portion, although that was made by the best maker in the colony, a
celebrated man.

The eagerness evinced by all these men, so confined in irons on Cockatoo
Island, to be employed in an exploring expedition, was such that even the
most reckless endeavoured to smooth their rugged fronts, and seemed to
wish they had better deserved the recommendation of the superintendent.
The prospect of achieving their freedom, by one year of good behaviour in
the interior, was cheering to the most depressed soul amongst these
prisoners. All pressed eagerly forward with their claims and pretensions,
which, unfortunately for the knowing ones, were strictly investigated by
Mr. Ormsby the superintendent, and Captain Innes, the visiting
magistr