54 
HERBERTON 
CHAP. 
one long room. Joe sat at the head of the table, the 
cloth of which bore traces of many meals ; the other 
convives were a miscellaneous collection— diggers in 
their shirt - sleeves, mothers with their babies, etc. 
There was a furious click of knives and forks, resolutely 
bent on making up for lost time, and scrimmaging 
their best |for the unsavoury -looking compounds on 
the table. I was very hungry, but I could not stand 
these “ fag ends ” ; and the pangs of hunger were only 
a secondary consideration to those of my bed. The 
house was so full that I could not get a room to my- 
self ; but at last they consented to make me up a bed 
on an upstairs verandah. Here I fought until day- 
light with mosquitoes, and, finally, submitting myself 
to circumstances, hailed dawn with inexpressible 
relief* 
By five o’clock we were well on our way again : it 
was a most uninteresting drive ; here and there we 
passed through a shady bit of jungle, but the rest of 
the journey lay through dry and stunted gum-trees. 
We passed many piled-up stacks of magnificent cedar 
logs which have been lying there for some years, waiting 
for the railway to be finished. The road for the last 
few miles before reaching Herberton was a great pull 
for the horses, and the heat was almost unbearable ; 
indeed, even on the verandah of the hotel, I had to sit 
with an umbrella up, for there was no protection from 
the sun under the corrugated iron roof. 
I went off at once to the Post Office where I 
had ordered my letters to be sent, but some one (they 
did not know who) had called for them the day before, 
and taken them away. Then I felt furious, and told 
them that they had no right to have given them up with- 
out an order from me ; the man only smiled, and was so 
profuse in his apologies that I couldn’t say anything 
