I have been ashore two or three times.  The town is like most Portuguese towns, hot and stinking, the odours here being improved by a strong flavour of nigger from the slaves, of whom there is an immense number.  They seem to do all the work, and their black skins shine in the sun as though they had been touched up with Warren, 30 Strand.  They are mostly in capital condition, and on the whole look happier than the corresponding class in England, the manufacturing and agricultural poor, I mean.  I have a much greater respect for them than for their beastly Portuguese masters, than whom there is not a more vile, ignorant, and besotted nation under the sun.  I only regret that such a glorious country as this should be in such hands.  Had Brazil been colonised by Englishmen, it would by this time have rivalled our Indian Empire.

The naturalist Macgillivray and I have had several excursions under pretence of catching butterflies, etc.  On the whole, however, I think we have been most successful in imbibing sherry cobbler, which you get here in great perfection.  By the way, tell Cooke [his brother-in-law], with my kindest regards, that —­ is a lying old thief, many of the things he told me about Macgillivray, e.g., being an ignoramus in natural history, etc. etc., having proved to be lies.  He is at any rate a very good ornithologist, and, I can testify, is exceedingly zealous in his vocation as a collector.  As in these (points) Mr. —­’s statements are unquestionably false, I must confess I feel greatly inclined to disbelieve his other assertions.

March 29.

We sail hence on Sunday for the Cape, so I will finish up.  If you have not already written to me at that place, direct your letters to H.M.S.  “Rattlesnake,” Sydney (to wait arrival).  We shall probably be at the Cape some weeks surveying, thence shall be take ourselves to the Mauritius, and leave a card on Paul and Virginia, thence on to Sydney; but it is of no use to direct to any place but the last.

P.S.—­The Rattlesnakes are not idle.  We shall most likely have something to say to the English savans before long.  If I have any frizz in the fire I will let you know.

[He gives a fuller account of this piece of work in a letter to his sister, dated Sydney, August 1, 1847.  The two papers in question, as appears from the briefest notice in the “Proceedings of the Linnean Society,” ascribing them to William (!) Huxley, were read in 1849:—­]

In my last letter I think I mentioned to you that I had worked out and sent home to the President of the Linnean Society, through Captain Stanley, an account of Physalia, or Portuguese man-of-war as it is called, an animal whose structure and affinities had never been worked out.  The careful investigation I made gave rise to several new ideas covering the whole class of animals to which this creature belongs, and these ideas I have had the good fortune to have had