Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/119

 April 23rd.—This morning I accompanied Mr. White, before breakfast, through the village of Stroud, to see some of the horses and bulls belonging to the Company. I found that Stroud presented a different aspect to the colonial townships in other parts of New South Wales; there was quite an English look about it, exemplified in the neat little gardens belonging to the mechanics in the service of the Company, and the roses and honeysuckles which diffused a grateful perfume on their verandahs and door-ways.

There is a signal want in Australia, even among the higher classes, of that just appreciation of the beauties of nature, and that innate taste in taking advantage of them, to enhance the picturesque effect of their neatly-arranged dwelling-houses, which, according to Washington Irving, characterize the English nation, from the peer to the peasant. There are some places in New South Wales, few and far between, where considerable taste has been displayed in the arrangement of the grounds, but in general the ne plus ultra of colonial landscape gardening is a square patch of land, laid out in straight walks, and surrounded by hideous pailings, whilst no flowers, or even culinary vegetables, enliven the dwellings of the labouring classes, unless some stray melon or pumpkin sends its long shoots round their huts.

I saw here at Stroud, some Chilians from Valparaiso, who were employed in breaking in some