DEPASTURE FROM SYDNEY. 371 



I visited the commissioner's camp, and, having an intro- 

 duction to the chief officer, was received very kindly at the 

 mess, and after having satisfied my curiosity with regard to 

 the Turon diggings, returned to Bathurst on the second 

 evening after my arrival. Having found the royal mail so 

 abominable a conveyance, I determined to try the opposition 

 coach this time. We started at a very early hour in certainly 

 a better vehicle than the mail ; in other respects there was 

 little to choose between them. The horses were just as bad, 

 the coachman just as uncivil, and all the arrangements just 

 as defective; and after a journey of thirty- two hours we 

 arrived at Sydney in safety, which was the more extraor- 

 dinary, considering that our dilapidated vehicle was conducted 

 by a drunken driver, in the dark, over the Blue Mountains. 



After visiting the Illawarra coast, by far the most 

 picturesque and fertile part of our possessions in the Aus- 

 tralian Colonies, I made a voyage in a small schooner to 

 the Friendly Islands, and from thence to several other groups 

 of the great South Sea archipelago, which, as I have 

 described in a little work I published at the beginning of 

 the year 1857, and they have been so often depicted by other 

 hands than mine, I shall not incur the risk of fatiguing the 

 reader by repeating what the reviewers call " the old tale of 

 Wesleyan missionaries and interesting savages." Suffice it 

 to say, I returned to Sydney in October, 1855, and the follow- 

 ing month sailed with my penates in the good steamer 

 William Denny, for the port of Auckland, in New Zealand. 



BB2 



