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62
alongside the roadway many a whitened skeleton , the victims
of this heart-breaking hill, crying out shame on our rulers ,
and for mercy on their surviving fe l lows . Then again there
is that very 'slough of despond ' the road along White's side
line from the Jordan where carts may be seen sticking in the
mud for days together - truly if in the winter Sir John could
be persuaded to go to Bothwell would he . then see with his own
eyes , hear with his own ears and stick in the mud that his own
and his Director-General of Works ' apathy has permitted to
continue year after year , increasing in depth and difficulty . 2 0
As Hall likewise suffered from the bad state of the roads and bush tracks
as he drove in his gig ound his large and scattered district to see his
patients and perform his many official duties, he willingly joined
seventeen other prominent memb ers of the community to petition Schaw to
convene a public meeting so that arrangements might be made to ob tain
probationary convicts . 21
At the first meeting on August 18 , the request
for a gang was forwarded to the Superintendent-General of the Probation
System;
at a second meeting on Septemb er 4 his reply was discus sed.
Certainly, the Government would give a probation gang to any district
app lying for one , provided the inhab itants made over ten acres of land and
undertook to build permanent barracks upon it and temporary huts of the
usual kind in the meantime .
The Superintendent even sent plans for the
barracks which the meeting , then and there , decided would cost three to
four thousand pounds and take two years to erect .
residents were inignant .
was less than one thousand ;
Of course, the
Surely the Governor knew that the population
that already the district was impoverished hy
the annual loss of twelve thousand pounds to ab sentee landlords who had
been driven away by poor local misrule;
that the distance of road was only
twelve miles , and that to build barracks was stupid as the working party
would be cont inually advancing .
As twelve miles of cro ss country road
should be made passable by fifty men in six years , or three hundred men in
eighteen months , to build barracks and give ten acres of land wou ld be
paying the Government two thousand pounds a year for the hire of the gang .
"Quid Nunc" cynically summed up the situation
The extent of road sought to be made is only twelve miles ,
and supposing magnificent Barracks bui lt in the very centre
of the line , the gang working towards either extremity would have
to march (to crown the farce, a la militaire, and in solemn
silence) so say the rules, six miles out to work and six miles
back to supper , of itself, a harder day's work without a single
stroke of labour on the roads then any probation man is ever
likely to perform . 22
Of cours e, nothing was done and the Bothwellans were left with th eir prohlerr.
20
Colonial Times , Sept . 28, 1841 .
2 1
Courier , Aug . 3 , 1841.
22 Colonial Times , Sept . 28. 1841 .