NEW SOUTH WALES. 87 



with regular rains, and they nurse and produce a beauty unfamiliar to the 

 latitude. Take a few steps over the brow of the hill on the old road, and 

 look down. You see tropical verdure and bloom, palms rising a hundred 

 feet, and spreading feathery plumes upon lance-like stems ; myrtle and coral 

 trees, figs and lily-pillies, with a sheen upon their leaves like the light on a 

 summer sea ; bowers and arches and impenetrable jungles of great vines, 

 trailing tendrils fifty feet long, and swinging masses of perfumed bloom a 

 hundred feet from the ground. There is nothing of the old familiar Australian 

 bush about it. You are 1,200 feet above the sea, which stretches away to the 

 world's rim beneath and before you. Below, past all the wonderland of the 

 bush, is the white tower of Woolongong, and beyond that the fringe of white 

 beach and snowy breakers, the Fern Islands, set in sapphire. Far, far away 

 goes the coast land. 



' Between coast-line and mountains lies the fertile land, the strip of country 

 that serves and feeds the great city. The train comes here to be laden with the 

 rich produce — milk, butter, and cheese — which by tons upon tons is taken in 

 and distributed in Sydney every day. Out of the bowels of the mountains the 

 line brings also coal and iron and shale and other mineral products, and from 

 the dense forest pour down the little coast rivers. 



' Halting at Kiama first, it will render all the beauties of the Illawarra 

 district proper accessible, as all its rich products available ; but in a very few 

 years it must pass on across Shoalhaven and Begar, and over the rugged country 

 of the Victorian border beyond Eden and Boyd Town. 



'Our next finger, The Great West, is a mighty one in every sense, 574 

 miles in length, and crossing in that length a fair section of the whole colony, 

 and enclosing in the triangle of which it forms the northern side, with the 

 Southern and South-Western line and Murrumbidgee river opposite, and the 

 Darling for base, the wildest mountains, the richest agricultural acres, and the 

 broadest pastures of the colony. By Paramatta, Castle Hill, and Toongabbie, 

 the earliest agricultural settlements the colony knew, which, however, seem 

 rather to have reached senility than perfect development, the North-Western 

 line strikes out for the rampart of the famous Blue Mountains — now one of the 

 show-places of Australia. Very soon the traveller perceives the great barrier 

 stretched right across the plain. Behind the dark green trees of the middle 

 distance it looms as the wall of some forbidden land. And nearer the deep 

 blue river at its feet looks like a moat specially made for purposes of 

 defence. Long indeed was the barrier effective, before the strong right arm of 

 civilization put down the stone pillars and carried over the platform of the 

 railway-bridge across which the train thunders now, the great engines puffing 

 and snorting, their force conserved for the present, but ready to be expended 

 by-and-by in the charge up the mountain. 



1 The upward view from that bridge should never be missed. It is a long 

 glassy sheet of water, coming from the bold and densely timbered gate of the 



