1847 MAURITIUS AND SYDNEY 51 



back of a house now in the possession of one Mr. Geary, 

 an English mechanist, who puts up half the steam 

 engines for the sugar mills in the island. The garden is 

 now an utter wilderness, but still very beautiful ; round 

 it runs a grassy path, and in the middle of the path on 

 each side towards the further extremity of the garden is 

 a funeral urn supported on a pedestal, and as dilapidated 

 as the rest of the affair. These dilapidations, as usual, 

 are the work of English visitors, relic-hunters, who are 

 as shameless here as elsewhere. I was exceedingly 

 pleased on the whole with my excursion, and when I 

 returned I made a drawing of the place, which I will 

 send some day or other. 



Since this I have made, in company with our purser 

 and a passenger, Mr. King, a regular pedestrian trip to 

 see some very beautiful falls up the country. 



Leaving Mauritius on May 17, they prolonged 

 their voyage to Sydney by being requisitioned to 

 take more specie to Hobart Town, so that Sydney 

 was not reached until July 16, eight months since 

 they had had news of home. 



The three months spent in this first visit to 

 Sydney proved to be one of the most vital periods 

 in the young surgeon's career. From boyhood up, 

 vaguely conscious of unrest, of great powers within 

 him working to find expression, he had yet been to 

 a certain extent driven in upon himself. He had 

 been somewhat isolated from those of his own age 

 by his eagerness for problems about which they cared 

 nothing ; and the tendency to solitude, the habit of 

 outward reserve imposed upon an unusually warm 

 nature, were intensified by the fact that he grew up 

 in surroundings not wholly congenial. One member 



