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148 the house-work. We generally find that females prefer England to Tasmania, on account of this annoyance.

13th. We reached Launceston, after visiting a few settlers on the Nile, and on the South Esk, into which the former flows.

At Launceston, we found an interesting letter from W. J. Darling, from Flinders Island, dated Establishment for the Aborigines, formerly Pea-Jacket, now Wybalenna, 6th April, 1833. The following are extracts from it:—

"We have been removed since the 1st February, down to this place, which is a paradise compared with the other, and which I have named Wybalenna, or Black Man's Houses, in honest English. We have abundance of water, an excellent garden, and every comfort a rational man can want. If you were gratified with the establishment before, you would be doubly so now, and would find a vast improvement among the people since your last visit: their habitations are in progress, four of them being nearly completed. I think you would approve of them. They consist of low cottages, twenty-eight feet by fourteen, with a double fire-place in the centre, and a partition; each apartment calculated to contain six persons. They are built of wattles, plastered and whitewashed; the wattles and grass for thatching,—of which a great quantity is required for each building,—have been brought in entirely by the natives, and the delight they show in the anticipation of their new houses, is highly gratifying. They are of course to be furnished with bed-places, tables, stools, &c. and each house will have a good-sized garden in front of it. By next spring there will not be a prettier, or more interesting place in the colony of V. D. Land. The women now wash their own clothes and those of their husbands, as well as any white women would do. We are not now half so naked as when you were last here, but have neat and substantial clothing."—In a letter of later date, after the Aborigines had got into their houses, W. J. Darling says, "Their houses are swept out every morning, their things all hung up and in order, and this is without a word being spoken to them. They all know, and make a distinction on the Sunday; the women