I see no possible way in which you can escape with us; and now, brother, you are on a steamboat where there is some chance for you to escape to a land of liberty. I beseech you not to let us hinder you. If we cannot get our liberty, we do not wish to be the means of keeping you from a land of freedom.

    The author had come to Sydney saying it 'was in the hope of bettering my condition', and he went on to observe colonial society and its doings with a keen eye and an expressive pen. A sense of freshness, adventure and wonder at the unknown in a strange new land is apparent on every page. He is awed by the splendours of the ancient Australian cedar forests of the south coast of New South Wales. He describes the brutality, frequency and injustice of the floggings which were still part of the convict system. He decries the corruption and tyranny of the magistrates and police. He is impressed by the warmth and equality of hospitality in the rough bush huts. Aborigines and bushrangers, cattle duffers and sly grog dealers, prostitutes and settlers' wives - all are here in an account sparkling with the vitality of fascinating experience in a raw, rough-and-tumble society. Manning Clark's Foreword recounts the detective-like search for the identity of the author and considers what kind of a man Alexander Harris must have been and why he wrote this account.

    Ebenezer Fox was twelve when the war began. He was part of that great historical event. At the age of 75, he decided to write down his memories of the war, to tell them to his grandchildren.Ebenezer Fox joined the Roxbury, Massachusetts militia in 1779, and a year later he signed-on as a deck hand on the gun ship Protector. When the Protector was taken by the British, Fox Fox was imprisoned on the Jersey, and in this book he described the conditions very vividly and in detail: "The idea of being incarcerated in this floating pandemonium filled us with horror, but the ideas we had formed of its horror fell far short of the reality. . . I now found myself in a loathsome prison, among a collection of the most wretched and disgusting looking objects that I ever beheld in human form. Here was a motley crew, covered with rags and filth; visages pallid with disease; emaciated with hunger and anxiety; and hardly retaining a trace of their original appearance." Illustrated with eight full page engravings.