Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/110

 92 roaring in the trees. Thermometer now (nine o'clock P.M.) 84°—was 94° at two.

10th—Pigs, pigs, pigs—an addition of six—total, twenty-eight.

I wrote shortly after my arrival here, recommending a speculation in slop clothes, Irish pork, and butter; if a cargo of it had arrived here about or before this time, it would have been very profitable to the owners. There has been no butter—any price could have been got for it. Pork, as I have already stated, has been selling for ten guineas per barrel; porter would also sell well.

I am sorry to state that two men were drowned in Melville Water last Tuesday, in consequence of intoxication—the bane of this country as of Ireland. I have been threshing to-day with new (patent it ought to be) machinery, viz., the bars of a ladder. The grain is good, but the head is small. More pigs to-day—total 32. They are a very troublesome stock.

Killed two cockatoos at one shot, and caught a small turtle. After these exploits, I tried to make a door, and with much labour planed one side, and shall put it up in this state tomorrow. Time is so precious that I cannot afford any portion of it for planing the other side.

I find that a surprising number of persons on their way to this settlement have been frightened out of their intentions by the people at the Cape, who seem to act as if they thought every injury which they inflict on us were a positive gain to themselves. Some people (whom we are much better without) have left this place without giving it a fair trial. We want quiet, hard-working, practical people—not gentlemen, nor adventurers: by gentlemen, here, I mean those who consider themselves degraded by pursuing any useful occupation. Let such stay away: better to have their room than their company.

I have finished my door, and actually ornamented the show side with the aid of a bead-plane; and ground some of my