62 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. IV 



illustrate the account of the voyage afterwards 

 published. As to his scientific work, he was accumu- 

 lating a large stock of observations, but felt rather 

 sore about the papers which he had already sent 

 home, for no word had reached him as to their fate, 

 not even that they had been received or looked over 

 by Forbes, to whom they had been consigned. As 

 a matter of fact, they had not been neglected, as he 

 was to find out on his return; but meanwhile the 

 state of affairs was not reassuring to a man whose 

 dearest hopes were bound up in the reception he 

 could win for these and similar researches. Altogether, 

 it was with no little joy that he turned his back on 

 the sweltering heat of Torres Straits, on the great 

 mountains of New Guinea, the Owen Stanley range, 

 which had remained hidden from D'Urville in the 

 Astrolabe to be discovered by the explorers on the 

 Rattlesnake, and the far-stretching archipelago of the 

 Louisiades, one tiny island in which still bears the 

 name of Huxley, after the assistant-surgeon of the 

 Rattlesnake. 



A few extracts from letters of the time will give 

 a more vivid idea of what the voyage was like. The 

 first is from a letter to his mother, dated February 1, 

 1849 : 



... I suppose you have wondered at the long 

 intervals of my letters, but my silence has been forced. 

 I wrote from Rockingham Bay in May, and from Cape 

 York in October. After leaving the latter place we have 

 had no communication with any one but the folks at 



