Two Years in New South Wales Author:Peter Cunningham Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER XXIV. Our society is divided into circles as in England; but, from the peculiarity of its constitution, still farther differences naturally exist, whic... more »h have at various times received colonial baptisms. We have, as I said before, first, the sterling and currency, or English and Colonial born, the latter bearing also the name of corn stalks (Indian corn), from the way in which they shoot up. This is the first grand division. Next, we have the legitimates, or cross-breds,—namely, such as have legal reasons for visiting this colony; and the illegitimates, or such as are free from that stigma. The pure Merino are a variety of the latter species, who pride themselves on being of the purest blood in the colony. We have likewise our titled characters, who bear " their blushing honours thick upon them," in the decorations of P. B. and C. B. which profusely adorn their persons ; and the null I. led, who, like myself, have neither "mark nor character" impressed upon our outward man. The titled are all official characters employed under the government, in street mending, brick-making, and suchlike,—the titular letters not portending that they belong to any such illustrious order as the Bath, but merely that they claim the Prisoner's Barracks or the Carter's Barracks for their respective domiciles. Convicts of but recent migration are facetiously known by the name of canaries, by reason of the yellow plumage in which they are fledged at the period of landing; but when fairly domiciliated, they are more respectfully spoken of under the loyal designation of government-men, the term convict being erased by a sort of general tacit compact from our Botany dictionary, as a word too ticklish to be pronounced in these sensitive latitudes. Only a few years indeed have elapsed since an ...« less
ISBN-13: 9780207941825 ISBN-10: 0207941823 Pages:458 Edition:New issue of 1827 ed Rating: