NORFOLK ISLAND.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 729, 9 April 1853, Page 4

NORFOLK ISLAND.

(From “ Dickens’s Household Word*. ’) Since residence on Norfolk Island is permitted only to two classes of men; —namely, to those who are engaged there in the public service, and to those who, having done the public some dis-service, are transported thither in tire character of convicts; and since it is only on occasions of great emergency' that any but a government ship showing the private signals, is permitted to approach its shore, I take it to be a fact that Norfolk Island does not often occupy a chapter in books of travel. Now, I have been to Norfolk Island; I know the place well and the people living there, convicts and all. How I came by my knowledge is a question which I am not obliged to answer ; but, for the comfort of the clean-fingered, T may state that I am not legally pilch. My misdeeds have not yet come to be discussed in any court of justice whatever. The first glimpse of Norfolk Island that one gets from a ship’s deck, is made remarkable by a tree —well known by means of pictures and descriptions—the grand Norfolk Island pine; which clothes the hills to their summit. The island is of volcanic origin. It is about twenty-one miles in girth, and rises abruptly from the sea on every side but one. On that one side, of course, we land. It is a low sandy level—the site of the penal settlement —and not very accessible. Ihe island bids men keep their distance by its physical forxnation quite as much os by its laws. A coral reel runs round it. Where the coast is inaccessible, the reef lurks under water; but where the coast might otherwise be come at, the reef shows its teeth and foams at an approaching vessel. It is only at certain times—when the surf beats over the bar in a comparatively placid slate of wrath—that any hope of landing can be entertained. The union jack hoisted on the flagstaff indi cates such a seas-on of relapse, and informs boats tba they may attempt to come ashore. The black flag hoisted means : “ If you come now, there is an end of you.” A boat having arrived, under favourable circumstances, within the reef; having been dashed over the bar very rudely by the wave that crosses it, and tossed down abreast of the jetty ; the visitor, when he has fetched his breath, has leisure to observe a gang of convicts, stripped to the waist, with ropes in their hands, ready to plunge in to the rescue, if the boat should happen to capsize. Perhaps the visitor is not allowed to fetch his breath, or to observe this gang, until he has taken s. salt-water bath, and has been dragged into society by a rope fastened round his middle. These convicts form the Rescue Gang; and any one of them who saves a life enjoys a shortened period of punishment. If it should happen that the boat is not upset, the visitor stands in it fora little time, tossing on the water near the pier. Then, watching his opportunity, when he is on the top of a wave, he leaps out of the boat into the arms of a Rescue man extended to receive him. Norfolk Island consists of a series of hills and valleys beautifully interfolded, rising in green ridges one above another, till they all culminate in the summit of Mount Pitt, the highest point in the Island, about three thousand feet above the level of the sea. The population of the Island is composed of eight hundred convicts, and the local staff essential for their proper management. The free community consists, therefore, wholly of Government officials and their families, together with a military force of about one hundred and fifty men and four or five officers. The good society or first rank of Norfolk Island is composed of the civil commandant, the officers of the garrison, the engineer and commissariat, the two clergymen, — one Protestant, the other Roman Catholic—and a medical officer or two. Superintendents and overseers of convicts make a second rank. Common soldiers are a third rank: and the convicts are, of course, the least respectable. The capital of Norfolk Island is the gaol. There is, besides, a spacious quadrangle of buildings for the convict barracks, for schoolrooms, and for places appointed for divine service. There are commodious barracks for the army of occupation of Norfolk Island. There is the mansion of the commandant, on a beautiful green mound; there are handsome houses for the officials; and, in picturesque, convenient nooks, lurk pleasant cottages for overseers. About three mdea from the gaol is Longridge, where a number of prisoners are employed in farming operations. 1 here is also an establishment on the opposite side of the Island called the Cascades, the business of which place is now declining. From the boundary of the settlement there runs a well-trodden pathway to the Cemetery, which is enclosed on three sides by tear-dropping hedges of the manchineel ; and, on the fourth side by a restless mourner, the vexed sea. The climate is healthy, but the graves are numerous and new. A sudden end has closed in this Island many a rugged way of vice. Born in a country which professes to be too religious to give education to its masses, left to be reared in infamy till the day comes—which is so long in coming—when sectarian pride is lo give place to Christian charity, the men who sleep here in the graves among the manchineels are to be visited with human sorrow. In me the common graveyard reverence was not the less for want of tombstone eulogies. “He was a thankless son, a cruel husband, a hard father, and a pot-house friend. Banished for all his burglaries by an indignant country, be lies buried here. His end was violent: he died, in quarrel, by the knife of an associate.” That might be the kind of epitaph which would speak truth among the mounds here, far away in Norfolk Island, about which no foot of wife or sister has been treading.

A large crop of the graves in Norfolk Island has grown out of those attempts at revolt; which formerly were frequent, and could be put down only by brute force. In 1834 a conspiracy was formed ; of which the aim was to destroy the military inhabitants by poisoning the wells, and then to put the Island into the possession of the convicts. That was defeated; and thirty-one revolters on that occasion suffered the penalty of death. The last outbreak occurred in 1846. The object on that occasion was to destroy certain overseers who had, by bringing men frequently to punishment, made themselves objects of a wild hate. The leader on this occasion was a certain William Westwood, commonly called Jacky Jacky; that name having been given to him by the natives of New South Wales, when he was leading there a lawless life. By a convict, who was this man’s close companion and confederate, I have been favoured with a Newgate calendar of details. Like many of such details, black and repulsive in the mass, they show here and there, through all the mist, a glimmer of that true light of humanity which might have brightened the man's life. There was indeed some good mixed even with the evil deed that had brought Jacky Jacky into Norfolk Island. Bent upon plunder, be with his associates had visited a settler’s house, during the absence of the master. They confined the servants, and proceeded to the best room ; in which the lady of the Louse, with a young lady, her friend, were preparing the children for bed, and perhapa teaching them their prayers. Jacky Jacky stated briefly the object of his visit ; and, having left an unaccustomed confederate in charge of the affrighted women, went up-stairs. The report of a gun followed by screams, called him down again. The lady of the bouse lay on the floor, surrounded by the children, bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound, which had divided the femoral artery. Jacky Jacky promptly called the whole house to his aid, bound the wound round with sheets as tightly as he could, ■ordered the settler’s horse to be put to the gig; and, as soon as the lady had recovered consciousness, had her placed carefully on cushions at the bottom of the vehicle. Then taking the reins, himself, he quitted his plunder, drove with utmost speed twelve miles to the nearest station; and, knocking up the doctor, committed the wounded lady to his care. Then returning to his Jollowers, he called them off, bidding them not remove an atom from the premises. Upon the information of the man who bad fired the gun, according to his own statement, Jacky Jacky and his friends were soon afterwards taken in the Bush. Many crimes having been laid to their charge, they were condemned to death; but by the earnest representations of the lady, who remembered gratefully the considerate distinction he had made in practice betwen burglary and murder, the sentence was commuted to transportation for life to Norfolk Island. But he was not born to die in his bed. He headed, as I before said, the conspiracy of July, 1846. Obnoxious constables were to be destroyed and the island to be seized. One morning, immediately after inspection, as the various gangs were being marched to their work, the revolt was opened by a simultaneous rush, end convictse scattered tbemselvs over the settlement in search of their victims; —certain constables who lived in .detached cottages near the beach. Those who had been on duty the preceding night, were in one cottage barbarously murdered in their sleep. The soldiery, after much exertion, got the greater number of the convicts back within the gaol, but some were scattered still among the hills, and three or four had seized a boat upon the beach, and made their escape to Philip Island. Philip Island is a lonely rock, lying about eix miles from the settlement, inhabited by goats and rabbits, by the sea-birds, and by a peculiar kind of groea parrot. It is a place occasionally visited by

officers of the convict garrison, fur a clay s shooting. On Philip Island, these three or four men were able lor a lono- time to elude the vigilance of those sent in persuit; at length, however, all but one were taken, or had thought it prudent to surrender. For eighteen months that one man, bunted by his fellows, lived on in his desolation, and escaped from every one of the many searching parties sent out to capture him, - who were to be heard shouting about the rock from time to time—the only human voices that disturbed his solitude. At length his lair was discovered. The desperate man then climbed swiftly to the highest pinnacle of rock in the small island. There he quietly awaited his pursuers. With much toil they had nearly scaled the height on he stood: he gave them a wild look of hatred and defiance, covered his head with his jacket, and leaped down, rebounding from rock to rock, and falling a shattered mass into the sea. What was his mother doing then in England ? For this outbreak, seventy convicts were put on their trial ; and of the seventy, thirteen, including Jacky Jacky, were condemned to death. They lie together in one grave upon uncousecrated ground outside the cemetery, close to the rocky shore where the waves beat upon the coral reef. They had been tried by a commission sent from Sydney. Until then, all persons charged with capital offences had been shipped to Sydney for trial; but that practice was dropped in order that there might no longer exist a motive which had been a strange and frequent source of crime. The old hardened convicts had amused themselves by urging the new-comers-into conflict with each other; and inciting them to murder their companions, in order that they—the instigators—-might have evidence to give, and thus get the relief of a voyage to Sydney in the character of witnesses. My talk has wandered from the cemetery* hut I must come back to it and read one tombstone, —sacred to the memory of Thomas Salisbury Wright, who was transported from Sydney at the age of one hundred and three for the term of his natural life. So here he died, having completed his one hundred and fifth year, lo be sure he was a young man when he committed the forgery for which he was transported. That occurred when he was only eighty-three years old. Through a cutting in the ledge of rock which overhangs the sea, I come now upon an amphitheatre of hills. These hills are all richly dressed in a thick clothing of wild shrubs, flowers, and grapery'. On one side is a mount covered to the top with the gigantic Norfolk Island pine ; on another side down goes a ravine that seemes to offer a short to the interior of the earth : a short and most pleasant cut; for intricate dark foliage is lighted up by lemon groves, where here and there, the sun is playing on their golden fruit. I descend by the path into|| the ravine, foliage shuts me out from the sun; magnificent creepers (for in nature, as in society, there are creepers which take rank as the magnificent) twist and twirl themselvs about my path. The birds that perch upon them glitter like their flowers: lories, parrots, parroquets, beautiful woodpigeons. But the forest is dark, and I ascend again, and get among such quaint aspects of vegetative life as are made by clusters of large fern trees, rising with a lean—some to this quarter and some to that—trees sadly wanting in uprightness of character, but carrying their crests fifteen or twenty feet above the ground. These look like grass among the Norfolk Island pines, which pile one dark feather-crown upon another—crown above crown, to a height of some two hundred feet above the soil.

From the summit of Mount Pitt, which I have now reached, I have Norfolk Island in complete subjection to one of my senses. I can see it all. Rock, forest, valley, cornfields, islets, sunshine on sea, sunshine on birds, no sun in gloomy glades, rays darting into darkness, and revealing parasites and creepers exquisitely coloured, and the bright green fans of the palmetto rising out of a froth of white convolvulus; guava and lemon, a delicious air, clear sky, and the sharp outline of every light feather of the foliage picked out against it.

There used to be oranges ; but, once upon a time, there lived in Norfolk Island a wise commandant, who voted oranges too great a luxury for convicts, and caused the trees that grew them to be extirpated# They are now, however, being reintroduced. In a garden, belonging to the commandant, called Orange Vale, sight, taste, and smell enjoy a paradise. Delicate cinnamon grows by the rough stout old English oak. Tea, coffee, tobacco, sugarcane, banana, figs, arrowroot and lemon ,grow in company with English fruits and vegetables that have been, forced by the climate into an ecstatic, transcendental state. The spirituality of a carrot gets to be developed when it grows up in such good company as that of sweet bucks and bananas. Sweet bucks are sweet potatoes, which are very kisses to the palate; and are served out daily as rations to the evil and the good, the convicts and the officers. But truly there is need of a fine climate to make compensation for the other details of a residence in Norfolk Island—l do not mean to the convicts who are cut off here from all the rest of mankind, and whose case is deplorable; but to those who gaurd and govern them. The members of the local staff form but a limited field of social intercourse for one another. The “ Lady Franklin” is the only regular trader to their little coast from Hobart Town ('one thousand three hundred miles away) ; she makes but four trips in the year. A convict ship is not often sent on from England. When a ship does arrive on lawful business at Norfolk Island, great is the sensation. The coming in of a ship on business causes apparently, all business to be at an end. Letters from home bless the temporary exiles; for they have to be enjoyed and answered. All in the ship who are entertainable are hospitably to be entertained. In private and in public life, who is alive and who is dead in England; who is up and who is down ; what bubbles have burst, and what new bubbles have been blown, have to be learned over the dinner-table. The highest virtue of a visitor, is untiring loquacity. The dark scenes of convict life, of which I have already given some examples, do not now fill Norfolk Island with their ancient honours. Here also the good old times have given way to better new times. Captain Macconochie, under all the difficulties against which he had to contend when he was governor, utterly broke down the old ferocious system. Under the temperate, strict, and judicious control of Mr. Price, the present commandant, a system of discipline has been established ; which, while it does not make the probation of the convicts other than a terra of punishment, accords to them such wholesome management, and such fair treatment, as has humanised their conduct among one another, and towards those set in authority over them. Formerly, in the blaze of noonday, it was dangerous for any one to walk alone beyond the precincts of the settlement. Violent crimes and murders were common among the gangs while at their work—convict quarrelling with convict. The jesident was clouded with a daily sense of insecurity, a dread for the safety of bis wife or children when they left his sight. For then the incessant lash made hard hearts harder ; and wretches made to grovel in dark cells, chained by ring-bolts to the floor, and wearing sixty pounds of iron on their arms, were degraded even lower than they had been forced at home below the feelings of humanity. Then convicts were driven at night-fall, besmeared and dirty with the day’s toil, into the barrack, and were locked up till morning in neglected rooms, to prey upon «ich other. No officer who ventured there among them would come out alive ; but, in front of the open grated windows sentries paced, whose orders were to fire promptly into any room from which the sound of tumult or the cry of murder should proceed, if the disturbance did not cease at his command. Whether the shot went into the body of the right offender, was a lottery which rendered it the interest of all, if possible—but among men so brutalised, bow was it possible I —to check the violent.

Now, this is all changed for the better. Still the discipline is very strict; and so works, that it is to the most hardened the most severe in punishment. The sleepng-rooms are now well lighted and well ventilated. The two hours betwen supper and rest have been spent in the school, and theday has been closed with prayers. The two clergymen, Messrs. Batchelor and .Ryan—one Protestant, one Roman Catholic—each in his sphere work without intermission. The schools are well-conducted; and, where they awaken, as they do in most, a desire for knowledge, they beget a mutual confidence between the well-conducted, who now form by far the chief proportion of the convicts. Locks and bolts are falling out of use upon the doors of the residents; and, became there are few female servants, pretty children—children thrive and look unusually pretty in a climate such as this—may be seen carried on the arms of house-breakers, or drawn in their small carls through the lemon groves and gardens, by the brown, rugged hands that the grown hard in deeds of violence.

It is no mircale that has been here performed; men bred to crime in England by the ignorance and filth we cherish, are bred out of crime again in Norfolk Island, by a little teaching and a little humane care. Almost all the men who return to Hobart Town after fulfilling their term of probation here, are in demand as servants, and are preferred to fresh arrivers from the motherountry. Stepmother-country she is to an ipnnense roportion of her children !

A Yankee Speech.— The following speech was delivered by an Annexationist at the recent election tor Toronto: —“ Feller citizens and horses, hurrah. There’s got to be a war. I’m for whipping rea Britain right off without stopping for compliments. We must hustle the British lion heels over head out of the everlasting borders of this here western continent. Hurrah for the annexation of Canada! Wo must have the critter neck and heels, if we have to wade in blood to our knees to pull it from the horns of John Bu . We must do it. Where’s the possum whose little soul don’t echo them sentiments? He aim nowhere, and never was. Can’t you, and I, and every one of us rouse up the wolf of human nature till he 11 paw tie whole of Old England clear down below low watermark? Yes, sir-ee. Every citizen of this tall land, from the owl on the hemlock tub to the President in his great arm-chair, is in favour of this all-thundering and liberty-spreading measure ! Just let them glorious ideas pop into the United States cranium rairly, and see if an earthquake shout from 26,000,000 of Indiarubber lungs don’t shake the whole earth, crack the zenith, and knock the very po’.es over ! I tell you there is nothing on this side the millennium like our own everlasting institution ; nor you can t scrape up a flock of civilised beings on the face of the universal terra firma who know so well to defend and spread them. Where’s the Yankee who won’t for his country within three-quarters ol an inch of his life, if it tries his soul—yes, and Lis upper leather too? What’s England? Why it aint anything at ail, scarcely. Uncle Sam will take it yet for a handkerchief to blow his nose upon when he gets a cold. We are bound to wake up snakes, and no mistake. Let us once get hold of the job in right earnest, with all of Uncle Sam s boys, and if we don’t dig a hole as deep as eternity with the spades of Yankee pluck, and scum the grease spots off the face of the world and pitch them clear to the bottom of it, then I am no two-legged crocodile. When this is done you will set the great roaring eagle of liberty like a big rooster crowing on the top of a barrel. Why, you are all ready and primed for the onset—all you want is a live coal or two of fire dropped on devoted heads to touch you off. Methinks the flashes of fire in your eyes to-day forebode blood and thunder—only mind you don’t flash in the pan! If you all do your boundeu duty in this crisis, you'll spit the tobacco juice of determination in John Ball’s eyes till he has the blind staggers, when you can take him by the tale and swing him beyond all recollection ! Rouse ye, ye, rouse ye—to the rescue! Let the shout penetrate every nook and cranny in North America—from the tiptop of the Arctic regions clear to the Straits of Gibraltar. Canada and the United States for ever! begot in a war-whoop, born in blood, cradled in thunder, and brought up in glory!”