Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/294

 "rock lily" hung its pendulum of pale chablis-coloured bells, and still more exquisite were the fragile white blooms of another orchid. In places were stretches of sugar plantation, and banana fields, always with their background of hill and forest. The fresh greenness of everything was delightful, for the district is well watered.

The line, which was sometimes laid across rough logs thrown over a small gorge, with a stream running through it, ended abruptly in the Maroochy River, swift-flowing between low banks, with the tall trees of the forest on one side, and a sugar plantation waving feathery heads of bloom on the other. We walked back with two friends. It was much more silent than an English forest. There was no pattering of the small feet of birds on the dry, dead carpet of leaves, and no continual twitter. A profusion of ferns grew along the track, and a quantity of large scarlet raspberries. The gum trees were putting out their red spring shoots. Sometimes the clear, sharp call of the peewit sounded, or the infectious peal on peal of mocking giggles from the kookooburra, sometimes the frogs were crying all together, as they cried in Aristophanes' time, "Breckkek kek kek—koax koax," and now for the first time we heard the Australian