a day. Without feeling tired at night, I am
quite ready to sit down and play my
concertina for an hour or two; that is what I
generally do every evening.

As soon as our fencing was finished, we
began the digging of a water-hole, that we
might secure to ourselves a supply of water
as soon as the rains set in. The position we
chose for this very essential part of an Australian
farm was in one corner of the garden,
at the bottom of the valley on one side of
which the house is built. This water-hole is
twelve feet in diameter, and thirteen feet
deep. We three spent only four days in
making it. The hole having been dug, we
covered it in, and cut trenches from it up the
sides of the valley, to catch all the water that
runs down from the adjacent hills. So well
planned are our water-works, that about an
hour's smart rain gave a supply of water that
was not exhausted for a month.

The first rain occurred about a month ago.
I then opened my packet of seeds, and planted
some of them; such as cabbages and lettuces.
They have all come up well. In addition to my
own seeds, Mr. Rumble had brought others.
Some of his peas are now three inches high.
The winter is the grand season for vegetation
here. At its commencement all the trees begin
to shoot out, just as they do in England in the
spring. About five weeks ago we began to clear
a piece of ground for our crop of wheat. The
land is by no means heavily timbered, few of
the trees being more than two feet thick; so
that we have now cleared about fifteen acres,
thirteen of which are already ploughed. The
trees are not hewn down, but dug out by the
roots: this is about the hardest work we do;
but Mr. Rumble and I manage to clear the
ground almost as fast as our man Tom
can plough it. We expect to be able to
sow about thirty acres of wheat this year;
which is considered excellent for the first crop.

One of the things which, no doubt, has been
very conducive to the restoration of my
health, is the extraordinary change in my
hours. We are always in bed at nine o'clock,
and up at day-break. One morning we underslept
ourselves through mistaking the light
of the moon for daylight. We rose and set to
work in the garden, chopping firewood, and
all that. We were just getting breakfast
ready, when I happened to look at my watch,
and found that it was then only a quarter
past two in the morning. We went quietly
to bed again, looking rather foolish.

Our diet is not luxurious; its staple articles
are damper and salt beef, with oceans of
tea. This damper, which is so frequently
mentioned in all works on Australia, I like
extremely; it is simply flour and water
made into a paste and baked in the wood–ashes.
We make it into cakes of two feet
broad and four inches thick; these are by no
means heavy, but when properly made are
just like bread; only, I should think, more
wholesome.

I have not yet given you my notion of
Australian scenery, nor of the towns of
Melbourne and Geelong. To begin with
Melbourne. The approach to it from the sea
is not agreeable. The steamer takes you
from the ship's side up six miles of the river
Yarra-Yarra, which runs through a low
swamp covered with small trees. As you
come near the town, the banks are fringed
with boiling-down establishments; which,
during the hot weather, emit an odour
anything but welcome. The town itself is on a
rising ground; the streets are very wide, and
quite straight, crossing each other at right
angles. This arrangement is not picturesque.
There is, however, in the streets of Melbourne,
a pleasing variety in the appearance
of the dwellings; you may see an obtrusive
newly-built brick house, running out to
claim as much of the street as the limit of
the proprietor's land will permit; next door
to it, you may find, perhaps, an old wooden
cottage shrinking bashfully into the street
behind. Some of the shops are quite of
London magnitude.

Geelong is a far prettier place than Melbourne.
It is built close to the bay on moderately
high ground; so that, from almost
every part of it, you can see either over
the bay, or far out into the country, just as
you can in Edinburgh. It is laid out much in
the same way as Melbourne, except that it has
the advantage of a fine large market square in
the centre. Considering that it has only been
eight years in existence, I may say that it
is a large town. It supports a theatre. It
contains English, Scotch, and Roman Catholic
churches. In the Catholic church is the one
thing that interests me in Geelong—a very
well-toned organ. One evening I stood for
half-an-hour outside the building, listening to
the organist playing Adeste fideles. It was the
first organ I had heard since that Easter
Sunday when you and I attended service in
Westminster Abbey.

On my first landing at Port Philip, I
thought the country had an ugly aspect;
every thing looked so dry and burnt up—not
a single blade of green grass was to be found
anywhere; and yet the trees are always
green. One sort of tree, however, which is
very common—the she-oak they call it—is
never green; indeed, it has no leaves at all,
but merely bunches of a sort of vegetable
twine depending from the branches. It is
the darkest and most sepulchral-looking tree
I ever saw. I think some enterprising cemetery
company might do well to introduce it
into England.

During our excursions round Melbourne,
although none of them extended beyond
twenty miles, I saw some wild forests, in
which the trees were growing in such dense
masses that you could often scarcely pass
between the trunks, many rising sixty feet
without a branch. This place was in the
"Stringy-bark Ranges," so called from the