TO ADELAIDE BY TRAIN 35 



And of all the sights that charmed my eyes as they gazed 

 from the train windows, there was nothing more delightful 

 than the flowers. All along the line they grew in masses and 

 patches and straggling lines. Between the rail and the road, 

 spring, undisturbed, had laid a carpet of many colours, so 

 bright and varied that the traveller longed to descend and fill 

 her hands with their beauties. From end to end of the 

 country the prevailing colour was yellow, for during October 

 Australia is indeed a field of cloth of gold. In the southern 

 part of our own State the early sun shone upon the soft 

 evening primroses, not yet closed before the heat of day, and 

 buttercups dotted the grass all along the way ; but, from Albury 

 to Melbourne the green fields were changed to golden carpets 

 by the bright, round faces of the Cape weed. Oblivious to the 

 cold welcome it receives, and heedless of the fact that it is a 

 " pest," this black-eyed daisy spreads itself for miles and miles 

 over the paddocks, and in one place has even changed a grassy 

 hill into a golden mountain. Within the railway boundaries 

 many of the native plants grow untrammelled, as yet, by this 

 alien, and here again yellow was the dominant tone. Clumps 

 of bluebells waved dainty heads, a delicate white blossom 

 sent little spikes up from the grass, but the majority of the 

 flowers were the sun's hue, gold and gleaming. Mile after 

 mile the ground was covered by a plant with a yellow spike 

 of blossoms, which a bronzed countryman told me, rather 

 shyly, was called " yellow posies." 



