Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/208

 shore. This is Melbourne's pleasure-place, with hotels along the front.

Returning through the older part of Melbourne we saw the old road along which men went out to the diggings, with some of its original galvanised iron buildings still standing. We passed by the cemetery, where the first settlers were buried, closed long ago. As we returned into the everyday busy streets of the great city we met the newly formed Australian contingent of troops marching out to their camping-ground. There can be few people so invertebrate that they can watch levies on the march without a responsive thrill, even in time of peace, and these men were going to fight not for their homes and families and country, but were relinquishing all for their distant kindred in a life-and-death struggle miles away. This great unpeopled country, where men are so urgently needed, was gladly sending of its best to "the Old Country"—"home," as they tenderly call it, with a depth of sentiment incomprehensible here, and incomprehensible to anyone who does not know and feel his own patriotism awake and flourish on alien soil.

Our last visit was to the Tourist Bureau, which in general management and organisation is incomparably the best in Australia. Here we were