V THE ROUGHEST ROAD IN AUSTRALIA 57 
gins carrying water, about the only thing they are 
good for. 
It is Sunday, and the day seems as if it would never 
come to an end, not a breath of cool air anywhere, not 
a book to read ; bottling up my self-imprisoned thoughts, 
I sat on the doorstep, I sat on the table, then under it, 
but still I could not get away from that fierce heat ; 
then I went back to the hotel and into a little hut next 
door, where I sat and fanned a child dying of fever ; 
there it was slightly cooler, and I had something besides 
my own worries to think of. Evening came at last, and 
I went for a walk with the housemaid from the hotel up 
to a hill overlooking the town. She gave me a most 
ghastly description of life in a mining town, and already 
I long for the night to be over, though the thought of 
that journey back hangs over me like a hideous night- 
mare. 
I have had many rough drives, but they all pale in 
comparison with that which brought me here ; the five 
horses had literally to climb up and down hills and 
rough tracks for miles after leaving Herberton (they 
say it is the roughest road in Australia), dragging 
that great heavy Cobbs's coach behind them. It needs 
to be strong, and so must, I suppose, be heavy ; here 
and there, where the track was unusually steep, and 
the coach going down literally had to drop from one 
boulder to another, all the passengers excepting myself 
got out. I b^ged leave to remain, not because I was 
not a coward, but because I preferred terror to that 
walk over the hot stones. 
In the gray dawn of the morning the temperature 
was just bearable, but as the day wore on the heat 
and dust became intolerable, and by ten A.M. we 
were only too glad to stop while they changed our 
horses, and get a quarter of an hour's rest and a cup of 
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