proof of his condition that her acquaintance with him had begun by his throwing a pig-melon at her, and that he continued to throw more melons whenever she entered the field where he was at work. As a missive expressive of affection I should have thought a cannon-ball had been quite as sentimental; but the girl's experiences of courtship showed me that the throwing of cucumbers and vegetable marrows over the garden wall by Mrs. Nickleby's insane lover was more true to nature than I had supposed.
I believe that when Englishmen are totally deprived of beer their friends will readily admit the case to be one that excuses grumbling and demands condolence; in order therefore to avoid both, we now set about brewing a supply of beer with coarse sugar. Not that we should not greatly have preferred malt, if we could have had it, but, with a view perhaps of keeping up the prices of bottled beer, which in the country stores is commonly sold at twenty-four shillings the dozen, malt is not generally made in the colony, and if beer is brewed in private houses at all, it is of sugar, mostly of the very cheap sort procured from India. I did indeed hear of one colonist who had, in very early days, manufactured malt for his own use, but as he had also gone the lengths of making a tank to collect the rain-water, and, further, of drawing it up by means of an iron pump, he was then too much in advance of his age to find imitators.
As a substitute for malt we found that good Lisbon sugar answered better than the coarser kinds, which not only spoil the flavour of the beer, but throw up such a quantity of scum as to make the use of them no economy.
