ry where in my last letter I left it off. If I remember
rightly, I ended with an attempt at describing our great feast. We
embarked the next day, and as soon as we were out of the bay the little
_Albion_ plunged into heavy seas. The motion was much worse in her
than on board the large vessel we had been so glad to leave, and all my
previous sufferings seemed insignificant compared with what I endured in
my small and wretchedly hard berth. I have a dim recollection of F----
helping me to dress, wrapping me up in various shawls, and half carrying
me up the companion ladder; I crawled into a sunny corner among the
boxes of oranges with which the deck was crowded, and there I lay
helpless and utterly miserable. One well-meaning and good-natured
fellow-passenger asked F---- if I was fond of birds, and on his saying
"Yes," went off for a large wicker cage of hideous "laughing Jackasses,"
which he was taking as a great treasure to Canterbury. Why they
should be called "Jackasses" I never could discover; but the creatures
certainly do utter by fits and starts a sound which may fairly be
described as laughter. These paroxysms arise from no cause that one
can perceive; one bird begins, and all the others join in, and a more
doleful and depressing chorus I never heard: early in the morning seemed
the favourite time for this discordant mirth. Their owner also possessed
a cockatoo with a great musical reputation, but I never heard it get
beyond the first bar of "Come into the garden, Maud." Ill as I was, I
remember being roused to something like a flicker of animation when
I was shown an exceedingly seedy and shabby-looking blackbird with
a broken leg in splints, which its master (the same bird-fancying
gentleman) assured me he had bought in Melbourne as a great bargain for
only 2 pounds 10 shillings!

After five days' steaming we arrived in the open roadstead of Hokitika,
on the west coast of the middle island of New Zealand, and five minutes
after the anchor was down a little tug came alongside to take away our
steerage passengers--three hundred diggers. The gold-fields on this
coast were only discovered eight months ago, and already several canvas
towns have sprung up; there are thirty thousand diggers at work, and
every vessel brings a fresh cargo of stalwart, sun-burnt men. It was
rather late, and getting dark, but still I could distinctly see the
picturesque tents in the deep mountain gorge, their white shapes dotted
here and