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a plodding matter-of-fact business-like and hard-working life, until you get yourself established; with very little of that romance and adventure about it which is so tempting and alluring to your minds. Yet it has its pleasures; but it is quite right that people should prepare themselves for what it really is. I am still unwilling to recommend emigration to any one; for the sort of life is so different from that at home, that many might be discontented with it, and blame the adviser instead of themselves. I had made up my mind, to endure every kind of hardship and privation for three years at least. Yet here, at the end of two years, I live almost as well as I could wish, and certainly lead a healthier and happier and less anxious life, now that the first struggle is over. As to the relative eligibility of this place and America, pray consult the "Quarterly," especially that number in which there is discussion about the relative advantages; I forget in which number it is; and in the first number of the Transactions of the Geographical Society, you will also find something on the subject. If our Government succeeds in getting the purchase-fee of five shillings an acre taken off for a few years, then settlers will come here more readily. This cannot for a long time be much of a commercial, or any thing but an agricultural or pastoral settlement, as there are no large navigable rivers traversing the country, and affording an outlet from the interior by water.
Nov. 1st.—Leaving my little team at work to-day, I went out with the youngest Mr. Burgess to look for a kangaroo and had a fine chase after one; the dogs killed it within 200 yards of us, in a stream of water; my puppy barked and bit, and pulled, and did what he could; but it was the first he had seen killed, and we could not expect more at his coup d'essai. He promises well; we carried the kangaroo on our backs, turn about, for seven miles; this was a matter of some toil, for it weighed eighty pounds: however, I shall have some days' fresh provisions. On our way home, I shot a
