Letters from an Exile at Botany Bay

Embracing the opportunity of a returning vessel, I would waft you, from
this place, a second testimonial of my insuperable attachment and
remembance. My first letter per the Atlantic, I hope you have received
before; but should it be otherwise, after speaking to the present state
of my mind, I shall hastily recapitulate its principal contents.

In my saddest hours, and God knows there are many of them, I have
observed you are then most busy with my memory. Melancholy's sombre
shadow louring over my soul, endears the fleeting moment by impelling me
to write to you. Indeed, it is solely owing to this despondent state of
mind, that ought I have produced for those last four years proceeds. When
this gloom frowns dreadful over the vista of my being, I but too much
indulge the dreary prospect--exploring the wide domain of adversity
terminated only by the impending darkness;--hence it is, that whatever
flows from my pen, or is laboured by my pencil, affects, in some degree,
the tone of mind that possess me at the period of its production.

Recurring now to my former letter:--it informed that I had wrote you from
Rio de Janeiro; that I had escaped at the Cape of Good-Hope, where I was
betrayed by the mercenary Dutch, and remanded to captivity; whence, after
seven months of imprisonment, the Royal Admiral E. Indiaman landed me
here; where the pur-blind jurisprudence of a Scottish tribunal,
doubtless, first intended me.

To lead you through the labyrinth of all my sufferings, from the 28th of
December, 1791, down to the present period, is a thing utterly
impossible; neither is it my duty to harrow up your feelings by the
attempt.--It better becomes me to soothe those sorrows that vague report
in the public prints has most likely excited, than to give an additional
stab to so valued a life --a life I have already, though innocently,
almost extinguished.

Yet not to pass over all too rapid; and to shew how dear you were to me
in my most prosperous state, take the subsequent specimen intended for
you, when I deemed myself a favored denizen of heaven--breathing a few
hours of inestimable liberty.