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but I hope we may be able to settle it amicably now. We propose a greater expenditure for some services, and a less for others than he does. We are anxiously looking for a vessel from England. There is neither salt meat nor foreign flour, nor candles nor soap, in the colony, but it is a comfort on the other hand that there is plenty of fresh meat and colonial wheat and flour, and whale oil, and plenty of clean pure water. So we cannot be at any very great loss for want of the above articles. I ate a dish of Neeld turnips yesterday, the first this season, and almost the earliest in the colony—certainly the earliest in the clay grounds in the country. They are very sweet, and this is from the original seed sent out, for not one went to seed last year with me.
June 18th.—On Tuesday last there were some very fierce gusts of wind, and during one of them a vessel called the Abeona, which has touched here on her passage from the Mauritius to Sydney, was driven from her moorings and drifted towards the shore, but, by good management and the strength of her anchor cables, she was let gradually upon the sandy beach, so that when the weather was calm again, she was got off without any damage. She has sugar, rice, a few candles, &c., but for everything such a price is asked that if they do not come down a little, they may take their goods to another market. The whale has been mismanaged, for want of proper tackle to turn it, so they have only got the blubber off the upper part, and the rest is spoilt, and smells so strongly that the inhabitants of Fremantle begin to find that there are disagreeables attending whaling also. For the first time in my life I was successful in a raffle. I had made my throw at an early hour and came away, but it appears afterwards there was a tie between me and another. Lady Stirling threw for me, and her luck carried the day. I look upon raffling as a sort of genteel way of begging, but we are expected to contribute, and so follow the crowd. I dare say you think it a monstrous thing to charge 15 per cent. interest,
