not in danger of being cut. It was only short
of that.

It was shocking. The bedroom we were
shown into was filthy, very small, and with a
very little window which had not been opened
to admit fresh air for a week at least. The
blankets were hideously dirty, displaying
ostentatiously large dark blotches of grease,
and net-works of dirty splashes, like foul
mockeries of a map of the moon. There were
two beds of this description: the room would
not have held a third. In this place we had
some tea, and bread and butter, with fried
meat—such stuff! Just as we were about to
take possession of our wretched beds, in
walked a man, with his wife carrying a
child, followed by the landlady, who
announced them as the occupants of the other
bed!

I began a vigorous remonstrance, but was
instantly stopped by the reminder, that we
had begged to be taken in, and had agreed to
anything; and if we did not like it we might
instantly depart. Our heads fell on our
breasts in sick submission.

The night we passed defies description;
partly because so much of it is unfit to relate.
The man was drunk and offensive; the
woman an unseemly slave, and insolent.
The child cried all night. Besides this, sleep
was impossible for the fleas, bugs, mosquitoes,
and a lively sort of beetle continually running
over our hands and necks, and trying to get
down the back. In the morning every part
of every one of us was covered with large
red swellings, or small red punctures. Not
one inch of us had been spared. Our faces,
as we looked at each other, were painful to
behold. As for me, I could scarcely lift my
eyelids, so swollen with bites upon bites. My
wife, once lovely, and far from bad looking
even after all our harassing, was about the
most unsightly woman I had ever seen; my
eldest daughter, eight years of age, was a
speckled blight; my second girl was a
squinting ideal; our poor little boy, a moon-
calf. None of us knew our own hands. My
wife's under lip was a tomato. I could have
cried like a child, with a mixture of grief, rage,
and self-reproach. She bore it admirably.

I paid four shillings each for our tea, four
shillings each for our bed—floor inclusive—
and four shillings each for our breakfast; at
which there was plenty of fried beef-steak, but
so tough that we could not eat a morsel.
We hurried out of this respectable den (I
admit that there were hundreds much worse),
and, meeting one of the passengers who came
out with us in the same ship, he told us that
he had pitched his tent on the South Yarra
encampment among a great number of tents;
and that he had slept very comfortably after
the confinement of a cabin on so long a
voyage. He said the encampment was called
Canvass Town.

Not knowing where to leave my wife and
the children, I took them all on board again,
to accomplish which occupied the whole
morning, with vexatious delays, and no one
able, or choosing to take the least trouble to
give the least information—to say nothing of
the renewed extortions. We packed up everything.
I was anxious to get my goods out of
the hold, so as to dispose of the "speculation".
After several days the hams were got up on
deck. Some of them had been spoiled by the
heat of the tropics, and had to be thrown
overboard; some had been damaged by the
bilge water in the hold, or by the seas we
had shipped in rounding the Cape; some had
been gnawed in holes by the rats, and a good
many had been stolen. The bale of boots
and shoes next appeared, all grey and green
with mouldiness, but recoverable, I was told.
Being unable to wait for the agricultural and
mining tools, which had been stowed at the
bottom of the hold, we left the ship in a boat
for Liardet's Beach; having ascertained that
there was a small encampment there, and
that this was the readiest way to get to
Canvass Town. We heard that drays were
always waiting on the beach, or close at hand,
to take passengers' luggage wherever they
wished.

We accordingly engaged a boat to take
ourselves and our baggage. The boatman
agreed to do it for three pounds, the distance
being barely a mile and a half; but, before
we had been ten minutes in the boat, he and
his mate discovered that we had so many
more packages than they had expected that
he demanded five pounds. I resisted, and
tendered him the three pounds, which he
took doggedly. They landed us on the
beach, close to the sea, where they bundled
out all our things. I inquired if the tide was
coming in? The owner of the boat said he
thought it was. They refused to remove my
baggage any higher up. They said they had
done all they agreed for. I saw no carts, nor
drays, on the beach. There were several
near the wooden boat-pier, but when I ran off
to them I found they were all engaged. The
boat had pushed off, and I had to call the
men back, and offer to pay them for helping
me to move our goods. They stipulated for
three pounds more to remove everything
high up, quite out of reach of the tide. There
was nothing for it, so I agreed, and it was
done. I told them they had made a pretty
good day's work out of me. The principal
man said, "Nonsense—this is nothing! I
shall soon be away from this. Why should I
waste my time here, while there's a fortune
a-staring me in the face up at the Diggings?
Good day's work be hanged!"

Here we remained looking in vain for a
dray. Whenever one drove up in front of
the public-house near the wooden pier, I ran
off to it; but found it was engaged. The sun
went down. It was dark soon afterwards
and there we were, sitting forlorn upon our
baggage with every prospect of passing the
night there. Under pretence of a last look