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letters which I was not clear about. I walked up to Guildford, though the day was excessively warm, and intended to have reached home by night to con over my letters in undisturbed comfort; but being wearied, I was forced to accept a bed on the way; but reached home for breakfast the following morning with a good appetite for it.
One word about health. You seem to consider that we must be very bilious here, and that we must consequently use much medicine. I have not taken any medicine whatever since I left Ireland, nor have I required it; so much for this climate.
It is fortunate that some of my letters reached you before Captain S. and his mate (who were never higher than Perth, if so far) arrived in Dublin, else you would have been unhappy about my situation here. What was Fremantle then? a bare, barren-looking district of sandy coast; the shrubs cut down for fire-wood, the herbage trodden bare, a few wooden houses, many ragged-looking tents and contrivances for habitations, our hotel, a poor public house, into which every one crowded, our colony, a few cheerless dissatisfied people with gloomy looks, plodding their way through the sand from hut to hut to drink grog, and grumble out their discontents to each other; a stranger (a sailor in particular) could not admire the settlement. Now there is a town laid out in regular streets of stone houses with low walls, and in some places palisades in front; two or three large well kept inns or hotels, in which you can get clean beds and good private rooms. The soil there is loam resting upon a stratum of easily worked limestone, and possessing a fertility almost exceeding belief, with abundant water near the surface. You inquire, "if there be any fish in the rivers," I thought I had mentioned my having assisted in taking ten thousand at one haul near Perth; up here they are not numerous, or rather I cannot take them without a net: you say, "winter will bring them;" remember I have often called
