summer. If we have no poor-rate collectors, nor tax-gatherers, we have fleas and mosquitoes, which bloodsuck us almost as much. If we buy land cheaper, it costs ten times as much to cultivate it. In England, through the long civilisation, and by the blessing of more tender and Christian consciences, a poor man will work almost the eyes out of his head for one or two shillings per day, doing the hardest labour under the sun; whilst here, they do all kinds of labour very pleasantly, taking care not to kill themselves, at the rate of 8s., 14s., 16s. per day, according to the kind of employment. "The labourers, hut-keepers, and working men generally, have been getting sadly too much money. I have heard of many instances when the prodigal expenditure of bush-labourers was perfectly astonishing. One man who had been up in the country about two years, came to his inn in Melbourne, having in his pocket more than 100l., his savings during that period of this 107. was spent that very evening in calling for dozens of the most expensive wine, and freely treating every person about him. In less than a fortnight all was gone. What would he naturally do next is the question. Why off into the bush again, to save and save for another such outbreak. "We have had a man mowing near us on the unoccupied land, who goes out of Melbourne daily with one bullock in a small cart, getting bush-hay. A small load of this, easily collected by him in six or seven hours, he sells at home for 17. Thus he frequently gets 67. per week in fine weather. This money is entirely clear; he pays no rent; collecting his hay on open land, where he can find it. One Monday morning early, I overtook him on the road to Melbourne, with a load; how surprisingly early! but he confessed to me that for the first time in two years he had been tempted to go out a-mowing on the Sunday. He was not satisfied with the six days, but must also press Sunday into his service-67. per week not being enough to spend. Still he did not mean to repeat the thing, for as he was returning, his load was upset, and being too late to re-load, he was compelled to sleep with it out in the bush. "On Christmas eve, we were very much amused by a man with a horse and dray-the liquor had got into his head, and so he had got out of the road, and came down to our place. We put him right several times, in vain : he always came back, and kept going to and fro in the woods, and rumbling up and down in them. We heard him at intervals, until after midnight; first in one part of the bush, then in another, making a terrible rattle with his dray among the stones. We felt satisfied that daylight would show him the way home when it found him, if he had not killed himself and his horse before then, by driving from some of the rocky steeps into the Yarra. People here often get drunk, and reeling out of Melbourne, find themselves a mile or two in the country. A sailor came to us one day, to ask where he was. The last thing he could remember, was drinking at the Highland Laddie, in the town, and now he had just picked himself up at the foot of a gum-tree! Melbourne is a strange drunken place, and there are many temptations for working men, and one fiery impulse-the heat of the climate. "Few days pass without us seeing four-wheel carriages, gigs, and horses, and horsemen in great numbers, go by near us from Melbourne to Heidelburgh-both places situate on the Yarra, eight miles from each other; and our farm is about half-way. Whether the colony will maintain its position, and continue improving, is all yet speculation. Yet this is a fine country: this Sabbath light and breezy, on which I am writing, has no equal in the finest summer's day in dear Old England—it is indeed a most lovely day. Our garden, only yet cultivated since the 2nd of October, has produced us potatoes, peas, beans, cabbages, carrots, parsley, melons very fine, and still larger vegetable marrows. The soil will do. The climate in summer is as hot as can well be endured; often 102° in the shade, and 120° in the sun. Doctor Lang says, 'The heat is never oppressive'—perhaps he means, does not entirely burn the life out of you! You are enabled to get through it in some way. This summer has been here the most oppressively hot experienced, or rather endured, by the oldest residents in Port Phillip. I have walked to and from Melbourne when it has been 116° in the sun; but on coming home, had to strip off every thing, even my stockings, all wet through with perspiration. Fie, Doctor Lang! "I have written very little verse since I came here, and that perhaps not poetry, having had other and more urgent employment. You used to say nothing would do here but spade-husbandry. There was some truth in your observation, yet we intend to try the plough. We used to talk about some person at Adelaide, who was nursing a cabbage for many months—yet after all worth nothing. This was surely the facetious story of some traveller. I have seen them in this country finer than could be grown in England. I wish we had some fruit-trees. We bought a dozen, but they were dead before we could plant them. Not one of the orange pips which I brought from England have grown. Whenever I quit this country, I shall often and ardently sigh after the climate for the sake of a garden and orchard. Here we have the climate without the trees-there we shall have the trees without the delicious climate. I have, as the phrenologists would say, the organ of locality in a surpassing degree. I am fond of our dwelling on the banks of the Yarra-our neat little two-roomed weather-boarded cottage-its curving slopes, and its prospect of silvery water, and old white birch-bark-looking gum-trees. The mimosas, three kinds of them, are beautiful and abundant, also the acacias. The insects of the country are a great nuisance-there are ants larger than a wasp, with a larger sting than it, and winged too, into the bargain. Indeed, we have ants in-door and out, of all sorts and sizes, in myriads. Of fleas it is the native country. Maggots or gentles, as honest Izaak calls them, are blown upon the meat alive and crawling. This I did not believe until I saw it." "Port Phillip, Jan. 2nd, 1842. "Dear Friend,-Although I have written to you months ago, there has been no vessel from this port until now-and now indeed I have two opportunities, one private, direct hence to London, the other through Van Diemen's Land; one missive therefore shall be despatched by each conveyance, that you may have two chances of hearing from me instead of one, or perhaps one instead of none. How mortifying it is not to be able to hold regular intercourse with those whom it is not possible to see, perhaps for years, if then. I am sorely afraid that many of my letters are lost, that to Tait, enclosed to S. G., amongst the number. This I shall regret, as I am told that it is contemplated by the Sydney or the Home Government to ruin this province entirely, by throwing open to purchasers, at a very cheap rate, the Crown lands in the neighbourhood of Melbourne, whilst Sydney and some other towns are, by special privilege, to be exempt from this infliction. I had, I think, clearly shown in that letter the oppressive injustice of such a measure, the bare expectation of such an event having proved sufficient to paralyse already the onward march of this district; and were it to come into actual operation, I know not what would become of us. "Lord John Russell's new instructions to the governor of New South Wales have already had the effect of lowering considerably the price of land, and inasmuch as it puts a stop to over-speculation, would not prove unsalutary; but, as I have before stated, to reduce to 17. per acre, adjoining allotments that have been sold by the same government for 421. per acre, is neither honourable nor honest, however expedient; and I doubt its expediency. Sufficient land might have been surveyed to supply all possible demands, and opened for selection, and yet property might have been protected by a simple clause in any measure regarding this colony, and without which clause there will be ruin and confusion. But enough of this-no thanks to Lord John Russell. When I shall be able to get back, I cannot tell. I could have been very well content to have passed away a few years in Australia, were there anything like stability given to property, and anything like certainty in the price of any one article to be bought or sold in the colony. Now for instance, had we bought, as J. B. and others did, several yoke of oxen, they were selling at that time for 407. a yoke; ten months after, when we bought, they were just half that price; and now, in the space of four or five months more, they may be worth 127. or 147. When we first arrived, sheep were worth 35s. per head; six months ago they were not worth more than 12s. or 14s.; now, or recently, they have been worth 20s. So much for fluctuation and downward tendency. "It is not the country for agriculture; cheaper labour is obtainable in the penal colonies of Sydney and Van Diemen's Land, consequently they outstrip us. Had we begun sheepkeeping at the time of our arrival, and had we had good luck with them, which all have not, we must have more than sunk the increase, through the depreciation in value. * * "One day this-nay, last-week, whilst I was busy writing, with the cottage-door open, in flew a very small bird, which I caught in the window, and it proved to be the diamond-bird. I knew it again, having seen a stuffed specimen in Melbourne. I should like much to take such a one with me to England, but did not like the idea of killing so beautiful a little creature, merely for so distant an uncertainty; moreover there would have been something inhospitable in the deed, as it came voluntarily. Yesterday, I saw the Australian spoonbill, a large white, heronlike looking creature; and Powers Smith (I wonder how he is going on) would have been quite in his element amongst the beetles and cicadas which I saw in the bush. "You have seen, when in some idle mood, you have been chatting to Mary, or Sarah, or Hannah, as they were busy ironing, in some comfortable winter kitchen, the thing called an ironing-blanket, scorched here and there to a ruddy brown with the hot iron; such now, only done brown universally, is the pasturage of Australia Felix, eaten bare by vast herds of cattle; the short herbage crisp as spun glass. Day after day, a man on horseback has gone down by our garden to the river, about noon, and after drinking and filling two quart bottles with pure Yarra, has ridden off again; perhaps he has had to come several miles for it. "It is noon, burningly hot, and dizzy and monotonous is the loud discord of the cicadas, only equalled in September and October by the melody of frogs, marsh-frogs, tree-frogs, and bellfrogs. We have noise enough, if no music. "One of the most unfortunate circumstances, as it regards epistolary intercourse with my friends, is the uncertainty I feel whether our postmaster burns or transmits them; for a gentleman, in corroboration of my own fears, has this week charged him with keeping back a letter. My having publicly charged him moreover with imposition (of which he has not taken the least notice) renders me suspicious that I am not safe as it regards my letters; so that since Tait's Magazine arrived here, I have not sent one letter through the Melbourne post-office. I therefore rejoice in these two opportunities of private convey ance. "You make mention of my mother's death: thank you for the expression of your sympathy with me in this bereavement. It is indeed a bereavement. You have recorded feelingly your own sentiment on that occasion when the case was your own, in the very beautiful poem, 'My Native Cottage.' I, too, have partly expressed my feelings in a small lyrical piece, which I will copy out for your perusal :— OUR MOTHER'S GRAVE. 'Strew flowers upon the honoured grave Let freshest verdure o'er it spread, |