former voyages, so that the names of Cook and Flinders, of Dentrecasteaux, and La Pérouse were to him well known by research, not solely as authorities upon which later works were based. The islands had a special charm for the Commodore. Imbued with the records of early discoveries, admiring Captain Cook as a true pattern of a discoverer, as brave yet prudent, highminded, accurate, truthful, the Commodore seemed to think it a worthy aim to try and supplement the discoveries of his great predecessor. Life to him was a time for work; he always wearied of ease, and gaiety, and pleasant times when there was work to be done. One work done, he sought for the next to do, never seeming to think rest possible with work undone.

"The labour trade occupied much of his attention. Having the responsibility of directing the commanders of the other ships on the station, having to judge of and report on their acts, it was consistent with the thoroughness of his character that he should himself pay a lengthy visit to the South Sea Islands. In April he made a short cruise through the New Hebrides and Banks' Group, examining islands, collecting all information, aiding missionaries, repressing lawlessness, trying to do justice both to traders and natives, making his office a real power felt for good throughout that part of the Pacific. He visited many of the islands, everywhere trying to establish friendly relations with the inhabitants. At each place he himself would land first, for he would never allow others to run a risk which he would not share himself; then by giving presents, of which he always had abundance, and by a frank and friendly manner, would establish confidence. Then he would visit their villages, collecting all manner of curiosities, always trying to obtain words of their language. He believed that open dealing would always be successful, and unconscious of a hostile motive himself, he hoped to inspire confidence in the natives of the islands, so that they would be friendly to white people, and that thus in time Polynesia would be safe ground for missionaries, and all who might come with an honest purpose. He never believed there was danger in landing within sight of

the ship, in a confiding, unsuspicious manner, and so would go, with his boat's crew unarmed, alone or with officers whom from time to time he asked to accompany him. He permitted and encouraged other officers and men to land for shooting or fishing; in everything trying to establish confidence and friendly feeling."

He returned to Sydney at the end of May, to leave again in three weeks for Fiji. The following letter was written by the Commodore during this last stay at Sydney:

SYDNEY, June 10th.

“I wish again, as I often have, and do wish for that carpet of the Arabian Nights, that I might go to you for an hour and refresh myself, with a good talk with you of all things knowable. We are here by no means in the wilds, and have books, papers, and everything else to instruct one as to how the world moves; but we have not, of course, except by letter, the running comment of. our living reviews, to correct our estimate of things that pass, and to give us a close journal of family histories. On the whole, if I had the wishing carpet, I think I should send it to you. It would be so delightful to have you with me for a year. You would delight in many things in these colonies, though some might offend

In New Zealand I think you would take great pleasure. The great drawback to the future is that the people will gradually work up into tropical regions of Australia, and lose their English character, becoming employers of labour of an inferior race, and then to a certain degree corrupted in their convictions about personal freedom and independence.

"Fiji is a bad inheritance in this way, but Northern Australia will be worse, and is fast becoming a Natal. The wretched aboriginal natives are being exterminated fast, and will never be able to tell their own inscrutable story; but another, and a regularly apprenticed servile race, will come either from the islands, or from China, to supply a labouring class. Although I have been two years from England I have seen as yet but very little of the

country, as I have been so continually brought back to Sydney, our head-quarters, by one duty or another, and in the intervals have been constantly in the islands; but I hope to pay a good visit to Melbourne next year, and to New Zealand during this year. The former is held to be rowdy in England, but this is a great mistake, and public sentiment is more law-abiding, sober, as well as intelligent, in Victoria than elsewhere in these colonies. Adieu ! I go again to Fiji to-morrow to accompany the new Governor, and then to cruise among the Solomon Islands of Mendaña, the old Spaniard; a perilous sea, but an interesting one, full of antres vast and picturesque spots.

"The just above stands to mean that at that point I had to break off, dress, go to a ball for two hours, and here I am again. If the band didn't play so loud, I shouldn't mind going, for I generally get a talk with some one. It is only 11.30 P.M. now, so that our ball was not a very great dissipation.

"Have you got dear old

again in your neighbourhood? If you come to speech of him, will you tell him that I speak of him with affection. Dear old fellow! it does one good to think that there is so unselfish and kind a man on earth.”

CHAPTER VII.

.THE LAST CRUISE.

BEFORE proceeding to relate the events of the last cruise of Commodore Goodenough, a few words of personal description may here find a fitting place. He was a man of middle height, of a spare and nervous frame; his head generally thrown back, his features sharply defined, with a keen and piercing deep-set eye, and a prominent chin, which spoke of strong determination, and of the iron nerve which he possessed, while the lines of his mouth revealed from time to time the tenderness of his heart.

Of his character and his abilities the reader will judge by his own letters, and by his doings; yet a few words may here be said of some of its most marked traits.

Some of his friends have spoken of his tenderness, his almost womanly power of sympathy; others, of his force of character and his grasp of mind, of the way in which he seemed to take in the whole range of a subject at a glance. An eminent writer has said of him, that he showed in this sifting and searching age that the most enquiring and critical mind could be united with the most devout and tender heart. Others, well able to judge, have called him a strong and trusted leader; a man dauntless, self-sacrificing, and resolute; watchful, and far-seeing-looking to the future no less than to the present of his profession, his constant anxiety being to elevate the religious and intellectual con

dition of the men under his charge, and especially the younger officers, to whom he both felt and acted as a father; while, again, the strictness, amounting at times to severity, of his discipline, and the uncompromising firmness and decision of his actions, which formed so marked a characteristic in him, and which were as clearly seen in his countenance as was the opposite quality of extreme gentleness, cannot be left unnoticed. But perhaps the

most strongly-marked features of his character were the loftiness of his aspirations and the disinterestedness of his aims. It was hard to him to understand that men should act from interested motives; it was impossible to him, when a duty lay before him, even to apprehend whether it would affect him personally; and it gave him almost physical pain when he was brought face to face with dishonest or self-seeking intentions in anyone with whom he was dealing. He believed in-and he clung to his faith in-truth and honesty, and in human nature; and this made him singularly impatient of anything approaching scandal, or even gossip ;* and it was this faith that enabled

The following letter to the editor of a small colonial newspaper is characteristic:

"MY DEAR SIR,-I am much obliged by your note and its enclosures, which I return. I never had any doubt of the genuineness of the documents which you published in your paper. I am anxious, however, to let bygones be forgotten as much as possible. I am satisfied that this is good policy as well as good moral precept, and if I may venture to say so to you, who are expert in the matter, it is good journalistic policy too. The public get tired of an old personal controversy, however much a certain class of readers may relish a present or recent scandal, and a battered antagonist becomes at last a hero. I am satisfied that the reading public of your colony contains enough intelligent educated men to support a high class of newspaper, in which no trace of personal hostility is seen, and I am satisfied of it, because I have seen it in a smaller community than this. In the paper of which I speak, early and