On our return to Melbourne, we made preparations for a removal to Ballaarat.  William remained with me at the latter place for twelve months, attending to any patient that might come in my absence.  He also opened a gold office adjoining my tent and did very well.  Here he perfected a plan of his own for weighing specimens containing quartz and gold, in water, so as to find the quantity of each component.  But he was ever pining for the bush.  The “busy haunts of men” had no attraction for him.  He preferred the society of a few to that of many, but the study of nature was his passion.  His love was fixed on animals, plants, and the starry firmament.  With regard to medicine, he used to say that it was not clear and defined in practice.  He wanted to measure the scope of a disease, and to supply the remedies by mathematical rule.  He saw, too, that medical men were less valued for their real worth than for their tact in winning confidence through the credulity of the public.  This was particularly exemplified in a gold-field, where the greatest impostors obtained credit for a time.  His thoughts and conversation also constantly reverted to the interior, and to the hope that he would one day undertake the journey to the Gulf of Carpentaria.  He was anxiously looking out for a movement in that direction, then often talked of.

About this period he made a pedestrian excursion to the Wannon, to sojourn for a short time with a Mr. Skene, a most worthy gentleman, now no more.  He was actively employed at that place, and wrote to me frequently, describing the family, to which he was much attached, the whimsicalities of his landlord—­a thorough old Scotian, who amused himself by waking the echoes of the wilderness with the bagpipes,—­the noble fern trees and the fine black cockatoos.  He also continued his practice in surgery, but I believe he made no charge, as, not being duly licensed, he considered he had no right to do so.  He returned to Ballaarat in consequence of a communication through me, from an American gentleman named Catherwood.  On receipt of my letter he lost not an hour, shouldered his swag (blankets, kit, etc.), took leave of Mr. Skene and family, and walked to Ballaarat, sleeping one night in the bush, by the way.  On the 22nd of April, 1855, he wrote thus to his mother: 

My dear mother,

I had the pleasure of receiving a letter from you a fortnight since.  I was at Moora Moora then, as you will see by a letter I wrote just before I came down here, in the hope of joining a party that is spoken of as about to explore the interior of the country, which you appear to have such a dread of.  It seems uncertain whether they will go at all.  As to what you say about people being starved to death in the bush, no doubt it would be rather disagreeable.  But when you talk of being killed in battle, I am almost ashamed to read it.  If every one had such ideas we should have no one going to sea for fear of being drowned; no travellers by railway for fear the engine should burst; and all would live in the open air for fear of the houses falling in.  I wish you would read Coombe’s Constitution of Man.  As regards some remarks of yours on people’s religious opinions, it is a subject on which so many differ, that I am inclined to Pope’s conclusion who says:—­