DEAR EISA,—I have been all the morning waiting for the mail, sure of a letter from you, but I again have drawn a blank in that tantalising lottery. You can scarcely realise what a matter of interest the mails become in a place like this—the perpetual coming and going of the steamers, the signalling of their approach from the Heads, then watching them come up the harbour, right past Government House to their respective creeks. Such a lovely harbour as it is, and every headland dotted with picturesque villas! We have had both time and weather to enjoy it, the latter having been faultless ever since the rainy week which greeted our arrival, when it did pour with a vengeance. Now it is quite lovely, only the nights are too chilly sometimes for perfection. It is midwinter, you know, and all the deciduous trees are leafless. Leafless oak and apple trees beside camellia and orange trees in full flower and fruit! But the willows have not lost _their_ leaves, but grow beside great clumps of bamboo. The days slip away pleasantly. Many very kind friends plan delightful excursions for us, by land or water; and I learn what carriage-springs are capable of enduring when I see the daintiest little pony-phaetons driven, apparently at random, through the bush, across fields, or over the roughest cart-tracks. When we come to a paling, we deliberately take it down, and, of course, put it up again. Sometimes we come to dells where the loveliest maidenhair fern grows wild, and we fill the carriage with it and the pink epacris. As to the sweet wild geranium which abounds, it is thought quite extraordinary that we should care to gather it! Yesterday we went by rail to Paramatta, and drove to the great orange gardens, and noticed one group of trees from 40 to 45 feet high, the stems being nearly a foot in diameter, and the lowest branch three feet above my head. I do not remember any so large in Malta or elsewhere. It seemed strange to see these gardens with such wealth of fruit and blossom, while the neighbouring peach and pear orchards were all leafless. We drove on to the camellia gardens, and paid five shillings for quite a small basketful, though millions of blossoms were wasting their loveliness, and I would fain have carried off even those that lay unheeded on the grass. To-night there is a great ball at the Masonic Hall, to which we go, being bound to see everything. CHAPTER III. LIFE IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS—DEATH OF COMMODORE GOODENOUGH—LIFE IN THE BUSH. FROM A TINY COTTAGE AT THE WEATHERBOARD IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS, NEW SOUTH WALES, Begun _Aug. 19, 1875_.