[PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION.]
SIX LETTERS FROM
THE COLONIES.
By R. C. SEATON.
HULL: WILDRIDGE & CO.
MDCCCLXXXVI.
PREFACE.
was absent from England eleven months, from November, 1884, toOctober, 1885. The first three of these Letters are reprinted, withslight alterations, from the Eastern Morning News. The last threewere written after my return to England. As I have not cared to keepup the fiction of having written them from Australia, they maycontain some references to events subsequent to my return. It isoften objected, and truly enough, that travellers, who spend only soshort a time as I have in fresh countries, are not justified inexpressing deliberate opinions about them; but this does not applywhere a writer gives his impressions as such, and not as maturedopinions, or where he expresses the opinions of other people who, bylong residence or otherwise in a particular country, have had everyopportunity of forming them. I think it will not be found that Ihave offended in this particular.
London,
October, 1886.
CONTENTS.
| I. | Voyage of the Hampshire | 7 |
| II. | Melbourne | 19 |
| III. | Victoria | 19 |
| IV. | South Australia | 47 |
| V. | Tasmania | 60 |
| VI. | Auckland and Sydney | 75 |
I.
The Voyage of the Hampshire.
Voyage to Australia has in these days become so ordinary an affairthat it may seem to require an apology to attempt to describe one,but a voyage in a sailing ship is so different from that in asteamer that it may interest some people. It is, as a rule, onlythose who go abroad for their health who prefer a sailing ship, onaccount of the great length of the voyage, in allusion to whichsteam people call sailing ships "wind jammers," while the sailorsretort on steamers by dubbing them "iron tanks" and "old co