Page:An emigrant's home letters.djvu/90

 shillings per week rent. When she sat down, within these wretched walls, overwhelmed with fatigue, on a box which I had brought with us from the ship I had but threepence in the world, and no employment. For more than two weeks I kept beating about Sydney for work, during which time I sold one thing and another from our little stock for support. At length, being completely starved out, I engaged as a common labourer with Sir John Jamison, Kt., M.C., to go about thirty-six miles up the country. Sir John agreed to give me £25 for the year, with a ration and half of food. This amounted to weekly:—

10½ lbs.&ensp;beef—sometimes unfit to eat. 10½ lbs.&ensp;rice—of the worst imaginable quality, &numsp;6¾ lbs.&ensp;flour—half made up of ground rice, &numsp;2 &numsp; lbs.&ensp;sugar—good-tasted brown, &emsp;¼ lb.&emsp;tea—inferior. &emsp;¼ lb.&emsp;soap—not enough to wash our hands. &numsp;2 &numsp; figs of tobacco—useless to me.

This was what we had to live upon, and not a leaf of a vegetable or a drop of milk beyond this. For the first four months we had no other bed than a sheet of bark off a box tree, and an old door, laid on two cross pieces of wood, covered over with a few articles of clothing. The hut appointed for us to live in was a very poor one.