i 9 8 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



tens of thousands who pass by enough will want something for Sunday reading to clear 

 out his stock and send him home provided for. The representatives of the fever of 

 competition are to be found in the newsboys, who, barefooted and often bare-headed, 

 dart at every chance of a likely customer, tilling- up the intervals of actual business with 

 shrill cries and eager appeals, and disposing of thousands of copies of the latest issues 

 of the evening press. 



And over all resound the city chimes. Eight o'clock, and the crowd is beginning 

 to gather ; nine, and it is thickening fast ; ten, it is thinning ; eleven, it is hurrying 

 homeward. At this hour the slow and aimless step gives place to haste, for the theatres 

 are emptying, the hotel doors are closing by order of the law, the shop-windows are 

 darkening, and the life and desire of the city is dying out. By midnight George Street 

 is quiet. If the moon be clear the shadows of the great buildings lie across the silent 

 roadways, the policeman's footfall echoes on the pavement, and the only noise comes 

 from some midnight revellers, homeward-bound and trolling forth a chorused song. 

 Later on the silence is hardly broken at all. The policeman is seen passing from door 

 to door, trying if each is securely locked ; the gas burns faintly in some of the windows ; 

 while others are barred and brightly lighted. Down the cross streets that meet the 

 w r ater the wharf-lamps are reflected in the still depths, and the only sounds that disturb 

 the quiet is from some inward-bound vessel working slowly up to her moorings. 



PARKS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS. 



Sydney, with its suburbs, is gradually filling all the space between Port Jackson 

 and Botany Bay, but more by accident than design, there is a belt of unalienated land 

 part of which is already devoted to pleasure grounds running across in an almost 

 continuous line between the southern shore of the former and the north shore of the 

 latter, and this is mostly park ground. The beautiful Botanic Gardens touch the waters 

 of Farm Cove. On their southern side they are divided only by the breadth of a street 

 from Hyde Park, which stretches south as far as Liverpool Street. Here there is a 

 break in the continuity of pleasant green reserve, for the suburb of Surry Hills is 

 closely built, and unrelieved by any square too compact a mass of brick, mortar and 

 macadam for a city in this climate. But beyond this suburb begins the ample space of 

 Moore Park, and that adjoins the Centennial Park and the upper part of the old City 

 Water Reserve, and this, though partly private property, stretches down to the engine- 

 pond, which is separated by only a dam from the waters of Botany Bay. The reser- 

 vation of parks did not form a part of the plans of the early founders of the city. In 

 their days acres were many and people were few, and the administrators had pressing 

 troubles enough to exercise their minds without thinking of the wants of a densely- 

 populated city of the future. Had it occurred to any surveyor to lay out the plan of 

 a large city and intersperse the building areas with suitable reserves, the site would 

 have lent itself admirably to a design that could hardly have been surpassed. But the 

 city was left to grow without a plan, and the reserves as we now have them are happy 

 accidents. As it is. the area reserved from building is large, but it might have been 

 much better distributed, there being considerable blocks thickly built upon without any 

 suitable open spaces to refresh the eye and sweeten the air. 



