SECOND RESIDENCE AT CAPE TOWN. 107 



September, 1838. 



Jaines Backhouse is still here. He and his companion 

 go to the country this week, and will probably be a year absent 

 in the interior — a very worthy, and withal pleasant pair. J. B. 

 is full of anecdote and information of all sorts. He dined with 

 us one evening after a walk to the hills and towards Campo Bay, 

 performed, Vasculum in hand, in an orthodox fashion. As a 

 minister I like him much, though perhaps I have had small 

 opportunities of judging of his powers. He is a mystery to most 

 persons here ; they cannot imagine the object of a man travelling 

 about without any apparently definite view. He is so unlike a 

 missionary that he cannot he one — and what then, is a puzzle. 



He will have much to tell on Ins return, as he is a very close 

 observer of men and things. His account of the state of society 

 in New South Wales is shocking, little short of disgusting to 

 any one brought up with proper moral feelings, and certainly I 

 have had no cause to regret not having settled there. Van 

 Diemen's Land is better, owing to the long-continued care of 

 the late Government ; the other Australian colonies vary in 

 degree, but in none is the tone of feeling on subjects of right 

 and wrong, healthy. I fear, when he has seen the Cape, he will 

 have to tell a similar story of us also : the fact is, that where 

 men are thinly scattered over a country, as in all colonies must 

 be the case, the check which society exercises on moral delin- 

 quency is loosened, and, unless there be real sterling principles 

 for a foundation, the character deteriorates. You see in Cape 

 Town a very great change for the worse in the children of 

 European parents, even in the second generation : there is very 

 little of a nice sense of honour amongst them. 



I should like much to see the " Memoir of Hannah Kilham," for 

 though I was too young to know all her value when she was in 

 Ireland, I have ever had a veneration for her character, and felt 

 an interest in all she did. I am in a very idle humour — not 

 low, but somewhat listless. Just energy left to say Fahrwohl ! 



