very inch of land in the country is
cultivated. Though they are so clever and neat-handed, and can do many
things as well as the English, yet they are idolaters. In their
churches, or pagodas as they are called, there are ugly images, which
they worship. They burn sandal-wood and bits of paper before them,
which they fancy is like saying their prayers. The chief thing produced
in the country is tea.

When we had landed the hides, seal-skins, and sandal-wood, which we had
brought, we took on board a cargo of tea, in chests. With this we
sailed for Sydney, New South Wales, as the captain calculated that we
should arrive there about the time that the wool produced in that colony
would be ready to ship to England. There are many dangers in the seas
between those two places. There are typhoons, which are strong, fierce
winds; and there are rocks and shoals; and there are pirates, mostly
Chinese or a people like them, who attack vessels, if they can take them
unawares, and rob them, and sometimes murder all on board. We escaped
all dangers, and arrived safely off Sydney harbour. We entered between
two high headlands into a large bay or lake, in which any number of
vessels might lie at anchor. The city of Sydney is a fine-looking
place, with towers, and churches, and large houses, and wide streets,
and carriages in great numbers driving about, and vessels of all sorts
lying alongside the quays, two or three landing emigrants just arrived
from England; and then there are huge warehouses close to the harbour.
Into one of them the tea we had brought was hoisted, and out of another
came the wool, in large packages, with which the _Rose_ was to be
freighted. What astonished me was to think that eighty years ago not a
white man was living in all that vast country, and now there are large
towns in all directions, and villages, and farms, and sheep-stations,
and thousands upon thousands of sheep, some of the wool from whose backs
we were now carrying home to be made up into all sorts of woollen goods
in our factories.

With cheerful voices we ran round the capstan as we weighed anchor, we
hoped to remain at our bows till we dropped it in the Mersey. The
whaler's people had left us at Hong Kong, at the mouth of the Canton
river. They said that we were too quiet for them.

I should like to tell of our voyage home, not that anything wonderful
happened. We continued sailing west till we arrived off the Cape of
Good Hope,