er and prosperity.

Empire builders to-day may well envy those whose lot it was to be the
first in that vast southern field.

They were a gallant little band who, in early days, carried the
mother-flag from New South Wales to lands and islands yet more distant,
discovering the shores, planting the first settlements and moulding them
into shape--men who worked with such untiring energy that succeeding
generations found a city, where lately had stood a few miserable huts,
and a flourishing seaport surrounding a once silent cove.

Looking back across one hundred and twenty years of time, we can picture
the empty spaces on the sea-shore, which are now towns, and the
monotonous wildernesses of bushland, which have been replaced by smiling
landscapes; and we can realise the enormous difficulties that had to be
overcome before houses could be built, or the bushland cleared and
cultivated.

One of the first letters (perhaps the very first from a woman's pen to be
handed down to us) written from Sydney, in November 1788, thus describes
the Mother-settlement at the beginning.

"We have now two streets, if four rows of the most miserable huts you can
possibly conceive deserve that name. Windows they have none as from the
Governor's house (now nearly finished) no glass could be spared, so that
lattices of twigs are made by our people to supply their places. At the
extremity of the lines where since our arrival the dead are buried there
is a place called the churchyard..." and then, telling of the only food
obtainable there, in addition to the hard fare provided by the
Government, the writer continues, "Our kangaroo cats are like mutton but
much leaner and there is a kind of chickweed so much in taste like
spinach that no difference can be discerned. Something like ground ivy is
used for tea but a scarcity of salt and sugar makes our best meals
insipid...Everyone is so taken up with their own misfortunes that they
have no pity to bestow on others."* (* To-day Sydney is the seventh city
of the Empire.) What was written of Sydney may be said to have been true
of all the settlements. Everywhere hardships were encountered, and
everywhere they were surmounted.

The Lady Nelson's log will show how in 1806 she paid a second and perhaps
a more important visit to New Zealand. Her commander was instructed by
Governor King to convey Tippahee, a New Zealand Chief of the Bay of
Islands on the north-east coast, back from Sydney to his own d