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Wolfe's parents presently moved to Greenwich, where he was sent to school at Swinden's. Here he worked quietly enough till just before he entered on his 'teens. Then the long-pent rage of England suddenly burst in war with Spain. The people went wild when the British fleet took Porto Bello, a Spanish port in Central America. The news was cried through the streets all night.
A month afterwards Swinden started again from PERNATTY, and found available pastoral land north of the Gawler Ranges, which became known as Swinden's country. During this year, also, Messrs. Miller and Dutton explored the country at the back of Fowler's Bay. Forty miles to the north they saw treeless plains stretching far inland, but they found no permanent water.
The noise of battle seemed to be sounding all round Swinden's school, where most of the boys belonged to naval and military families. Ships were fitting out in English harbours. Soldiers were marching into every English camp. Crowds were singing and cheering. First one boy's father and then another's was under orders for the front.
About 1737 the family removed from Westerham to Greenwich, where the children at once began to attend Mr. Swinden's School. The episode described in the opening paragraph is about the only anecdote which has been preserved of their connection with that institution, and for it we are indebted, not to any life of Wolfe, but to an old history of Greenwich.
Wolfe and Jervis had both been at the same school at Greenwich, Swinden's, though at different times, and they were great friends. Wolfe had made up a sealed parcel of his notebook, his will, and the portrait of Katherine Lowther, and he now handed it over to Jervis for safe keeping.
We now meet with an old friend in the field, in the person of J. M'Dowall Stuart, formerly draughtsman for Captain Sturt, and one of the party who bought experience of heat, thirst, and desolation, during their long imprisonment in the depot glen. On the 14th May, 1858, Stuart left Oratunga for an excursion to the north-west of Swinden's country, west of Lake Torrens.
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