Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/446

 and paralysed by the first blast of the steam-whistle, arrive, weary and wayworn. At break of day they are beguiled into trucks, and within six-and-thirty hours have their first (and last) sight of the metropolis.

In the meantime herds of team-horses, bell-adorned, make ceaseless, not inharmonious jangling; sunburnt, bearded teamsters, drovers, shepherds, mingled with navvies, travellers, trim officials, tradesfolk, and the usual horde of camp-followers, male and female, give one the idea of an annual fair held upon the border of an ancient kingdom before civilisation had rubbed the edges from humanity's coinage, and obliterated so much that was characteristic in the process.

I stood on the spot an hour before daybreak on the following morn. Hushed and voiceless was the great industrial host. Around and afar stretched the waste, broadly open to the moonbeams, which softened the harsh outline of forest thicket and arid plain. The stars, that mysterious array of the greater and the lesser lights of heaven, burned in the cloudless azure—each planet flashing and scintillating, each tiny point of light 'a patine of pure gold.' The low croon of the wild-fowl, as they swam and splashed in the river-reach, was the only sound that caught the ear. Glimmering watch-fires illumined the scattered encampment. For the moment one felt regretful that the grandeur of Night and Silence should be invaded by the vulgar turmoil of the coming day.

One of the aids to picturesque effect, though not generally regarded as artistic treatment, is the clearing and formation of roads through a highland district. Such a region is occasionally reached by me, and never traversed without admiration. The ways are surrounded by wooded hills, some of considerable altitude, on the sides and summits of which are high piled

But here the road-clearing, rarely supplemented by engineering disfigurement, produces the effect of a winding, thickly-grown avenue. On either side stand in close order the frenelas, casuarinas, and eucalypts of the forest primeval, with an occasional kurrajong or a red-foliaged, drought-slain callitris, 'like to a copper beech among the greens.' The floor