IV 
A MEMORABLE JOURNEY 
45 
to catch the train at Cairns. As we drove off, I felt 
a genuine regret at having to say good-bye to such 
kind friends, and to so much that was novel and 
beautiful, but I began to feel that I would never come 
to my journey’s end if I loitered longer on the way. 
This is a typical Australian Bush hotel, at the head 
of the Barron Falls, and I wished twenty times to-day 
that you had been with me to enjoy the magnificent 
scenery along the railway line. 
I have now travelled on the engine, on a navvy’s 
trolly, on a railway bicycle, and lastly on the cowcatcher 
of an express engine, so that I have had every loco- 
motive sensation obtainable. You will say, “And how 
did you like this latter mode of progression ? ” And I 
will promptly reply that I wouldn’t have missed it as 
a novel experience, but have no wish to try it again. 
Such a quick flight through mid-air in this position, 
holding on like grim death with heels and hands, brings 
rather too great a sense of exultation, your heart seems 
to fill your throat, your blood tears through your veins, 
and the speed through the air sounds in your ears like 
the whizz of a hundred spinning-wheels, while every- 
thing beside you runs into a watered ribbon of jumbled 
colours, and it is with a feeling of relief that the 
mountain bridges and sharp corners are turned, and the 
engine slackens speed on the level ground as she hisses 
into the station terminus. 
The line by which I travelled has only been opened 
for four months, and it is by far the most beautiful, 
they say, in Australia. Besides being a good specimen 
of engineering skill in mountain railroad making, the 
beauty of each fresh turn becomes more and more im- 
pressive as it mounts the higher. In many places the 
train seems almost to hang over the precipices 600 and 
900 feet deep, while still towering above are masses of 
