contrasting strongly with a modestly attired Cingalese woman, and an Indian ayah with her young charge.  Amidst all this, the French language prevails; and everything more or less pertains of the French character, and an Englishman can scarcely believe that he is in one of the colonies of his own country.”

From Mauritius they proceeded to the English-looking colony of Tasmania, and after a few days set out for Sydney, arriving there on July 16th.  The surveying officers had tedious work to do there, and Huxley stayed in Sydney for three months.  Then, and in the course of three other prolonged stays in that town during the expedition, Huxley entered into the society of the town and became a general favourite.  He is still remembered there, and the accompanying illustration[C] is a copy of an original sketch of himself, now in the possession of an Australian lady.  He drew it on the fly-leaf of a volume of Lytton’s poems and presented it on her birthday to the little daughter of a friend.  At Sydney, too, he met and gained the love of the lady, then Miss Henrietta A. Heathorn, who afterwards became his wife.

On October 11th the Rattlesnake sailed northwards to begin the real work of the expedition.  The great island of New Guinea, lying to the north of Australia, is separated from it only by the comparatively narrow Torres Straits.  Through these lies the natural route for the commerce between Australia and the Northern Hemisphere.  The eastward prolongation of New Guinea, and the coast of Queensland, enclose between them a great tropical sea which gradually converges to the Straits.  The waters are very tempestuous, and the navigation is made more dangerous by the thousands of coral islands and coral reefs that stud the ocean.  Following the shoreline of Queensland, at a distance of from ten to one hundred and fifty miles, and stretching for twelve hundred and fifty miles, is the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, one of the wonders of the world.  The shelving floor of the ocean rises nearly to the surface along this line, and vast colonies of coral building creatures have formed their reefs up to the water’s edge along the ridge.  The turbulent waves scouring over this living mass have carved and moulded it into millions of fantastic islands, sometimes heaping detached masses of dead debris high above the surface of the water.  At low tide the most wonderful fields of the animal flowers of the sea are exposed.  Some of them form branching systems of hard skeletons like stony trees, the soft, brightly coloured animals dotted over the stems like buds.  Others form solid masses; others, again, rounded skull like boulders, or elevations like toadstools.  The colours of the skeletons and the animals are vivid scarlets and purples and greens.  Sea anemones, shell-fish, and starfish of the most vivid hues are as abundant as the corals.  Brilliant fish dart through the blossoms of the marine gardens, and sea birds scream