and interesting contrast to the other sections of the planet, the sections that are known to us all, familiar to us all.  In the matter of particulars—­a detail here, a detail there—­we have had the choice climate of New South Wales’ seacoast; we have had the Australian heat as furnished by Captain Sturt; we have had the wonderful dust-storm; and we have considered the phenomenon of an almost empty hot wilderness half as big as the United States, with a narrow belt of civilization, population, and good climate around it.

CHAPTER X.

Everything human is pathetic.  The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow.  There is no humor in heaven. 
                                  —­Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.

Captain Cook found Australia in 1770, and eighteen years later the British Government began to transport convicts to it.  Altogether, New South Wales received 83,000 in 53 years.  The convicts wore heavy chains; they were ill-fed and badly treated by the officers set over them; they were heavily punished for even slight infractions of the rules; “the cruelest discipline ever known” is one historian’s description of their life.—­[The Story of Australasia.  J. S. Laurie.]

English law was hard-hearted in those days.  For trifling offenses which in our day would be punished by a small fine or a few days’ confinement, men, women, and boys were sent to this other end of the earth to serve terms of seven and fourteen years; and for serious crimes they were transported for life.  Children were sent to the penal colonies for seven years for stealing a rabbit!

When I was in London twenty-three years ago there was a new penalty in force for diminishing garroting and wife-beating—­25 lashes on the bare back with the cat-o’-nine-tails.  It was said that this terrible punishment was able to bring the stubbornest ruffians to terms; and that no man had been found with grit enough to keep his emotions to himself beyond the ninth blow; as a rule the man shrieked earlier.  That penalty had a great and wholesome effect upon the garroters and wife-beaters; but humane modern London could not endure it; it got its law rescinded.  Many a bruised and battered English wife has since had occasion to deplore that cruel achievement of sentimental “humanity.”

Twenty-five lashes!  In Australia and Tasmania they gave a convict fifty for almost any little offense; and sometimes a brutal officer would add fifty, and then another fifty, and so on, as long as the sufferer could endure the torture and live.  In Tasmania I read the entry, in an old manuscript official record, of a case where a convict was given three hundred lashes—­for stealing some silver spoons.  And men got more than that, sometimes.  Who handled the cat?  Often it was another convict; sometimes it was the culprit’s dearest comrade; and he had to lay on with all his might; otherwise he would get a flogging himself for his mercy —­for he was under watch—­and yet not do his friend any good:  the friend would be attended to by another hand and suffer no lack in the matter of full punishment.