the shadows of the evening stretched out, have been deceived with some fantastic little cloud, which, as it has condensed or expanded by such a light, for a little time has deceived impatient imagination into a momentary idea that 'twas a vessel altering her sails or position while steering in for the haven, when in a moment it has assumed a form so unlike what the mind was intent upon, or become so greatly' extended, as fully to certify me of its flimsy texture and fleeting existence. Surely our countrymen cannot have altogether forgotten us, or been vainly led from any silly, sanguine representations hence, to trust we could make it out tolerably well without their assistance.'
One can well imagine young Southwell, who thus wrote to his uncle, straining his eyes seaward from the cliffs at South Head, and looking in vain for a sail on the solitary Pacific—the ocean, for many hundreds of miles further than the range of his telescope, a desert of water.
Meanwhile, what must have been the feelings of the lonely man upon whom the welfare of the entire settlement depended—a burden no wise lessened by the whinings of his small-souled subordinates, each preoccupied with his own individual grievances? Tench tells how at length the clouds of misfortune began to separate, and on the evening of the 3rd of June, the joyful cry of 'the flag's up,' resounded in every direction.
'I was sitting in my hut, musing on our fate, when
