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     [PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION.]


     SIX LETTERS FROM
     THE COLONIES.


     BY R. C. SEATON.


     HULL: WILDRIDGE & CO.

     MDCCCLXXXVI.




PREFACE.


I was absent from England eleven months, from November, 1884, to
October, 1885. The first three of these Letters are reprinted, with
slight alterations, from the _Eastern Morning News_. The last three
were written after my return to England. As I have not cared to keep
up the fiction of having written them from Australia, they may
contain some references to events subsequent to my return. It is
often objected, and truly enough, that travellers, who spend only so
short a time as I have in fresh countries, are not justified in
expressing deliberate opinions about them; but this does not apply
where a writer gives his impressions as such, and not as matured
opinions, or where he expresses the opinions of other people who, by
long residence or otherwise in a particular country, have had every
opportunity of forming them. I think it will not be found that I
have offended in this particular.

LONDON,

October, 1886.




CONTENTS.

                                      PAGE

       I.--VOYAGE OF THE HAMPSHIRE      7

      II.--MELBOURNE                   19

     III.--VICTORIA                    33

      IV.--SOUTH AUSTRALIA             47

       V.--TASMANIA                    60

      VI.--AUCKLAND AND SYDNEY         75




I.

The Voyage of the Hampshire.


A Voyage to Australia has in these days become so ordinary an affair
that it may seem to require an apology to attempt to describe one,
but a voyage in a sailing ship is so different