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2 
Railways ; Ten Years After. 43 
The trees swinging wave-like before the breeze conceal dangers untold beneath 
their heavy blanket-like branches, the existence of which are beyond contem- 
plation until one is brought to close grips with them. Here it is a swamp 
whose vicious treacherous mass stretches for mile after mile to all points of the 
compass, until it attains an area sufficiently large to absorb an English county. 
There it is a litter of jagged rock as if Nature had been at play with the moun- 
tains, and after pulverising their solid masses had tossed the debris promis- 
cuously on every hand. Covered with slippery, decaying vegetation their 
surfaces are as dangerous as orange peel on an asphalt pavement, and a slight 
slip may result easily in 2n ugly contusion or a badly broken limb. Could one 
survey the scene of solemn grandeur presented by the vegetation from a coign 
of vantage, nothing could be seen but a maze of fallen tree trunks, levelled 
by wind, water, and fire, piled up beneath the trees to a height of ten, fifteen, 
and twenty feet in an inextricable mass, and over which one has to make one’s 
way with infinite labour, menaced with danger to life and limb. The forest is 
trackless, save for narrow pathways, some of which are scarcely distinguishable, 
and all merely inches in width, wandering in apparent aimlessness, through 
the gloom to one knows not whither. Maybe they come to a dead stop on the 
brink of a gulch, at the bottom of which a broad river is tearing along fiend- 
ishly. The opposite bank is one’s objective, and there is no bridge to afford 
communication. In order to cross one must be dependent upon individual 
resource in contriving a flimsy vehicle, and even when afloat one must possess 
considerable presence of mind and skill in battling with the fierce current, 
sunken jagged rocks, snaggs, timber jams, sandbars, roaring rapids and whirl- 
pools. Qne carries his life in his hands the whole time, certain in the knowledge 
that at any moment he may be called upon to battle for his life when his bark 
comes to grief and disappears far beneath his feet. One cannot wander far 
from the trail beaten down by the moccasined feet of the Indian without 
having to fight his way foot by foot with the axe, for the bush stands up 
impregnable, and bristling with snags. Advance must he made warily to 
avoid sudden immersion in a swamp, while if astride a pack-horse he must be 
ever on the alert to spring clear the moment one’s mount gets into difficultier. 
In summer the ground is well-nigh impassable, for it is as soft and treacherous 
as quicksand. Advance is reckoned in yards per hour. In winter, when the ooze 
has become hardened by the grip of frost, and snow has covered the whole 
with a thick pall, progress is easier and more rapid. But winter brings fresh 
dangers peculiarly its own. There is the blinding blizzard, the relentless 
drift, the slush which superficis lly appears sufficiently strong to withstand one’s 
weight, but collapses beneath one’s foot and leaves one floundering waist-high 
in a freezing slough. Then there is the cold—the pitiless low temperature 
which penetrates the thickest clothing, for when the thermometer is hovering 
about 35 degrees or more below zero, supreme ingenuity is required to keep the 
blood circulating through one’s veins, and to avoid that terrible enemy, frost- 
bite.” 
Such difficulties as are described by the writer pale before those en- 
countered by the Australians in the construction of the first transcontinental 
railway of the island continent. When completed it will be four thousand miles 
