Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/24

4 has had the accustomedness of a home to us for all these weeks, shrinks to the aspect of a ship, of no more importance to us than a passenger train; and impatience seizes us to be off. There is the land, alluring in a glow of sunset barred with feathery clouds there's a shore breeze calling, let us go!

So much for the emotions of arrival. They are quickly submerged by occurrences which are no less stubborn in the poetic moments of reaching a new land, than at any other time. The Blue Funnel Liner had been behind her time, and had not wired her subsequent gain of a few hours; our arrival had been expected, and was to have been made the occasion of a greeting by the Government of Western Australia to the members of a scientific mission on board. Western Australia's first greeting was to have taken the form of a garden party at Government House, Perth; and as the invitations had been distributed over hundreds of miles of a wide country weeks before, no postponement had been possible. The garden party was being held—in our regretted absence—and the Port Medical Authorities, not to be done out of their festivity, had gone to it. So there Western Australia was—at our garden party, and there peering at the land of promise were we.