1854 THE CAPE HORN OF LIFE 171 



because I do not write that therefore I do not think of 

 you or care to know about you, but only that I am eaten 

 up with the zeal of my own house, and doing with all 

 my heart the thing that the moment calls for. 



The last year has been eventful for me. There is 

 always a Cape Horn in one's life that one either weathers 

 or wrecks one's self on. Thank God, I think I may say I 

 have weathered mine not without a good deal of damage 

 to spars and rigging though, for it blew deuced hard on 

 the other side. 



At the commencement of this year my affairs came to 

 a crisis. The Government, notwithstanding all the repre- 

 sentations which were made to them, would neither give 

 nor refuse the grant for the publication of my work, and 

 by way of cutting short all further discussion the 

 Admiralty called upon me to serve. A correspondence 

 ensued, in which, as commonly happens in these cases, 

 they got the worst of it in logic and words, and I in 

 reality and " tin." They answered my syllogism by the 

 irrelevant and absurd threat of stopping my pay if I did 

 not serve at once. Here was a pretty business ! How- 

 ever, it was no use turning back when so much had been 

 sacrificed for one's end, so I put their Lordships' letter up 

 on my mantelpiece and betook myself to scribbling for 

 my bread. They, on the other hand, removed my name 

 from the List. So there was an interregnum when I was 

 no longer in Her Majesty's service. I had already joined 

 the Westminster Review, and had inured myself to the 

 labour of translation and I could get any amount of 

 scientific work I wanted so there was a living, though 

 a scanty one, and amazingly hard work for it. My pen 

 is not a very facile one, and what I write costs me a good 

 deal of trouble. 



In the spring of this year, however, a door opened. 

 My poor lost friend Professor Forbes whose steady 

 attachment and aid had always been of the utmost service 

 to me was called to fill the chair of Natural History in 



