A RAILWAY WORKED BY WHITE SLAVE POWER.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 228, 13 June 1872, Page 9

A RAILWAY WORKED BY WHITE SLAVE POWER.

The ' recent assassination of the Governor-General of India suggests the reflection that convicts in penal settlements often have opportunities of disposing of obnoxious authorities, and sometimes without injuring themselves. In Lieut. -Col. Mundy's Australian reminiscences, he gave an account of a tramway worked by convicts, which was not always a safe or pleasant mode of conveyance : — " At seven a.m. we landed ou a rough pier of timber, upon which the rail, or rather the wooden tramway, abuts, and in the middle of the dreary little settlement, which consists Qf the Commissaiy quarters and a few huts, we found a couple of low cars or trucks on four wheels, with two benches in each, and standing near those not elegant vehicles were eight convicts, dressed in the grey and yellow garb of double-dyed disgrace and crime ; another in grey uu variegated was in attendance as bead man of the gang. These men were to be our teams. Dividing ourselves into parties, Doctor and Mrs. — • and I got into one, and two tolerably weighty gentlemen into the other. Upon this, the prisoners seized various bars crossing the front and the back of the carriages, and, after pushing them with great toil up a considerable plane, reached the top of a long descent, when, getting up their steam, down they rattled at tremendous speed, the chai s round their ankles clinking and clankirg as they trotted along ; and as soon *.s the carnages, in their headlong speed down the hill, exceeded the possible speed of that slow animal, man, at a word from their leader, the runners jumped upon the sides of the truck, in rather unpleasant proximity to tlie passengers, and away we all wen*, bondsman and freeman, jolting ana swaying in a manner that smacked somewhat too much of 'thed — 1 take the hindmost,' although a man sitting behind contrived to lock a wheel \vi h a wooden crowbar, when the descent bpcame so rapid as to call for renion - trance. A ccidentshave not unfrequently occurred when travellers by this rail have encouraged, or not forbidden, the men to abandon the trucks to their ow n momentum down the hill, for there are several sharpish turns in the line, and the tramway is of the rudest construction. • Occasionally, perhaps, these capsizes have not been purely accidental when travellers obnoxious to the moth c powers have fallen into their hand?. One of the highest public officers of the Colony- —a gentleman popular with all classes, and whose personal qualities it would be impossible to estimate lightly —met, as I was told, wioh a tremendous upset on this railway. Rolling without much damage into the ditch, he was picked up, teres atque rotundus by the ' canary birds,' who placed him upon h's legs, and amid a thousand expressions jf contrition, set to work to brush the dirt of his clothes, and so officious were they, that on reference to his pockets, neither watch nor purse were to be found."

Two leaders of Paris fashions recently had the temerity to appear at a ball without chignons. Beauty iz a morning tlmam which the breakfast bell puts an end to. Men, dying, make their wills ; but wives Escape a work so sad. Why shonld they m<xh> what all tlieir lives CL-ntle dames have. had.