re,
or according to their trade or particular qualifications: thus:

Burnett was the son of a respectable house-carpenter on the banks of the
Tweed, where he had been too fond of shooting game, his only cause of
trouble.

Whiting, a Londoner, had been a soldier in the Guards.

Woods had been found useful in the department as a surveyor's man; in
which capacity he first came under my notice, after he had been long
employed as a boatman in the survey of the coast, and having become, in
consequence, ill from scurvy, he made application to me to be employed on
shore. The justness of his request, and the services he had performed,
prepossessed me in his favour, and I never afterwards had occasion to
change my good opinion of him.

John Palmer was a sailmaker as well as a sailor, and both he and Jones
had been on board a man-of-war, and were very handy fellows.

Worthington was a strong youth, recently arrived from Nottingham. He was
nicknamed by his comrades Five-o'clock, from his having, on the outset of
the journey, disturbed them by insisting that the hour was five o'clock
soon after midnight, from his eagerness to be ready in time in the
morning.

I never saw Souter's diploma, but his experience and skill in surgery
were sufficient to satisfy us, and to acquire for him from the men the
appellation of The Doctor.

Robert Muirhead had been a soldier in India, and banished, for some
mutiny, to New South Wales; where his steady conduct had obtained for him
an excellent character.

Delaney and Foreham were experienced men in driving cattle.

Joseph Jones, originally a London groom, I had always found intelligent
and trustworthy.

Bombelli could shoe horses, and was afterwards transferred to my service
by Mr. Sempill in lieu of a very turbulent character, whom I left behind,
and who declared it to be his firm determination to be hanged.

Cussack had been a bog surveyor in Ireland; he was an honest creature,
but had got somehow implicated in a charge of administering unlawful
oaths.

Brown had been a soldier, and subsequently was assistant coachman to the
Marquis of ----.

Dawkins was an old tar, in whom Mr. White, himself formerly an officer in
the Indian navy, placed much confidence.

EQUIPMENT.

Thus it had been my study, in organising this party, to combine proved
men of both services with some neat-handed mechanics, as engineers, and
it now formed a respectable body of men, for the purpose for which it