lit your pipe with it. It was on the subject of the `Dunbar'.
After a few more attempts in prose and verse -- attempts only remarkable
for their being clever imitations -- I hit upon the right vein and wrote
the Curlew Song. Then followed the crude, but sometimes happy verses
which made up my first volume."

The verses on the wreck of the `Dunbar', written at the age of sixteen,
were eventually printed in `The Empire' in 1860 as "The Merchant Ship".
Henry Parkes, the editor of that newspaper, had already welcomed
some of the boy's poems, and in `The Empire' of the 8th December, 1859,
had noticed as just published a song -- "Silent Tears" --
the words of which were written by "a young native poet, Mr. H. Kendall,
N.A.P." These initials, which puzzled Parkes, as well they might,
meant no more than Native Australian Poet.

Kendall also sent some poems to `The Sydney Morning Herald';
there they attracted the attention of Henry Halloran, a civil servant
and a voluminous amateur writer, who sought out the poet
and tried to help him.

Kendall's mother brought him to Mr. Sheridan Moore, who had some reputation
as a literary critic. He was greatly interested in the poems, and promised
to try to raise money for their publication. Subscriptions were invited
by advertisement in January, 1861, but came in so slowly that,
after a year's delay, Kendall almost despaired of publication.

Meanwhile Moore had introduced Kendall to James Lionel Michael,
through whom he came to know Nicol D. Stenhouse, Dr. Woolley, and others
of the small group of literary men in Sydney. Michael, a London solicitor,
had been a friend of some of the Pre-Raphaelite group of artists,