NEW TIES 



41 



I am getting on capitally at present. Habit, inclination, and 

 now a sense of duty keep me at work, and the nature of our 

 cruise atTords me opportunities such as none but a blind man 

 would fail to make use of. I have sent two or three papers 

 home already to be published, which I have great hopes will 

 throw light upon some hitherto obscure branches of natural his- 

 tory, and I have just finished a more important one, which 1 

 intend to get read at the Royal Society. The other day I sub- 

 mitted it to William Macleay (the celebrated propounder of the 

 Quinary system), who has a beautiful place near Sydney, and, 

 I hear, " werry much approves what I have done." All this 

 goes to the comforting side of the question, and gives me hope 

 of being able to follow out my favourite pursuits in course of 

 time, without hindrance to what is now the main object of my 

 life. I tell Netty to look to being a " Frau Professorin " one 

 of these odd days, and she has faith, as I believe would have 

 if I told her I was going to be Prime Minister. 



We go to the northward again about the 23rd of this month 

 (April), and shall be away for ten or twelve months surveying 

 in Torres Straits. I believe we are to refit in Port Essington, and 

 that will be the only place approaching to civilisation that we 

 shall see for the whole of that time ; and after July or August 

 next, when a provision ship is to come up to us, we shall not 

 even get letters. I hope and trust I shall hear from you before 

 then. Do not suppose that my new ties have made me forgetful 

 of old ones. On the other hand, these are if anything strength- 

 ened. Does not my dearest Nettie love you as I do ! and do I 

 not often wish that you could see and love and esteem her as 

 I know you would. We often talk about you, and I tell her 

 stories of old times. 



Another letter, a year later, gives his mother the answers 

 to a string of questions which, mother-like, she had asked 

 him, thirsting for exact and minute information about her 

 future daughter-in-law : — 



Sydney, Feb. i, 1849. 



(After describing how he had just come back from a nine 

 months' cruise) — First and foremost, my deaj- mother, I must 

 thank you for your very kind letter of September 1848. I read 

 the greater part of it to Nettie, who was as much pleased as I 

 with your kindly wishes towards both of us. Now I suppose I 

 must do my best to answer your questions. First, as to age, 

 Nettie is about three months younger than myself — that is the 



