Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/222

 spacious plan of the newer capitals. We caught passing glimpses of fine buildings and open spaces, "Hyde Park," and Macquarie Street, the Harley Street of Sydney, where all the doctors live, advertising their whereabouts with immense brass plates on the railings of their houses.

Descending this broad street, we were on the famous Sydney Harbour, the most beautiful in the world, Valparaiso its only rival. One always thinks of a harbour as a round place full of shipping, with crowded, dirty wharfs. Sydney Harbour is quite different from this; it is a series of creeks running up into the land, its different arms separated by wooded hills, whose trees are rapidly disappearing in a tide of villas. Wherever you are in Sydney, you are never far away from some fresh aspect of the harbour.

Our car ran on to a steam-ferry, already crowded with cars and carts, climbed the bank on the other side, and passing a terrace of houses, like an old-fashioned London suburb, drew up at a garden gate. We never saw anything prettier in Australia than that garden. A sloping tree-shaded lawn, bordered by grey, close-clipped salt bush, led down to an old house, chocolate-coloured, two-storied, gabled. On the right of the path was a large tree, still bare of leaves, but covered with long, scarlet blossoms. It was the