NEW SOUTH WALES. 95 



leaf and trees were all abloom and the quandongs were heavily fruited, and 

 the nardoo with its life-saving seed ripened and decayed unheeded. Often 

 at eventide in that winter did the whole landscape seem pure and perfect as 

 a single crystal, the sky just after sunset of the palest primrose or the 

 colour of the neck of a wheat-stalk when the ear is just ripe ; the flood 

 water through the lignum bushes glassy still ; not a leaf of any tree stirring 

 nor a grass-blade or herb-bloom moving upon all the plain. From the mul- 

 titudinous flowers of the sand-ridge comes a rare sweet fragrance mingling 

 with the balsamic odour of the pines. There would be noise and tumult a 

 little later, as the crested galahs came cackling homeward to rest, and then 

 the long and solemn hush of night, with sound enough and yet no lack of 

 peace. The whistle of the wild duck's wing and sharp blow of her descent 

 on the water, the dull thunder of the wings of great birds — pelicans, native 

 companions, swan, ibis, and crane — rising in hurried flight, scared by some 

 movement of 'possum or night-feeding kangaroo. Always the tinkle of the 

 horse-bell and the prattle of the flame-tongues within the little circle of 

 heat and light. Beauty enough in the inner lands in such a year, a mar- 

 vellous contrast to the ghostliness, the abomination of desolation, of the year 

 when no rain falls and all life dies. 



The northern table-land is intersected by the Great Northern Railway, 

 and is bounded by the Pacific Ocean, the Macpherson range, the Dumaresque 

 and Darling rivers, and the Great Western line. The third division of the 

 colony contains upwards of 100,000 square miles of country, of mountain and 

 plain and wild forest and fertile down, and infinite variety of scenery. Near 

 to the coast, and south and west from the line leaving Newcastle for the 

 north, such country as we have seen about Orange and Albany, but with the 

 green in foliage and verdure which comes from a somewhat warmer and more 

 genial climate. Farther inland there are more of the great pastures, and in 

 the extreme north a prosperous agriculture and a beginning of tropical industry, 

 which afford a pleasant contrast to all that we have seen before. We shall 

 not linger long here to look upon any New England villages or prosperous 

 towns. We shall not concern ourselves with the marvellous richness of the 

 Breeza plains — where in the wet summers grass grows so tall that horses and 

 bullocks are lost ; and stockmen tell of patches where they have had the long 

 seed-stalks above their heads, and they on horseback — but visit the north- 

 eastern corner of the colony, where the three sugar rivers come down from 

 the mountains. 



All their surroundings are tropical and rich, and never so rich perhaps 

 as in the heart of the country lying about the heads of the Richmond, and 

 northward towards the Tweed River. There we find the vegetation whose 

 density and glory and magnificence must be seen to be realised. It is the 

 country known as the Big Scrub, where everything is gigantic, compared with 

 ordinary Australian vegetation. The river flows deep and navigable for small 



