LIFE OF PKOFESSOR HUXLEY 



41 NORTH BANK, REGENT'S PARK, 

 November 21, 1850. 



MY DEAREST LIZZIE We have been at home now 

 nearly three weeks, and I have been a free man again 

 twelve days. Her Majesty's ships have been paid off on 

 the 9th of this month. Properly speaking, indeed, we 

 have been at home longer, for we touched at Plymouth 

 and trod English ground and saw English green fields on 

 the 23rd of October, but we were allowed to remain only 

 twenty-four hours, and to my great disgust were ordered 

 round to Chatham to be paid off. The ill-luck which 

 had made our voyage homeward so long (we sailed 

 from Sydney on the 2nd of May) pursued us in the 

 Channel, and we did not reach Chatham until the 2nd 

 of November ; and what do you think was one of the 

 first things I did when we reached Plymouth ? Wrote to 

 Eliza K. asking news of a certain naughty sister of mine, 

 from whom I had never heard a word since we had been 

 away and if perchance there should be any letter, beg- 

 ging her to forward it immediately to Chatham. And 

 so, when at length we got there, I found your kind long 

 letter had been in England some six or seven months ; 

 but hearing of the likelihood of our return, they had 

 very judiciously not sent it to me. 



Your letter, my poor Lizzie, justifies many a heartache 

 I have had when thinking over your lot, knowing, as I 

 well do, what emigrant life is in climates less trying than 

 that in which you live. I have seen a good deal of bush 

 life in Australia, and it enables me fully to sympathise 

 with and enter into every particular you tell me from 

 the baking and boiling and pigs squealing, down to that 

 ferocious landshark Mrs. Gunther, of whose class Australia 

 will furnish fine specimens. Had I been at home, too, 

 I could have enlightened the good folks as to the means 

 of carriage in the colonies, and could have told them that 

 the two or twenty thousand miles over sea is the smallest 



