"But I will soon be at work again for you. I have no greater joy than to be waiting upon you; and everything I get, which I think will be valuable to you, gives me increased satisfaction. You can scarcely believe what happiness I experience in devoting any portion of my time to your service. You are never out of my thoughts, and always in my prayers. My ideas turn toward you from every place, and in almost everything I see. When I think of the troubles and trials you must have, with eighteen children around you, I wonder you can at all think of me. But, dear lady, I do feel such an interest about you and your family, that I am thankful whenever you name any of them; and I was so delighted with your description of them all! Always tell me about them. I sincerely desire to know how Miss Anne is, and Miss Harriet, and Miss Sophia. "Have you any knowledge, my dear lady, of Governor Bligh? Alas! I have lost a good friend in Governor King. I do think that if a petition were presented to him in my behalf, so well known as I am to the late governor, something might be done for me. Every one tells me that he says my conduct has been so uniformly consistent and good that I deserve a reward. But it requires friends near the fountain of mercy to make its stream flow towards such as I. I should be almost ready to die with joy if a pardon were to come to me, with permission to return to England. I would then gladly come, and live and die in your service. "Since I last wrote to you, I have been living again with Mrs. Palmer. I sent you, by the ship _Buffalo_, a small case, containing the skins of the rarest birds found in this country, together with an opossum, of a dark colour, and very fierce; also a species of rat, which very much resembles a diminutive hyena. You will find two large, magnificent birds, called here the mountain pheasant; they are only like our English bird in size. The plume of feathers in the tail of the cock bird would form the most graceful ornament for a queen's head-dress. Two noble feathers, somewhat like a peacock's, only more brilliant and various in their colours, surrounded by the most glittering silver lines of curving feathers, fine as the prairie grass, and sparkling like the waves of the ocean, ornament the tail of the male bird, whilst the female is only remarkable for the elegance of her shape, and not for the beauty of her plumage.