196 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



they are lazily self-possessed, independent in spirit, and careless of patronage typical of 

 a development in a new world and under progressive social conditions. 



Not more characteristic, but on a larger scale, is the Sydney crowd in George 

 Street on an ordinary Saturday night. Anyone who wishes to study the physiognomy, 

 the dress, the style and carriage of the people, may have his fill of opportunity here. 

 From the Haymarket to King Street is one continuous crowded promenade. Why so 

 many people turn out at this particular time to march in solemn procession it is hard 

 to say ; but men are gregarious and the creatures of custom, and all the world goes 

 where all the world goes. This is not the promenade for the wealthier classes : there 

 is nothing in Sydney approaching to the character of a fashionable Parisian boulevard; 

 George Street on a Saturday night gathers the metropolitan multitude. Of late years 

 several arcades have been made, running through from George Street to the streets 

 behind. These covered-ways are brilliantly illuminated at night, and thickly set with shops 

 on either side, but the main street is the chief promenade. A visitor coming in to the 

 city from the Railway Station for the first time might wonder what the commotion was 

 about ; but this is the normal condition of the street every Saturday night. It is a 

 stream of people a mile long, and very seldom indeed is it stirred boisterously or rudely 

 by any exhibition of passion or of blackguardism. 



Although the type is dominantly Australian, there is a visible mixture of various 

 nationalities. This is due partly to the variety always to be found in a great sea-port, 

 and partly to the attraction the colony has held out to immigrants from different 

 countries. One may recognize the physiognomy of the industrious German settlers, 

 French and Italian vignerons interested in the sale of their wines, and strangely-garbed 

 Asiatics who have strolled up from the ships lying alongside the Quay at the end of the 

 street. Tints of black and brown are seen together; dark Arab boys from Aden, ebon- 

 hued as the coals they handle, without a trace of lustre on their cheeks, clad in dingy 

 blue frocks,- red scarves and parti-coloured caps; shiny-brown fellows from Madras and 

 Bombay, many of them as handsome as Greeks, and gaily dressed in crimson and blue 

 and gold. They come to the street bazaar to do a stroke of trade, bringing bundles 

 of carved and polished sticks, trays of silver and filigree work, curiously-cut ivory, and 

 scarves and kerchiefs of the rich colours and intricate patterns peculiar to Eastern 

 looms. Passing them may be seen the yellow, flat-faced, slant-eyed Chinamen, who have 

 come in from their vegetable gardens, or up from their gambling-saloons and furniture- 

 shops, and who thread their way unobtrusively and submissively through the crowd ; 

 while deepest in colour, and perhaps lowest in type of all, is the black boy from North 

 Queensland, brought down by some squatter from an exploring or a droving trip, and sent 

 down town with an injunction " not to get bushed." Touched with all these points of 

 colour and darkness, ebbs and flows the main Caucasian current, not without peculiarities 

 and curiosities of its own, to some of which sad and strange histories are attached. 



The blind beggar stands with his medical certificate and scriptural text hanging on 

 his breast, indifferent apparently as a statue, and only moved to display some symptom 

 of life when a passer-by drops a penny in his box. The blind fiddler scrapes away at 

 tunes that seem to have forgotten their music ; and the attendant old woman, whose 

 shawl and bonnet look like relics of English work-house life, extends her saucer in which 



