“Like the Cape York natives, they were immensely curious to look at one’s legs, asking permission, very gently but very pressingly, to pull up the trouser, spanning the calf with their hands, drawing in their breath and making big eyes all the while.  Once, when the front of my shirt blew open, and they saw the white skin of my chest, they set up an universal shout.  I imagine that as they paint their faces black, they fancied that we ingeniously coloured ours white, and were astonished to see that we were really of that (to them) disgusting tint all over.”

[On May 2, 1850, the “Rattlesnake” sailed for the last time out of Sydney harbour, bound for England by way of the Horn.  In spite of his cheerful anticipations, Huxley was not to see his future wife again for five years more, when he was at length in a position to bid her come and join him.  During the three years of their engagement in Australia, they had at least been able to see each other at intervals, and to be together for months at a time.  In the long periods of absence, also, they had invented a device to cheat the sense of separation.  Each kept a particular journal, to be exchanged when they met again, and only to be read, day by day, during the next voyage.  But now it was very different, their only means of communication being the slow agency of the post, beset with endless possibilities of misunderstanding when it brought belated answers to questions already months old and out of date in the changed aspect of circumstances.  These perils, however, they weathered, and it proves how deep in the moral nature of each the bond between them was rooted, that in the end they passed safely through the still greater danger of imperceptibly growing estranged from one another under the influences of such utterly different surroundings.

A kindly storm which forced the old ship to put into the Bay of Islands to repair a number of small leaks that rendered the lower deck uninhabitable, made it possible for Huxley to send back a letter that should reach Australia in one month instead of ten after his departure.

He utilized a week’s stay here characteristically enough in an expedition to Waimate, the chief missionary station and the school of the native institutions (a sort of Normal School for native teachers), in order to judge of his own inspection what missionary life was like.]

I have been greatly surprised in these good people [he writes].  I had expected a good deal of “straight-hairedness” (if you understand the phrase) and methodistical puritanism, but I find it quite otherwise.  Both Mr. and Mrs. Burrows seem very quiet and unpretending—­straightforward folks desirous of doing their best for the people among whom they are placed.

[One touch must not be allowed to pass unnoticed in his appreciation of the missionaries’ unstudied welcome to the belated travellers, whose proper host was unable to take them in:—­“tea unlimited and a blazing fire, together with A very nice cat.”