"This is the second great collection I have made for you; and I shall not, dear lady, forward any more until I hear of the safe arrival of the last, it is so very disheartening to find all my labour and love thrown away. Oh! how I wish that I could be permitted to bring a cargo home for you! I would part with everything I have most gladly for such a purpose, but I fear it will never be; and sometimes my poor heart feels broken, as I sit alone, pondering over all my hope and fears. "My dear landlady, Mrs. Palmer, has given me such a nice drawing of my cottage and the surrounding country for you! I shall send it; and I hope you will not think me presumptuous if I ask for one of the dear, dear Cliff, as I know, my dear lady, that you can so easily do one for me. If one of the young ladies would be so kind as to copy it, then I could give Mrs. Palmer one by way of return. Yours shall hang over my chimney-place; and when I look at it I shall think of those happy days which I spent there with you for my friend and mistress. "Ah! dear lady, when I was learning so many good lessons under your eye, little did I think that I should reap the profit thereof in a foreign land. Your word of approbation was a sort of foretaste of that which, I hope and trust, we shall both rejoice to hear, 'Well done, good and faithful servant!' "Dear lady, I am very contented, and am getting on well, but we have all had severe misfortune in this district: first, by the floods; secondly, by fire; and thirdly, by such a hurricane as levelled whole acres of timber-trees of enormous size. We were afraid to remain indoors lest our houses should fall on our heads; and out of doors we could hardly stand at all. Great trees swept by us as if they had been straws. "The flood in the month of May distressed us very much; but that on the 31st of July and the 1st of August, the days after the high wind, was dreadful. It was the greatest ever experienced by any of the settlers, though the natives speak of one which covered all the plain from the mountains, and was deeper than our church is high. The one I have so lately witnessed went over the tops of the houses on the plain; and many poor creatures were on their chimneys crying out for mercy, and for boats to go to them. It was shocking to hear their cries, and it made me feel so wretched at not being able to relieve them. It was very dangerous to approach them, for sometimes the eddies were so strong round their houses that boats were swept away, or swamped in the attempt. I saw one boat completely sunk by a tree falling upon it, just as it was passing; and had not another boat been near to take the sufferers off the boughs upon which they had climbed, they must all have perished.