"That is not grey hair, my dear, it is powder; nearly every one who could afford to pay the tax wore powder in those days. When that picture was done my father was only thirty-five years old. Well, as I told you, we lived at Wapping, on the banks of the river Thames, close to the great London Docks. Since then other docks have been built, and Wapping is no longer such an important place; but then it was the chief entrance for shipping, and nearly all the great merchantmen came in there with their cargoes, or started thence for foreign countries. Many large vessels lay there for months at a time to be refitted, and as our house stood close to the water's-edge you could see from its windows all that went on, and all the different crafts and barges which passed on the river. When you wished to go anywhere by water you had only to step down a narrow flight of stone stairs outside, get into a boat, and be rowed where you pleased, and this was a very pleasant way of travelling and cost little. At that time few lived at Wapping but sea-faring people, and those who owned great wharfs, and had to do with merchandise and shipping. My father was in the merchant service, well-known for his successful voyages, and always to be trusted to carry through a matter honourably and well. He was a man of his word, firm and true, and one who would look neither to right or left, but go straight on where his duty led. When you think of your great-grandfather, Susan, you can always feel proud of this; there is nothing better than to have had people belonging to us in the past who have been high-minded and good. He was, of course, often absent from us for months at a time, and had much to tell us about his voyages when he returned. He was the first to take out a gang of convicts in the ship _Scarborough_, and land them in the place which was afterwards called Botany Bay, then a wild and desolate country; this happened in the year 1788, when a new law was passed to establish a penal settlement in Australia with a governor at its head. Until then convicts had been sent to America and the West Indies. The account of this landing always interested me very much; but, on his second voyage to Australia, there happened to my father such a strange adventure, and such a narrow escape from a dreadful death that I never wearied of hearing about it, and it is now as fresh in my memory as if he had just told it to me. This is how it came to pass. It was in the spring of 1789, when he had been at home with us for a month, that he received orders to start for the colony with a second lot of 200 convicts, some to be taken on board at Woolwich, and some at Portsmouth; he was afterwards to proceed to China for a cargo of tea, and would therefore be away a long, long time. The whole household was sorry for this, because we all missed his cheerful companionship; but my mother grieved most of all, for she understood better than we did, the dangers