Settlement.

The space left for the accommodation of the passengers being thus
curtailed, and the comforts of the voyage seeming likely to be much
diminished, the writer was most providentially induced to change his
ship, and, a few weeks later, secured a berth in another vessel.

The work is compiled from the actual letters and journal of a young
emigrant, with extracts from two papers contributed by him to the Eagle,
a periodical issued by some of the members of St. John's College,
Cambridge, at which the writer took his degree. This variety in the
sources from which the materials are put together must be the apology
for some defects in their connection and coherence. It is hoped also
that the circumstances of bodily fatigue and actual difficulty under
which they were often written, will excuse many faults of style.

For whatever of presumption may appear in giving this little book to the
public, the friends of the writer alone are answerable. It was at their
wish only that he consented to its being printed. It is, however,
submitted to the reader, in the hope that the unbiassed impressions of
colonial life, as they fell freshly on a young mind, may not be wholly
devoid of interest. Its value to his friends at home is not diminished
by the fact that the MS., having been sent out to New Zealand for
revision, was, on its return, lost in the Colombo, and was fished up
from the Indian Ocean so nearly washed out as to have been with some
difficulty deciphered.

It should be further stated, for the encouragement of those who think of
following the example of the author, and emigrating to the same
settlement, that his most recent letters indicate that he has no reason