V 



journey's ending 



The only wasted day of all my tour, twelve weeks 

 out and home, and, including minor desertions of 

 the main track, nearer twelve thousand miles than 

 ten, was spent at Hendersonville, a sun-baked 

 hamlet at which, to regain the high road to the 

 south, it was necessary to halt for several hours. 



I wish that village all prosperity. May it soon 

 be a city! May it call millionaires its sons ! But 

 also may it nevermore see me in its alleys ! I have 

 tramped amid the sin, sweat and sorrow of Cornish 

 exiles in the iron-roofed townships of tropical 

 Queensland, and have talked of blue bays in the 

 West country, where red-winged pilchard boats 

 glide out of tiny harbours in the last rays of the 

 sinking sun, until these Australian Cornishmen, 

 homesick at the recollection, have threatened to 

 brain me unless I held my peace. Yet, unless the 

 lapse of years has strangely softened the outlines of 

 the picture, I would rather die on the plains near 

 Mount Morgan than live at Hendersonville. It 

 may be that to its natives this unpretentious village 

 stands for all that is sweet and homely. Long may 

 they rejoice in its mysterious beauty. For me, the 

 place, unlovely had it even been the abode of 

 angels, was yet further discounted by the boorish 

 behaviour of the host of the Blue Ridge Inn, a 

 house admirably suited, no doubt, to the unsophisti- 



69 



