Early Letters 



I see that the Great Exhibition for 1862 seems determined 

 on. If so it will be a great inducement to me to cut short 

 the period of my banishment and get home in time to see 

 it. I assure you I now feel at times very great longings 

 for the peace and quiet of home — very much weariness of 

 this troublesome, wearisome, wandering life. I have lost 

 some of that elasticity and freshness which made the over- 

 coming of difficulties a pleasure, and the country and people 

 are now too familiar to me to retain any of the charms of 

 novelty which gild over so much that is really monotonous 

 and disagreeable. My health, too, gives way, and I cannot 

 now put up so well with fatigue and privations as at first. 

 All these causes will induce me to come home as soon as 

 possible, and I think I may promise, if no accident happens, 

 to come back to dear and beautiful England in the summer 

 of next year. C. Allen will stay a year longer and complete 

 the work which I shall not be able to do. 



I have been pretty comfortable here, having for two 

 months had the society of Mr. Geach, a Cornish mining 

 engineer who has been looking for copper here. He is a 

 very intelligent and pleasant fellow, but has now left. 

 Another Englishman, Capt. Hart, is a resident here. He 

 has a little house on the foot of the hills two miles out of 

 town ; I have a cottage (which was Mr. Geach's) a quarter 

 of a mile farther. He is what you may call a speculative 

 man : he reads a good deal, knows a little and wants to 

 know more, and is fond of speculating on the most 

 abstruse and unattainable points of science and philosophy. 

 You would be astonished at the number of men among the 

 captains and traders of these parts who have more than 

 an average amount of literary and scientific taste ; whereas 

 among the naval and military officers and various Govern- 

 ment officials very few have any such taste, but find their 

 only amusements in card-playing and dissipation. Some of 



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