310 By Stream and Sea. 



to hasty conclusions. The scenery, if not grand, is pretty ; 

 if there are no forests there are patches of picturesque wood- 

 land and shadings of grassy dell. Ant-hills, neatly fashioned 

 as obelisks reared by human hands, rise ruddy-brown on the 

 hill sides. On the shore line, strips of clean, hard yellow 

 sand alternate with dark rocks, honeycombed by the wear 

 and tear of time. 



Somerset, the first Australian port of call, comes upon you 

 suddenly from behind a point on Albany Island. By the 

 time these lines are reproduced in England, Somerset will, 

 in all probability, be disestablished and disendowed, for 

 Thursday Island passage, a little to the north, has been for 

 various reasons preferred before it as a Government depot 

 and a port of call for the mail steamers. Somerset, though 

 to our eyes the cove is extremely pretty, and the sight of 

 houses amongst trees welcome, is said to be a dreary place 

 at the best — sterile, deserted, exposed. The pearl fishermen 

 call there for stores, and they are a rude race. I believe 

 there are not a dozen houses in the whole township, and the 

 inhabitants are sometimes on absolutely short commons in 

 the matter of food. On the day of our arrival a great event 

 had happened — a boy had shot a wallaby and brought it in 

 for a feast. The day previously a carpet snake twelve feet 

 long had been destroyed near one of the verandahs. The 

 aborigines in the bush are, as they always have been in this 

 part of the colony, a constant source of trouble and an occa- 

 sional source of danger. On the whole, therefore, you may 

 find better places of residence than this Somerset : but it was 

 not without interest to me, who had read De Beauvoir's 

 book, and been informed how that clever Frenchman had 

 been treated very hospitably at the place, and had partaken 

 very freely of a collation of marvellous stories dished up out 

 of sheer devilry by some of the people with whom he had 



