Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/205

176 point to the effect of the climate upon certain states of health or disease in proof of its virtues.

The fearlessness with which people can remain out of doors at night and can continue their day's labour in spite of the sun, are the two points which most excite the wonder of a stranger. Khourabene's "old master" told me that he once drove his team for many miles upon a day that the sun-heat stood at 145° Fahrenheit. "I started," he said, "in the morning with four bay horses, but as the day went on, they became so covered with foam that I seemed to be driving white ones." On the other hand Binnahan in using the expression "glass frost," showed plainly that she knew ice by sight, and early risers in the winter would find the puddles frozen, though in the course of five years we never knew more than one occasion when the ground continued hard in shady places throughout the day. That one exception occurred during the extremely dry winter of 1865, when the frosts were more severe than had been known for fifteen or twenty years, and an old colonist, who perhaps forgot that her increasing age made her more susceptible of cold, informed me in an oracular manner that "the seasons were changing," and that she "should not be surprised if we was to have a fall of snow." But, unfortunately for her reputation as a weather-wise woman, no snowstorm came to give her the satisfaction of saying that she had expected it.

Perhaps I may be allowed, though at the risk of some repetition, to close my own description of the West Australian climate with that of Bishop Salvado, than whom no one, not excepting even the aborigines, is better