A number of other poems by Kendall appeared in the same magazine
during 1860 and 1861. But in a letter written years afterwards
to Mr. Sheridan Moore, Kendall says "My first essay in writing was sent to
`The Southern Cross' at the time you were sub-editor. You, of course,
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.
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