Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/243

 looking out on a suburb of London—Sydenham, for instance, as far as the aspect of the neat suburban houses was concerned. The illusion was deepened by the appearance of "Springfield Ladies' College," very trim and sedate among its neighbours, only the gardens bore camellia bushes for roses.

Leura, on the other hand, gives the illusion of a Swiss village, with its background of high dark hills, large flourishing hotels, and rows of fir trees. Our destination was Katoomba. These hill settlements are on the way to becoming thriving towns. A large and excellent hotel already dominated the one main street of shops. The Blue Mountains are a popular week-end, or holiday resort for Sydney, whose residents can easily attain the pure mountain air, after the steamy heat which is said to be the normal condition of the city in summer. Katoomba could only boast of one modest street, but it supported two chemists' shops, and a furnishing company, conducted by a man of unsurpassed initiative and a sense of the dramatic. One would not have supposed that there was scope for such a faculty in the furnishing trade. But in his shop window was represented not mere specimens of his wares, not merely pillow-slips and dining-tables to tempt the hardy pioneer from the backwoods, but that hardy