Given under my Hand and the Seal of the Colony, at Melbourne, this fourth
day of December, in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred
and fifty-four, and in the eighteenth year of Her Majesty's Reign.
(L.S.) CHARLES HOTHAM,
By His Excellency's Command,
JOHN FOSTER.
God save the Queen!
- - -
Great works!
Chapter LXVII.
Ecce Amaritudo Mea Amarissima.
We were frightened by the report that a gang of red-coats were sinking
a large pit in the Camp.
"Are they going to bury us alive without any flogging? That's not half
so merciful as Haynau's rule in Austria;" was my observation to a mate
prisoner - a shrewd Irishman.
"Where did you read in history that the British Lion was ever merciful
to a fallen foe?" was his sorrowfully earnest reply.
Oh! days and nights of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th of December, 1854,
your remembrance will not end, no, not even in my grave.
They were happy days in my youth, when I thought with Rousseau, that
the heart of man is from nature good. It was a sad fatality now that
compelled me to feel the truth from the prophet Isaiah, that the heart
of man is desperately wicked.
