Читать книгу Old Convict Times to Gold Digging Days - William Derricourt - Страница 23

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Our tyrannical superintendent, Mr. Cook, was now re-called to Hobart. He was replaced by Mr. Purcelaw, whose first act was to divide the men into three classes, according to conduct. Next arrived a batch of free overseers and Cornish miners. The sub-overseer's—prisoners—were removed and free men substituted. Instead of having to rush for our loads, ironed as we were, we were now allowed to walk along in twos as quietly as at a funeral. One morning the new superintendent mustered all hands, and notified them of a thing they could scarcely believe—that any man wishing to communicate with friends outside would be allowed to do so at stated times, and supplied with pen, ink, and paper. Another reform was that trade departments were organised, and each man, as nearly as possible, set to his own trade. Shoemakers were set to remedy the miners' great grievance of worn-out boots; boots could be repaired when necessary, others being supplied meanwhile, and there was no more complaining of torn and blistered feet. Then, too, as well as the Church of England clergyman, a Catholic priest was allowed to pay regular visits to his own people.

By this time I had finished my four years in irons. I was taken away altogether from the mines, my garb changed from magpie to grey. I was placed in class 2, and was promoted a step by being sent into the bush with two men under me to burn charcoal for the mines. Here I was quite contented, leading a steady, quiet life, and progressing toward further advancement. My new work lay in a dense scrub full of ferns. Here I felled timber and built kilns. In my spare time I used to dig kangaroo traps, which were great holes, 6 feet by 3, sunk in the beaten tracks of the animals, and covered with grass and ferns as nearly as possible like the surrounding scrub. The kangaroos would come hopping along their usual track, and, all of a sudden, pop into the trap from which they would be unable to escape on account of overlapping logs placed round the sides of the hole. Where I could not dig the trap deep enough, because of rock or hard ground, I used to place in the hole a stake, fastened upright and sharpened to a point which I hardened in the fire. This stake served to impale the kangaroo directly he fell into the trap. I also hunted and caught opossums. For kangaroo carcases, sold to the convict servants of free overseers, for with servants only could I deal, I received two figs of tobacco each; for kangaroo skins one fig; and for opossum skins half a fig. All the servants dealt with me except one, whom I avoided, as I knew his master to be a rigorously strict upholder of prison discipline. This servant spoke to me at last, saying that the others could have a kangaroo at times, but he never. Upon his asking I promised that I would let him have the first I caught. Next day, going my rounds, I discovered that in one of my traps had been caught not a kangaroo, but a soldier's kangaroo dog, a noted killer, which I had every reason to hate for disturbing and thinning my game. I knocked him on the head, stripped off his skin, buried it, cut off his tail, and fitting to the skinned body the tail of a real kangaroo that I had caught, left the made-up animal in the place at which I had appointed that my customer should look for the kangaroo meat he had wished. I got the agreed price in tobacco from the martinet's servant, but some time after, when I had been bargaining with a hutkeeper for a cap lined with diamond sinnet which the same servant wished me to get him also, his master pounced upon me. I saw before me the prospect of being sent back to class 3 for trafficking, and of my removal to Hobart being long put off. I pleaded with the overseer as he was leading me away not to get me into trouble again after all I had undergone; but I could do nothing with him until I said, in despair, "Then I'll tell that you ate the soldier's dog that a reward of six figs of tobacco has 'been offered for."

"What do you say?" said he.

"The kangaroo I let your man have," I answered, "was nothing more nor less than the soldier's big black dog, and if I split you'll be in it."

After making sundry wry faces and spitting as though he were spitting out pieces of the dog, he agreed to let me go, seeing full well how he would be chaffed if it were once known that he had been dining off the soldier's pet. He never troubled me again, and, of course, I kept his secret strictly.

Some time after this the Bishop of Hobart and his wife visited us. The lady during a morning ride happened to take a beaten track between the mines and Mount Stuart, and her horse stumbled into one of my kangaroo traps, she being thrown on the side, but out of the hole, more frightened than hurt. Then there arose a great stir in the camp. I of course did not let on that I knew anything about who had made the traps, and tried to throw suspicion upon the soldiers. The superintendent offered to get me a partial remission of sentence if I could find out the guilty parties; but, needless to say, I never did.

The next step of our superintendent was to lighten the men's shackles by removing the chain links connecting the basils, or leg rings, and for this leniency he suffered. The men certainly were sentenced to work a fixed time in chains, and by removing these links the nature of the sentence was, strictly speaking, altered. For this slight fault the superintendent was recalled. Some time after I happened to meet him in Launceston. He said, "Well, I got broke at the mines for relieving you men of your chains. The tyranny in this colony will die away by degrees as yonder gibbet post is decaying." On my asking where he was then living he told me he kept a public-house near Rat's Castle, Ellenthorpe Hall, the property of the largest squatter in the land—a Mr. Clarke.

A new superintendent named Kerr, or Carr, soon arrived at the mines, who seemed to be just as humane as his predecessor.