Page:Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies.djvu/263

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1834.]
VAN DIEMENS LAND.
219

and that the remains of pride, even in persons of some degree of spirituality, are mortified by the omission of these titles and addresses.

9th mo. 4th. The Monthly Meeting was held at Kelvedon, and the judgment of that held in the 8th month, at Hobart Town, was confirmed, respecting recording my companion, as an approved minister, and sanctioning his proceeding with me in that capacity.

Between the 12th and 17th, we again visited the settlers in the upper part of Great Swan Port, holding several religious meetings among them.

When at Moulting Bay, close to the house of a settler, we counted fifty-six Black Swans, in pairs: their nests had been carried away by floods. This is often the case, and at other times they are extensively robbed of their eggs. One family, at whose house we lodged, had sometimes taken as many as five hundred eggs at a time. Formerly a tribe of Aborigines resorted regularly to this neighbourhood, at this season of the year, to collect swans' eggs.

Happening to take up the Hobart Town Courier, at Belmont, on the 1 7th, we saw, with much interest and satisfaction, a notice of the safe arrival of our dear friends Daniel and Charles Wheeler, in Hobart Town. They landed from the Henry Freeling, on the 10th inst.; being on a religious visit, to some parts of the Australian Colonies, and to the Islands of the South Seas. — Dr. Ross, the editor of this newspaper, had kindly inserted a special notice of their arrival, hoping that the tidings would reach us through this medium.

On the 22nd, we set out to return to Hobart Town, in company with Francis and Anna Maria Cotton. Several of their children, with Dr. Story, accompanied us a few miles on the way. On the beach, near T. Buxton's, the Doctor and I turned over some flat, basaltic stones, in a pool of salt water, that did not become empty by the recession of the tide, and were gratified with the sight of several species of coralline, alcyonite, sponge, and others of the lower tribes of animals, of curious and singular structure, but of which we had not the means of preserving specimens.