Vol. XV, No. 88


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AUSTRALIAN SCENES AND ADVENTURES.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

[Illustration: FOREST OF COCKATOOS.]


People who go to Australia expecting every other man they meet to be a
convict, and every convict a ruffian in felon's garb, will assuredly
find themselves mistaken. And if contemplating a residence in Sydney or
Melbourne they need not anticipate the necessity of living in a tent or
a shanty, nor yet of accepting the society of convicts or negroes as the
only alternative to a life of solitude. Neither will it be necessary to
go armed with revolvers by day, nor to place plate and jewels under
guard at night. Sydney, the capital of the penal colony, is a quiet,
orderly city, abounding in villas and gardens, churches and schools, and
about its well-lighted streets ride and walk well-dressed and well-bred
people, whose visages betray neither the ruffian nor the cannibal. Some
of them may be convicts or "ticket-of-leave-men," but this a stranger
would need to be told, as they dress like others, their equipages are
quite as stylish, and many of them not only amass more property, but are
really more honest, than some of those never sentenced, because they