12th September.—Macquarie Street.—I am again set down in a habitation of my own, to tell you somewhat about the last three weeks—it is surely that since I wrote last.

Well, our first object was to remove into a private home, and then I began to miss my Indian attendants, who never suffer you to see any thing or place until fit for your reception—something very different I had now to experience. We selected a house—one of the last in Macquarie Street, which I liked as affording immediate access to the jungle. It stands a few doors higher up than the Franklands', which locality was one of my chief inducements. So into this empty house all our baggage was conveyed, according to the taste of two or three assigned men, who had no idea of doing anything beyond the letter of their instructions. They put it inside the house and departed. I went for one or two days and looked at it in despair, but finding that neither sirdar bearers nor the more disinterested fairies, whose assistance to the housekeepers of past time has lived both in story and in song, were coming to my aid, I collected all the moral resolution and immoral physical force I could command—which latter material you must translate as referring to our convict servants—and proceeded to my unwonted and unrelished task.