Curiosity led me to the house where this famous governor and adventurous explorer had lived, and the janitor, a trusted old servant, showed me over the building. It was one of those enormous structures which the English build for the edification and amazement of the natives in their colonies. I had heard and read a great deal about Sir John and the lovely woman that was mourning his long absence, and I entered the silent house with a feeling that I was trespassing upon a great and unutterable grief. Imagine my astonishment--I may say, horror--to learn that Lady Franklin, or Lady Jane, as she was generally called, had for years lived at one end of the long house, while Sir John had lived at the other, and that, as the story went, they had not spoken to each other for years. She seemed certainly to have had the grace to assume a virtue she did not possess, and apparently mourned her lost lord for years, and spent much of her time in liberal charities. This is the first time I have referred in any way to this unknown unhappiness of Sir John Franklin. It was not known to many people in Tasmania at the time, and I suppose that it is known now only to members of the two families, the Franklins and the Griffins. As I had come half around the island of Tasmania, approaching Hobart Town from the sea, I had seen nothing of the interior of the country, so I determined--after finishing my business in Hobart Town--to cross the island to Launceston. There is now a railway running directly across, but at that time there was only a stage route. Stages ran every other day. I engaged passage in the mail-coach, the same style of coach that had been used for hundreds of years in England and Scotland, still as rough and cumbersome as when first devised. There, too, was the old Tudor driver and the Restoration guard. Nothing was wanting. The coach looked to me as if it had been taken from behind the scenes of some old comedy--a piece of stage property. But if the stage was antiquated and out of touch with the modern stir of the world, the driver was not. I asked him what he thought would be the proper thing in the way of a "tip," as I did not know the ways of Tasmania. "That depends, sir," he said, "upon whom we are riding with." That settled the business for me, for my tip then had to be a sort of measure of my self-esteem. I was literally cornered, and had to give him a big tip, in sheer self-defense. The road to Launceston was an excellent one, a macadam built by convicts, and the scenery was the most beautiful I had seen in Australasia. When I arrived at Launceston I had to get a pass to leave the country, as it had been necessary to have a passport to enter it. The British were very particular whom they permitted to leave Tasmania, and whom they allowed to go there.