Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/486



first week of December! And seeing that we are in the realm of Australia, in the district of Riverina, where the season has been wet, which is 'dry country' English for triumphantly prosperous, also that vegetable growth is at its acme, we regard our title as fully justified.

All plant-life is now profusely, riotously luxuriant. A drenching winter, following a wet autumn, preceded a late, showery spring; thus, and because of which, the pastures and cornfields, the orchards and gardens, are rich with verdure and promise to a degree unknown since the proverbial year of 1870.

Some few sultry days have we had, but the true Australian summer has not, so far, appeared in its lurid, wasting splendour. Hardly a ripening tinge is yet visible on the wide-waving prairies, the bespangled meadows, the shaded forest lawns. Wild flowers of every shape and hue—blue and scarlet, pink and orange, white and yellow, perfumed or scentless—glorify the landscape.

As we drive along, this balmy, breezy, sun-bright day, through the champaign, which lies anear and around an inland country town, let us (if haply it may tend to dispel some small portion of the ignorance of our British friends as to the 'bush of Australia') put on record the 'scenes and sounds of a far clime' in this season of the year.

The wheat crops, standing strong and level for leagues around, as high, generally, as the rail fence which protects them, have not as yet been assailed; but the reaper and binder has made many a foray into the hayfields. Here we notice one of the results of machinery. In the majority of instances the oats, though green of hue, are in sheaves and