And now I must touch briefly on Van Dieman’s Land business-operations. Yankee cuteness in bargaining has became a proverb, but I doubt whether the sharpest of the speculators from the land of wooden nutmegs could outdo the sharpers found here. Long before we passed the Iron Pot light, a boat, containing a couple of speculators, came alongside, and her passengers jumped aboard of us. (One of their names, by the way, was Smart, and he sustained the aptitude of his cognomen to the best of his ability.) We purchased a boat of them, which, after we were outside, was found to be much worn, and the crevices filled with putty and neatly painted, so as to defy detection. The potatoes, bought for first-rate, were very ordinary; and the salt-meat, ten tierces of which had been bought for corned beef--being represented as having been but a short time out of pickle--was fairly white with an encrustation of salt, which no amount of soaking would remove: being ten times more saline than that which we had brought from home twenty-four months previously. This meat, when opened, was not, like ours, of a rich red and yellow hue, but of a sickly pink and white, which may have been owing to the absence of saltpetre in the pickle. It was quite fat; but the fat was like suet, and eatable only whilst warm; wanting the rich, pleasant taste of the fat on our own meat. The epicure may laugh at my expression of “rich taste,” applied to a piece of salt-junk; but let him do, as I have done, after hours of fatiguing night-duty--when his system is almost prostrated from exposure to wind and weather--go down to his messpan, get a piece of fat beef, a cake of hard bread, and a raw onion, (if he is fortunate enough to possess the latter,) and then go on deck, and munch it, then, I think, he will find the taste of it rich, grateful and pleasant.