TIPPAHEE AND HIS FOUR SONS ARE CONVEYED TO NEW ZEALAND IN THE LADY NELSON. The following months were months well spent by England's little ship; months which, like many others, left their mark on the early history of Australia and New Zealand, when seed was sown in England's name that was afterwards to bear fruit and extend her power and prosperity. Empire builders to-day may well envy those whose lot it was to be the first in that vast southern field. They were a gallant little band who, in early days, carried the mother-flag from New South Wales to lands and islands yet more distant, discovering the shores, planting the first settlements and moulding them into shape--men who worked with such untiring energy that succeeding generations found a city, where lately had stood a few miserable huts, and a flourishing seaport surrounding a once silent cove. Looking back across one hundred and twenty years of time, we can picture the empty spaces on the sea-shore, which are now towns, and the monotonous wildernesses of bushland, which have been replaced by smiling landscapes; and we can realise the enormous difficulties that had to be overcome before houses could be built, or the bushland cleared and cultivated. One of the first letters (perhaps the very first from a woman's pen to be handed down to us) written from Sydney, in November 1788, thus describes the Mother-settlement at the beginning. "We have now two streets, if four rows of the most miserable huts you can possibly conceive deserve that name. Windows they have none as from the Governor's house (now nearly finished) no glass could be spared, so that lattices of twigs are made by our people to supply their places. At the extremity of the lines where since our arrival the dead are buried there is a place called the churchyard..." and then, telling of the only food obtainable there, in addition to the hard fare provided by the Government, the writer continues, "Our kangaroo cats are like mutton but much leaner and there is a kind of chickweed so much in taste like spinach that no difference can be discerned. Something like ground ivy is used for tea but a scarcity of salt and sugar makes our best meals insipid...Everyone is so taken up with their own misfortunes that they have no pity to bestow on others."* (* To-day Sydney is the seventh city of the Empire.) What was written of Sydney may be said to have been true of all the settlements. Everywhere hardships were encountered, and everywhere they were surmounted.