Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/90

 also managed, by means of a few alterations, to make a pretty little sitting-room out of the chamber next the kitchen, though its brick floor was always a nuisance, as it cut our Indian matting to pieces almost as fast as it was laid down.

As the rooms all faced east and west, we were exposed to the full blaze of the afternoon sun, as soon as it was low enough for its beams to pass under the verandah, which was at about three o'clock. Blinds were therefore articles of immediate necessity, and I resolved to lose no time in going to one of the stores to procure them. The stores lay on the side of the river which was opposite to us; but during the dry season we were under no necessity of crossing the bridge. Our nearest way at that time of year was over the bed of the Avon, which even when dry has its own peculiar beauties, though they differ from those of river scenery at home. There are nooks shaded by the paper bark, and wide grassy spots, with permanent water holes intervening, around which the cattle love to congregate during the mid-day heat. Some of the pools are mere duck-ponds; others are fine stretches of water, half a mile in length and very deep, and these are generally contained between steep banks covered with brushwood and topped by high trees, which cast the reflections of their long arms over the smooth placid water beneath. Again perhaps the river bed will widen, and its banks will become lower, and you may come to large sandy tracts which, a few months before, were covered by the winter floods, but are now so dry and bare that cricketers select them as convenient spots for the purpose of playing out a match.