ractory
and disorderly characters--to work in irons;" the sixth were "men of
the most degraded and incorrigible character--to be worked in irons, and
kept entirely separate from the other prisoners;" while the seventh were
the refuse of this refuse--the murderers, bandits, and villains, whom
neither chain nor lash could tame. They were regarded as socially dead,
and shipped to Hell's Gates, or Maria Island. Hells Gates was the most
dreaded of all these houses of bondage. The discipline at the place was
so severe, and the life so terrible, that prisoners would risk all to
escape from it. In one year, of eighty-five deaths there, only thirty
were from natural causes; of the remaining dead, twenty-seven were
drowned, eight killed accidentally, three shot by the soldiers, and
twelve murdered by their comrades. In 1822, one hundred and sixty-nine
men out of one hundred and eighty-two were punished to the extent of two
thousand lashes. During the ten years of its existence, one hundred
and twelve men escaped, out of whom sixty-two only were found-dead.
The prisoners killed themselves to avoid living any longer, and if so
fortunate as to penetrate the desert of scrub, heath, and swamp, which
lay between their prison and the settled districts, preferred death to
recapture. Successfully to transport the remnant of this desperate band
of doubly-convicted felons to Arthur's new prison, was the mission of
Maurice Frere.

He was sitting by the empty fire-place, with one leg carelessly thrown
over the other, entertaining the company with his usual indifferent air.
The six years that had passed since his departure from England had given
him a sturdier frame and a fuller face. His hair was coarser, his face
redder, and his eye more hard, but in demeanour he was little changed.
Sobered he might be, and his voice had acquired that decisive, insured
tone which a voice exercised only in accents of command invariably
acquires, but his bad qualities were as prominent as ever. His five
years' residence at Maria Island had increased that brutality of
thought, and overbearing confidence in his own importance, for which he
had been always remarkable, but it had also given him an assured air of
authority, which covered the more unpleasant features of his character.
He was detested by the prisoners--as he said, "it was a word and a blow
with him"--but, among his superiors, he passed for an officer, honest
and painstaking, though somewhat bluff and