It is so absurd to hear the old familiar names out here. A man tells you he has just come from Morpeth, Oxford, or Hyde Park, Norwood or Sydenham, Waterloo, Waverley or Paddington, Birkenhead or Liverpool, Brighton or Cremorne, Clifton, St Leonard’s, Darlington, Anglesea, &c. It is quite a relief to hear so wholly novel a name as Wooloomoolloo! But truly all the attractions which have hitherto delighted me in foreign lands are here conspicuous by their absence. Apparently no native population. Certainly no rich colour; no statuesque tropical undress; no graceful cocoa-palms. Everything is British, even to the ploughman riding his horses home at night, and the four-horse omnibuses, and the hansom cab which drives you about the town at 4s. an hour, and the genuine unadulterated cockney accents of men born and bred in the colony. Of course it is interesting to see this Greater Britain mushroom, but it is difficult to believe that we are 14,000 miles from London! and I hope, before long, to get glimpses of bush-life. But of Sydney itself we run some danger of getting more than we wish, inasmuch as the difficulties of getting ready a house in Fiji are very great, especially from lack of hands to labour—a difficulty which has been sorely increased by a frightful plague of measles, which, by news just received, have (at the lowest computation) carried off one-fifth of the whole population of the Isles. Some rate it far higher. And the survivors are all disheartened and miserable, and unfit for work. So, although Sir Arthur is buying his doors and windows and planking ready-made here to facilitate his building, it may be months before he has a house ready for us; and meanwhile we must have one here, and a very difficult article it is to find. The gentlemen are house-hunting all over the place, with very bad success; and the worst of it is that there is so little time, as Sir Arthur must start for Fiji within ten days, and leave us settled here,—a dull prospect for Lady Gordon, and doubly so as she must be anxious at his running into such a sink of measles, he being the only one of the party who has never had them. We went to the opera last night. The most remarkable thing about it was the drop-scene, which was simply a huge advertisement sheet, with puffs of all sorts, from the newest sewing-machine to the most efficacious pills! Imagine the effect of this descending between each act of Anna Bolena! I regretted much that I had not rather accompanied Commodore and Mrs Goodenough, who spent the evening with a large party of blue-jackets. It is quite touching to see their cordial kindness to all the men, and extreme interest in all that concerns them; and yet the Commodore has the name of being stern. I can only say I never saw a face which more thoroughly revealed the genial nature within. * * * * * _June 10._