Ah, well, we won't laugh at these two poor bears, with their sorrows before; they will be mightily changed in a year's time, or I am mistaken!

There is a group much more pleasant to contemplate. Two lanky, brownfaced, good-looking youths-the eldest about eighteen, and evidently brothers

-are standing side by side, alike in face, figure, and dress; one is an inch longer than the other, but it is impossible to tell them apart. They are not bad specimens of Australian youth before the flood (of gold); and, as being characteristic, I will take notice of them in lieu of giving you statistics about the returns per share of the railway; about which the less that is said the better. They are dressed in breeches and boots, in brilliant-patterned flannel shirts of the same pattern, in white coats of expensive material, with loosely-tied blue handkerchiefs round their necks, and cabbage-tree hats on their heads. Each one has in his hand a stock-whip, some fourteen feet long, and there lies at the feet of each a saddle and bridle. They stand side by side silent. They have that patient, stolid look, which arises from an utter absence of care, and from, let us say, not too much education. Look at the contrast they make to that lawyer, fuming up and down the platform, audibly cross-examining imaginary witnesses as to when the dawdling, jolter-headed idiots, are going to start this lumbering train of theirs. Would all the gold in Ballarat induce him to stand as quiet and unheeding as those two lads have done for half an hour? He could not do it. But our two brothers, they are in no hurry, bless you. They ain't hungry or thirsty, or too hot or too cold, or tired with standing; they have plenty of money, and an easy round of duties, easily performed. They would as soon be there as elsewhere. They have never-oh, my pale friends, who are going into the schools next term to try for a first-they have never tasted of the tree of knowledge. Think and say, would you change with them?

to us; so we beckon them to come into our carriage. After a quick flash of recognition from the four blue eyes, guard is beckoned up to open the door. The saddles are taken up, and the two brothers prepare to enter. Guard objects that the saddles must go in the luggage-van. Guard's suggestion is received with lofty scorn. Elder brother demands of guard whether he (guard) thinks him such a fool as to shy a thirteen-guinea saddle into the luggage-van, and have everybody else's luggage piled atop of it. Younger brother suggests that they shall go in the luggage-van themselves, and take care of their saddlery. Guard submits that the saddles will annoy the other passengers. His honour, the judge, without raising his eyes from the foolscap sheet he is reading at the other end of the carriage, says, in a throaty voice, as if he was summing up, that if the young gentlemen don't bring their saddles in he shall leave the carriage. So the valuable property is stowed away somehow, and we are once more locked up.

All this waiting about is altered now. Then there was but one line of rails, and an accident every day; now the trains run, I understand, with wonderful punctuality. At this time we waited nearly an hour altogether; but, being men of contented disposition, did not get very much bored. The lawyer aforementioned was enough to amuse one for a time. This leading counsel and M.L.C. grew more impatient as the time went on, and at last, having drawn the station-master out of his private office as a terrier draws a badger, he so bullied and aggravated that peaceable man that he retired into his house in high wrath, sending this Parthian arrow at the lawyer: "If I thought there were half-a-dozen such aggravating chaps as you in the train, I'd start "her immediately, and have you all "smashed to punk ashes against the "goods before you'd gone ten miles."

66

A train comes sliding in alongside of us, and then off we go. Past the battery and the lighthouse, away on to the

"The plain is grassy, wild and bare, Wide and wild, and open to the air."

On every side a wide stretch of grey grass, with here and there a belt of dark timber, seen miles off, making capes and islands in the sea of herbage. A piece of country quite unlike anything one can see in England. Here and there is a lonely station, apparently built for the accommodation of the one public-house which stands about one hundred yards off, the only house in sight. Here two farmers get out (one of whom has lost his luggage), and two get in (one of whom is drunk, through having waited too long at the public-house for the train). Here also the station-master holds a conversation with the guard on the most personal and private matters, every word of which is perfectly audible to the whole train, and highly interesting. And then on we go again.

A pretty blue peaked mountain right before us; the mountain grows bigger and bigger, and at length, racing along under its hanging woods and granite crags, we find that the long-drawn bay on our left is narrowing up, and that the end of our journey is near.

Then

we see a great town (thirty thousand inhabitants) built of wood, painted white, of red brick and grey stone, with one or two spires, and a great iron clock-tower. Then the train stops; we have come thirty miles, and we are in Geelong.

There

There was no time then to notice what we had been enabled to notice on former occasions-that the Geelong terminus was a handsome and commodious building, in a suburb of the second city in Victoria, in the port of Great Ballarat; no time for that now. stands before the gateway of the station a coach like a cricket-drag, with an awning of black leather, and curtains of the same. It holds about ten people, is drawn by four splendid horses, and is driven by a very large, very freshcoloured, and very handsome Yankee, who is now standing up on his box, and roaring in a voice half sulky, half frantic, "Now then here, now then, all aboard for

tumble on board as fast as we can, and find that our driver is inclined to attribute the lateness of the train to a morbid wish on the part of his passengers to make themselves disagreeable to their driver. This very much embittered the relations between the ten passengers on the one hand, and the driver on the other. The latter, indeed, was the most conceited and sulky I ever met among his very sulky and conceited class.

At length all was ready, the horses were standing immoveable, the driver settled himself firmly, and said—"Ho!"

With one mad bound the four horses sprang forward together, one of the leaders fairly standing on his hind legs. Three more fierce plunges, and the coach was fairly under weigh, and the four bays were cantering through the shabby suburbs of the town.

One remarks principally that the houses are of one storey, of wood and iron, and that the population don't comb their hair, and keep many goats, who have no visible means of subsistence. Now the streets get handsomer, and the shops exhibit more plate glass; now passing through a handsome street, with some fine stone houses, and seeing glimpses of the bright blue sea down lanes, we pull up suddenly in a handsome enough market square, with a singularly pretty clock-tower in the centre. There is a pause for a moment at the post-office; and then, before we have time to think of where we are, we are up the street, up the hill, on to the breezy down, with a long black road stretching indefinitely before us.

There is a noble view beneath us now. As we look back, a circular bay, intensely blue, with a shore of white sand; a white town, pretty enough at this distance; two piers with shipping, and a peaked mountain rising from the sea on the left-as like, I suspect, to Naples and Vesuvius as two peas. The myrtle-like shrubs which fringe the shore, and the trim white villas peeping out from among them, carry out the idea amazingly, until the eye catches a tall red chimney-stack or two, and watches a

line miles away, and then we know that we are not, indeed, looking at a scene of Italian laziness, but on a good, honest, thriving, busy English town.

Now the whole scene has dipped down below the hill, and we are looking inland over some wooded hills, with a noble, vast stretch of corn-land, dairyfarm, and vineyards on the left. The road goes straight as a line, apparently without a break; and we think it looks level enough until we come to a grand precipitous ravine, about five hundred feet deep, and at the bottom a little river, fringed with green trees, and a pretty village, with a public-house or two, and a blacksmith's shop.

We travelled fast, and were soon up the hill, through the wood, and away over the plains again-long weary yellow stretches of grass, bounded by dull she-oak woods, with one shabby inn by the roadside, visible for miles-the external prospect being so dull that we turned to look at our fellow passengers. There were six in our compartment; let us see what they were like. A tolerably cosmopolitan collection, upon my word. My vis-à-vis was a Chinaman, with a round, smooth, beardless face, displaying no trace of human emotion or intelligence-not unlike a cocoa-nut from which the hair has been removed. He was dressed in the height of European dandyism, save that he wore over all a tunic of sky-blue watered silk. He goggled his eyes, and looked at nothing.

He

He did not look out of the window, or at me, or at the bottom of the carriage-he looked nowhere. He had just come back from some villanous expedition in town, and I have no doubt had a cool hundred or two stowed about him for travelling expenses. Next to him sat a big-chested, black-haired, handsome man, whom we knew. was a French baker on a large scale; and his mission seemed to be to make himself agreeable-which he did, setting us all talking to one another, save the surly driver and the Chinaman. He tried his hand on coachman too; but, only getting an oath for his pains, he desisted, with a shrug; after which, he

and his neighbour the Irishman kept us alive for a mile or two by various antics, while a Scotchman looked on approvingly, and took snuff, and a German smoked and dozed.

Such were our companions. As for the scenery we were passing through, or the road we were travelling on, the less that is said of either the better. It is hard for an Englishman to imagine a forest which is in every respect dreary and hideous; yet such is the case with the stunted belt of honeysuckle forest which generally makes its appearance between the sea and the mountains, which must be crossed before one gets into the beautiful glades and valleys among the quartz ranges. Travellers are very apt to condemn Australian woods wholesale, by their first impressions of them from the dreary she-oaks and honeysuckles near the coast-forgetting that afterwards, they saw a little farther in the interior forests more majestic, ay, and more beautiful in their way, though thin in foliage, than it will be easy to find in more than a few places in England. But whoever says that a honeysuckle forest is beautiful deserves to live in one for the rest of his life. It consists of mile beyond mile of miserable clay-land, far too rotten and uneven to walk over with comfort. Its only herbage is sparse worthless tussock-grass; its only timber very like unhappy old apple-trees after a gale of wind.

And the road through this aforesaid honeysuckle forest? Well, it is a remarkable provision of nature that the road (unless macadamised) is so unutterably bad that it quite takes off your attention from the scenery around you -one continual bump, thump, crash; crash, thump, bump. Every instant you are lifted off the seat four inches, and let down again (no cushions, mind you), as if you were playing at see-saw, and the other boy had slid off just when you were at your highest. Your head is shaken till you fear fracture of the base of the skull. The creak, jump, jolt of the vehicle begins to form itself into a tune from its monotony (say the Bay of

Biscay or Old Robin Grey), until some more agonising crash than usual makes you wickedly hope for an upset, that you may get a quiet walk in peace for a mile or two.

No such luck; the driver goes headlong forward, with whip, and voice-a man of one idea—to do it as quickly as possible. "Jerry, Jerry, jo; snap (from the whip). Jerry, hi. Snap, snap. Blank, blank, your blank, blank." This last to his horses. I cannot render it here. Then snap, snap again. A dead fix, and we dream foolishly of getting out and walking. Nnio. He is only gathering his horses together for a rush. Then the original Ho! and we are all right again, going along at full gallop.

The horrible discomfort of our present mode of transit would render it totally impossible for any one who had not been this road before to make any observations, whether general or particular, on the immense amount and variety of traffic which we are meeting and overtaking. We, however, who have in times heretofore, jogged leisurely along the road on horseback-we, I say, can give some sort of idea of what this hideous phantasmagoria of men, horses, drays, women, and children, which, to us, in our headlong course, appear to be tumbling head over heels and making faces at us, would appear to some happier traveller who has not bartered comfort, safety, and money for mere speed.

In one place a string of empty drays passes us going towards the town, each drawn by two horses, very similar in breed and make to inferior English hunters (for your heavy dray-horse, your Barclay and Perkins, would soon bog himself in these heavy roads). Then, again, we overtake a long caravan of loaded horse-drays toiling wearily up country with loads of all conceivable sorts of merchandise; and immediately afterwards, a caravan of bullock-drays, each drawn by eight oxen apiece, going the same way with ourselves, yet empty. How is this? say you, why thus. These bullock-drays belong to the settlers, and

ment, and are returning. As I speak, we meet a wool-dray, piled to a dangerous height with the wool-bales, and threatening each instant to topple over, which threat it religiously fulfils about every fifty miles.

Now we overtake a long file of Chinamen, just landed, all in their native dress, dusky-looking blue smocks, loose drawers of the same, and hats like Indian pagodas. They are carrying their worldly goods over their shoulders, on bamboos, as in the willow-pattern plate; and as they pass, to my astonishment, my goggle-eyed Chinese vis-à-vis wakes up, puts his head out of where the window should be, and makes a noise like a door with rusty hinges, but ten times as loud. He is replied to by the head man of the travelling Chinamen in a sound as though one were playing a hurdy-gurdy under the bed-clothes. Our Chinaman draws his head back, and looks round upon his fellow-travellers with the air of one who has said something rather clever, he believes; and before I have time to ask him, angrily, what the deuce he means by making that noise before a gentleman, I see something which puts Chinamen, out of my head altogether.

A dray is upset by the roadside, evidently the dray of a newly-arrived emigrant, and all the poor little household gods are scattered about in the dirt. Poor old granny is sitting by the roadside, looking scared and wringing her hands, while the young mother is engaged half in watching her husband among the struggling horses, and half in trying to soothe the baby by her breast. She has had a sad cut, poor soul, I can see by her crumpled bonnet ; and she looks pale and wild, but brave withal. A girl about fourteen is nursing and quieting a child of six, while a boy of ten helps his father. There is the bonnet-box, crushed flat by the hair trunk. Alas! for the poor Sunday bonnet inside, brought with such proud care so many miles, the last memento of happy summer church-goings in England. Poor bonnet! becoming poetical only in thy destruction! There, too, the

open, and "The Iarmer of Englewood Forest" and "Fatherless Fanny" are in the mud with their old friend and companion, the fiddle. God speed you, my poor friends; be brave and careful, and the worst will soon be over. A twelvemonth hence you shall be sitting by the fireside laughing at all these mishaps and annoyances, bitter as they are now. If this purgatory of jolting continues much longer, a crisis must supervene― death, probably, or insanity. Two or three thousand years ago, as near as I can compute, there was a short cessation of it—a dream, as of being taken into an inn and having a dinner, and seeing the Chinaman eat with his knife and his fingers, dismissing his fork from office without pension; but since then things have been worse than ever; and now a change is coming over me. I must be going mad. That Chinaman's head is no more fixed on his shoulders than King Charles the First's. He has got a joint in his neck like those nodding papier maché mandarins we used to have at home. How I should like to knock his head off, only I am so sleepy. Ah! that is it; before I have time to think about it, I am asleep.

I woke whenever we changed horses at a country township, and saw the same sight everywhere,-two or three large wooden hotels, with a few travellers loitering about in the verandahs, unwilling to shoulder their heavy bundles and proceed. A drunken man dragged out and lying prone by the door, with his patient dog waiting till he should arouse himself and come home. The blacksmith's shop, with its lot of gossiping idlers. The store, or village shop, with the proprietor at his door, with his hands in his pockets; half-a-dozen houses around, little wooden farmhouses like toys, standing just inside the threerailed fence, which inclosed the 80, 160, or 640 acre lots belonging to them; and around and beyond all the forest, now composed of Eucalypti (box and stringy bark here), and infinitely more beautiful than the miserable Banksia forest on which we poured the vials of our wrath.

But at a place called Burat-bridge, I woke up for good; for in that place the plank road begins, and from that place the troubles of the traveller into Ballarat end. The road is of wooden planks, laid crosswise, and the coach runs as on a railway. This is an American invention. Let me do the Americans full justice. In spite of the bad and "wooden nutmeg" quality of ninetenths of their importations, they have taught the Victorians one invaluable lesson-how to travel with speed over rough bush roads. Their double-ended Collins' picks, too, are more useful and handy than any imported from home.

We dash on through the darkening glades of a beautiful forest, the topmost boughs overhead growing more and more golden under the slanting rays of the sinking sun. As the tallest feathery bough begins to lose the light, and the magpie, most glorious of song-birds, croons out his vespers, I lean out of the coach to feast my eyes on a sight which, though so often seen, has never palled upon meone of the most beautiful mountains in the world, Mount Buninyong. It is the extreme southern lip of a great volcanic crater, which runs up suddenly near a thousand feet above the road, covered from the dark base to where the topmost trees stand, feathering up against the crimson west, with some of the largest timber in the world. Northwards, and towards Ballarat, the lava has burst down the rim of the cup on all sides, pouring in bands from forty to sixty feet thick over the gold-beds, to the everlasting confusion of miners; but at the south end it stands up still as abrupt and lofty as it did when all the fertile country was a fiery desert-when the internal fires were vitrifying every seam in the slate-rock, and sublimating its vapour into gold.

Buninyong. Three large hotels, and a blacksmith's shop. A stoppage. A drunken man, who is anxious to fight any man in the coach for half-a-crown. The return gold escort from Geelong ; ten troopers, in scarlet shirts, white breeches, and helmets; two carts, driven tandem, and an officer in a blue cloak,