step of the way." Poor Gander! Mary Ann and the children all survived
the trials of the voyage and arrived safe in Melbourne, where Gander was
very fortunate, and in three years made sufficient money to enable him
to retire, and as the English Mail Steamer Company, or the P. & O.
Company had put on a line from Ceylon to Australia in 1852, the Gander
family were enabled to go home by the overland route, as Mrs. Gander had
wished to go.



Hard Times.



In June, 1854, I left Melbourne on the barque "Junior," bound to Callao,
in Peru. We had a fine voyage, and on arrival, being free, I went to
Lima, the capital. I found this was a very interesting old city, with
beautiful surrounding country, which I enjoyed very much, and spent
nearly a month there. Then I had a week in Callao, which was a pretty
wild place. I used to sail around the bay, and in sailing near the shore
I could look down, at the bottom of the sea, on the houses of old
Callao, which was swallowed by an earthquake in the latter part of the
last century. And, strange to say, when the town disappeared an island
came up out in the bay. This island is very high and is called "San
Lorenzo," after a lone fisherman who had been out in his boat fishing on
the night when the earthquake took place, and in the morning poor old
Lorenzo found himself in a boat about a thousand feet up on a mountain
and no town in sight.

Well, I joined the barque "Tropic," loaded with guano, bound for Cork,