wood; and our cask and people being sent
on shore, we sent them their provisions on
shore every day.

CHIPS.
SAFETY FOR FEMALE EMIGRANTS.

ONE of the greatest and most deplorable
hindrances to the emigration of young women
to distant colonies, is want of protection.
That any class—but more especially women—
should ever need protection in British ships
manned by British seamen, is a little humiliating;
but so many instances of brutality
and immorality have been proved, that the
treatment of emigrants during their voyage
is now occupying the serious attention of the
Legislature.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Chisholm's plan of
emigration, which associates, in groups and
families, the weak with the strong, has been
found to work successfully in removing the
wholesome dread which many well-disposed
young women felt in venturing alone in
emigration vessels. The pledge which was framed,
and is regularly taken by the embarking
emigrants of the Family Colonisation Loan
Society, will show the excellence of, at least,
their intentions: nor have we heard anything
to show that these good intentions have
not been zealously fulfilled. The resolutions
forming the pledge were passed by a "Group
Committee," composed of the elders of one of
the groups.

"That we pledge ourselves, as Christian fathers
and heads of families, to exercise a parental control
and guardianship over all orphans and friendless
females of good repute for virtue and morality,
proceeding with the family groups; to protect
them as our children, and allow them to share
the same cabins with our daughters.

"We further resolve to discourage gambling,
and not to take cards or dice with us, or to enter
into any pernicious amusements during the
voyage. We likewise resolve, by parental advice
and good example, to encourage and promote
some well-advised system of self-improvement
during the passage.

"As the system of repayment proposed by this
Society is one that, if honourably kept, will add
to the credit of the working-classes as a body, and
be the means of encouraging the generous and good
to assist our struggling countrymen, we hereby
solemnly pledge our honour as men, and our character
as Christians, to repay the loan advanced
to us, and to impress the sacredness of fulfilling
this duty on each and all of the members
constituting the groups. We also promise to
aid the colonial agents in the recovery of such
loans, and to make known, in whatever part of
the colonies we may be, the means by which
parties well to-do there may assist their relations
in this country, through the medium of the Family
Colonisation Loan Society.

"We further pledge ourselves not to introduce
as candidates for membership of the Society any
men but those we know to be of good character,
or families but of good repute.

"We also determine not to accept of payment
for any services we may render on board ship; but
endeavour, individually and collectively, to preserve
the order of a well-regulated family during
our passage to Australia, and to organise and
establish a system of protection that will enable
our female relatives to enter an emigrant ship
with the same confidence of meeting with
protection, as respectable females can now enter our
steamers, trains, and mail coaches.

"That all members, constituting groups, be
asked for their, approval and fulfilment, as far as
they may be individually concerned, of the above
resolutions."

MR. BUBBS AND THE MOON.

MR. BUBBS has written to us, while in a
state of alarm, occasioned, he says, by a
misprint in the account of his Voyage to
the Moon, which appeared in "Household
Words," No. 60, page 187. He assures us that
he never intended, even in supposition, to cut
the "earth" in half. It is merely the sun upon
which he desired to perform that ideal operation.
The passage ought to have stood thus:—

"If the sun were cut in half— like an orange,
and the matter scooped out of one of these
halves, so as to form a kind of hollow bell,
and the earth put in the centre of this, that the
moon would be easily able to go round us, just
the same as usual."

Mr. Bubbs accuses our printers prematurely;
the mistake originated in his own
manuscript. A slight blunder of this kind is
only pardonable in a person on such intimate
terms as Mr. Bubb is with the Moon.

PROFITABLE INVESTMENT OF TOIL.—NEW
ZEALAND.

THE following extract from the letter of a
brother of an Irish nobleman, dated Wellington,
New Zealand, 20th November, 1850,
speaks for itself:—

"This is certainly the first settlement, in
point of scenery, in New Zealand, from its
being very hilly and thickly wooded; but, in
proportion to its beauty, it is inferior to some
others in a utilitarian point of view—one we
colonists are compelled to put in the first
rank. It is astonishing what an improvement
has taken place here. By a strange
coincidence, I arrived here this time on the
anniversary of my first arrival eight years
ago. I have been to see several of the people
who came out in the same ship with us, as
common labourers, and landed, most of them,
with, no other property than the clothes
they stood in, now all comfortably off.
Two brothers, in particular, Yorkshiremen,
who landed in this predicament, were able to
tell me, on that day eight years, that they
were worth nearly one thousand pounds each!
What made it more interesting was, that the
spot on which they live, and where we were then
talking, was the identical one where we had
had a pic-nic on our arrival. It was then an
almost impenetrable forest. It now contains
many acres of cleared land, several of which