Page:Extracts from the letters and journals of George Fletcher Moore.djvu/177

 Rh burning the stumps of trees, so no wonder for me to doff the outer garment; the thermometer standing at 80°. James and John have learned to use the cross-cut saw, which enabled me to clear away, with the subsequent aid of fire, the gum trees, which are extremely hard and heavy, not unlike sycamore in colour, but much more ponderous.

14th.—My thermometer has fallen this morning to 52°. I have been digging out potatoes—a miserable crop; but no wonder, for the seed was very wretched, and planted in a very dry spot, which will not answer in our dry summer. Thermometer up again to 62°; lovely moonlight night

Two pigs smothered by their mamma's awkwardness; and Letty came in like the Trojan of old, "so dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, and would have told me—" all my pork was out. But it is no joking matter, nor am I in a humour for heroics now, for it is a sad truth that my last bit of pork was boiled this day.

Oh, for some of that which you have in Dublin for twenty shillings per cwt.! You, master Joseph, would think salt pork very sorry food, especially without cabbage, or any other vegetable; but we colonists think it sumptuous at this present moment. I am breakfasting on bread and coffee, without butter, milk, or eggs—but next year I hope to fare better: and as to the dinner of to-day, I shot three pigeons before breakfast. Our usual