66 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, v 



Properly speaking, indeed, we have been at home longer, for 

 we touched at Plymouth and trod English ground and saw Eng- 

 lish 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 Syd- 

 ney 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 Plym- 

 outh? 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, 

 begging 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 siSc 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 

 part of the difficulty and expense of getting anything to people 

 living inland; as it is, I think I have done some good in the 

 matter ; their meaning was good but their discretion small. But 

 the obtuseness of English in general about anything out of the 

 immediate circle of their own experience is something won- 

 derful. 



I had heard here and there fractional accounts of your 

 doings from Eliza K. and my mother — not of the most cheery 

 description- — and therefore I was right glad to get your letter, 

 which, though it tells of sorrow and misfortune enough and to 

 spare, yet shows me that the brave woman's heart you always 

 had, my dearest Lizzie, is still yours, and that you have always 

 had the warm love of those immediately around you, and now, 

 as the doctor's letter tells us, you have one more source of joy 

 and happiness, and this new joy must efface the bitterness — 



