Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/244

 pioneer himself. The whole shop front had been converted into a scene representing a sumptuously furnished hotel bedroom, in which a young man, a wax figure, had retired for the night. His clothes were thrown carelessly about the room, his boots and socks kicked off by the bedside, his gun leant in one corner, the contents of his small tin trunk were neatly arranged on the dressing-table. A small table, on which were a pack of cards and an empty champagne bottle, bore testimony to his gay bachelor habits, but before he went to bed his last thought had been otherwise, for open upon the writing-table was a letter written in a large bold hand to his "Dearest Henriette," lamenting his loneliness, and asking when the happy day would come on which they should set up house together. The whole scene was so realistic that the youth of Katoomba could not linger long unmoved in contemplation of it.

We lunched at the large hotel of the little settlement, its verandah overlooking a fine vista of misty hills that must have been superb on a sunny day, but the rain clouds hung heavily over them, diffusing an exquisitely soft light under the low grey sky. After lunch we started on the top of a coach drawn by five horses to see some of the falls for which the neighbourhood is famous. It took skilled driving over the rough tracks that