As I shall have occasion hereafter to allude to them incidentally, I
may mention that my two brothers accompanied me on this distant
voyage.

The elder, a disciple of Aesculapius, was not only anxious to gratify
his fraternal solicitude and his professional tastes by watching my
case, but was desirous of realizing the pleasures of rural life in
Australia.

My younger brother (whose pursuits entitle him to be called
Meliboeus) was a youth not eighteen, originally designed for the
Church, and intended to cut a figure at Oxford; but modestly
conceiving that the figure he was likely to cut would not tend to the
advancement of his worldly interests, and moreover, having no
admiration for Virgil beyond the Bucolics, he fitted himself out with
a Lowland plaid and a set of Pandaean pipes, and solemnly dedicated
himself to the duties of a shepherd.

Thus it was that we were all embarked in the same boat; or rather, we
found ourselves in the month of April, 1841, on board of a certain
ill-appointed barque bound for Western Australia.

We had with us a couple of servants, four rams with curling horns --
a purchase from the late Lord Western; a noble blood-hound, the gift
of a noble Lord famous for the breed; a real old English
mastiff-bitch, from the stock at Lyme Park; and a handsome spaniel
cocker. Besides this collection of quadrupeds, we had a vast
assortment of useless lumber, which had cost us many hundred pounds.
Being most darkly ignorant of every thing relating to the country to
which we were going, but having a notion that it was very much of the