This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIX. THE KELLY GANG. HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. As in New South Wales, so in Victoria, the last of the bushranging gangs was the worst. The leading members of the gang in each case were brothers, springing from a vicious stock. Each gang operated in a district where tribal ramifications were strong and numerous, and "telegraphs" and harbourers as plentiful as mushrooms on an old sheep station after autumn rain. The most sanguinary deed of each was the murder of a party of policemen, entrapped in a lonely part of the bush. But the Kellys were in every way better generals than the Clarkes--more systematic in their proceedings, having bolder conceptions, which they carried out in a more daring manner. It will be remembered that the Chief Justice of New South Wales, when referring to the criminality of the Clarkes, spoke of it as the working of the old leaven of convictism. For this statement he was taken to task by not a few press writers, and was charged with vindictively recalling things which should be carefully buried and kept out of sight. But whatever was said concerning the Clarkes might have been said with absolute truth concerning the Kelly's, who appear to have lived in an atmosphere of crime and luxuriated in robbery and violence. The family was, root and branch, morally diseased. "Red Kelly," as the father was called, had been transported to Tasmania in 1841 for attempting to shoot his landlord, and arrived in Victoria early in the history of that colony, which received not a few of the worst of the Van Demonians. He was first heard of at Wallan, thirty miles from Melbourne, which was in those days considered quite an out-station. Here he became acquainted with a family named Quinn, who had settled in the same locality; and...