The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-08-18 00:00:00

THE PENAL SETTLEMENTS

Macquarie Harbour was formed at an early period after the
colonization of Van Diemen's Land, and continued to be a
place of punishment until 1831 or 1832. Thither were sent
such felons as were reconvicted in the colony, or such as the
governor might deem deserving of being sent there without
undergoing a trial. To these, again, are to be added native-
born colonists and free emigrants, found guilty of crime
within the settled portions of Tasmania.

Notwithstanding the sea of jungle which barred a passage
to the main land, attempts at escape were frequent. One of
the earliest and most horrible in its results was that of Pearse.
This man, with seven others, in 1822 or 1823, resolved to
encounter every hazard. Having possessed themselves of a
couple of boats, with a small portion of provision, equal to a
week's consumption at the rate of two ounces a day per man,
they were successful in flying the settlement. Their scanty
stores exhausted, it appears they quitted the boats, relanding
within sight of Macquarie Harbour. They then lived for
eight or nine days on the tops of tea-tree, which they boiled
in tin pots to extract the juice. Having entered the tre-
mendous bather of jungle, where nothing capableof sustaining
life was to be found, and the propriety of casting lots having
been discussed, three of the party separated privately from
the rest, two of whom it is said regained the settlement,
where they shortly after died, the third perishing on his re-
turn. The party, now reduced to five, lived for two or three
days on wild berries and their kangaroo-skin jackets, which
they roasted. At length they reached the Gordun river,
which they swam across, but their difficulties and privations
were as great as ever. The remorseless labyrinth seemed
interminable, for, like birds within the net, they found them-
selves closed within its fatal meshes. Lamed, exhausted,
famished, they struggled vainly on—every step but added to
their despair. Frenzy possessed their hearts. The vulture
in their jaws must be appeased, and a victim died that his
more miserable fellows might live. Another and another
fell, a man named Greenhill appearing, invariably, to have
been the executioner. At last Pearse and Greenhill alone
remained. Without the power to go forward—unable to.
retrace their steps and surrender to the authorities, they
madly sought to extricate themselves. The scene that fol-
lowed was horrible. These sole survivors, the dismal relics
of a dismal fate—each viewing the other with agonizing
doubt, with indescribable terror, their eyes glaring with
fiendish light—scanned each other's movements with nerves
strung to madness. Sleep, that carried doom, was the object
of anxious avoidance—" nature's restorative," so much re-
quired, was wildly endeavoured to be repelled. The herculean
constitution of Pearse bore him victor through the inhuman
contest—raging with hunger, worn out with watching, reduced
to the veriest extreme of human hopelessness, despair in his
soul, exhaustion in his frame—the fated Greenhill sunk,
overpowered, to earth. A spring—a half laugh, half shriek—
and a swift-descending axe told the rest.

Can mortal suffering—mortal debasement—be presented
in more abject, more heart-rending colours ? A runaway
convict—a felon murderer—forced to support life by canni-
balism—hopeless to preserve it by flight—nay, even unable
to offer it in atonement of an uncontemplated offence. Such
the awful position of Pearse ! After incredible hardship, he
gained the banks of the Derwent, and found some fragments
of opossums at a spot where the natives had recently made
fires. More eager to die than to live, he shouted loudly, in
the hope that they would come and transfix him with their
spears. Having fallen in with some bush-rangers, Pearse
was taken along with them ; but his late melancholy adven-
tures having been unknown, he was merely sent back to
e ithoughtt.rom ther
thhoerrroa
at-
tempts h.Nel Macquarie agone
Ht ahrrboouugrh. w
oOurli
de
hwaoluel d have h
kept
tempts to escape. Such, however, did not prove to be the
case ; urged by a comrade named Cox, and induced by the
powerful apprehension of corporal punishment for the loss of
a shirt that had beet, stolen from him, the terrors of the bush
were less than his dread of Macquarie Harbour, from which
he and Cox absconded. Another scene of famine and misery
ensued, Cox perishing to preserve his partner's life. After
a few days Pearse returned to the settlement. Conveyed
before the commandant, he disclosed every thing, being
weary of life, and willing to die for the misfortunes and atro-
cities into which he had fallen. He was, in consequence.
sent to Hobart Town, where he shortly expiated his offences
upon the scaffold.
The punishment must have been terrible that could induce
men, in the face of such horrors to attempt to escape. Mus-
tered at sunrise, half a pound of salt meat with an equal quan-
tity of flour or biscuit was apportioned to each ; they were
then led to theirlabour, the constant immersion in the water,
the sponginess of the ground which continually gave way
under their feet when engaged in rolling timber to the beach,
rendered life a curse ; and, at sunset, without a single recrea-
tion, without even a change of garment, they were recon-
ducted to their cabins, again to awake to the joyless light of
a cheerless morrow.

Murder in Tasmania is by no means a prevalent crime, but
at the penal settlements it has been of frequent occurrence,
and the perpetrators have almost invariably declared that
they committed the deed, zn order that they themselves
should be rid of a hopeless life.
The terrors of Macquarie Harbour may be readily inferred
from the fact, that in spite of failure and death, escape was
continually attempted. Many fugitives were never heard of,
having perished, in the dreadful jungle.—Colonial Magazine.

We understand from good authority that her Majesty's
appearance has altered lately much for the worse ; that she is
become extremely thin, and that she is subjected to a swelling
in the feet.—Bath Herald.—Her Majesty, like ladies of lower
degree, must be worse before she is better.