Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/69

 miles farther, and a doctor rode rapidly by, to attend upon a man who had been that morning crushed under a load of sandalwood. Our driver, having already picked up the news of the accident during a short stoppage that we made at Guildford, appeared much interested in the contents of a case which was slung round the doctor's neck, opining that "he has got his instruments."

The man of medicine was in the right to urge on his horse whilst he could do so with a safe conscience, for we, following in his track, soon found ourselves upon another sand plain, across which lay the long and disheartening perspective of our road, stretching in a perfectly straight line of some two or three miles, through every step of which the sand lay fetlock deep. Had the time of year been winter, our slow pace would have been fully compensated by the greater leisure afforded us for observing the exquisite flowers which at that season would have adorned these sandy tracts, though, irrespective of flowers, it must not be supposed that a sand plain in Western Australia invariably represents the bare and naked waste which the name implies to English ears. Many sand plains, it is true, look wild enough, with patches of low growing scrub, varied only with the gaunt stems of Xanthorrhoea, and a few weird shea-oaks destitute of leaves, between whose fine countless twigs, doing duty for foliage, the air sighs in passing with the sound as of a distant railway train, and mocks the sense of hearing in much the same manner as a mirage of water deceives the eye in the deserts of other lands. But on the plain that I am describing, our view, though no longer hemmed in with tall trees, was often much blocked with brushwood, amongst which prevailed