this
vicinity Mount Wellington towers grandly forty-two hundred feet above
the others, so close to the city on the northwest side as to seem almost
within rifle-range. The shape of the town is square, built upon a
succession of low hills, being very much in this respect like Sydney. It
has broad streets intersecting one another at right angles, lined with
handsome well-stocked stores serving an active and enterprising
population of thirty thousand or more. Of these shops, two or three
spacious and elegant bookstores deserve special mention, being such as
would do credit to any American or European city. Their shelves and
counters were found to contain a remarkably full assortment of both
modern and classic literature. There must be many cultured and
intelligent people here to afford sufficient support to such admirable
establishments.

Many fine public buildings were observed, with elaborate facades, nearly
all built of light freestone; while quite a number of handsome edifices,
both for public and private use, were noticed as in course of
construction of the same material. Churches, banks, insurance offices,
and the like, all in this bright cheerful stone, give not only an
imposing aspect to the thoroughfares of the city, but one always
pleasing whether viewed under cloud-shadows or in the rays of the sun.
And yet Hobart has hardly outlived the curse of the penal associations
which clustered about its birth. Thirty or forty years ago the British
Government expended here five thousand dollars per day in support of
jails and military barracks. The last convict ship from England
discharged her cargo at Hobart in 1851, since which year the system has
gradually disappeared. The loss of a large, profitable, and regular
business incidental to a penal depot, however objectionable in some of
its associations, gave the place a check from which it has taken a
series of years to recover; but its far more legitimate and agreeable
growth is now one in which the citizens may and do take a commendable
and natural pride. The past history of the place, so characterized by
official cruelties, brutalities, and crimes, will not bear recall or
exposure to the light of day. What Cayenne was to France, Hobart was to
England; namely, the convict's purgatory, where order was maintained
only by the lash, the halter, and the bullet; where official murder
formed a part of the daily routine. What a broad contrast exists between
that picture of th