Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/356

 servant who, with his "lubra" and a Chinese cook, ran our friend's house. We got in and began the ascent of the steep red hill. The Government horse was tough but deliberate, and crawled leisurely through the thick red dust. The air was heavy with the sweet strong scent of a curiously twisted Japanese-looking tree, not unlike an olive. It was covered with small white flowers, and was called a milkwood tree. The natives say that the milky juice of the wood produces blindness.

At the entrance to Darwin is the Chinese quarter, all tumble-down tin shanties, unsightly and comfortless, and very poverty-stricken looking, with shrill children screaming and playing in the dust. Its appearance gave one an inkling why Australians would rather dispense with the cheap and efficient Chinese labour than leaven the population of their great clean land with people who could thrive contentedly in a little colony of pigsties. Here suddenly was a bullock cart laden with wood, the little Chinese driver in his immense flat hat, looking exactly as if he had just stepped off a valuable old tea-*tray. It was the very soul of all Oriental picturesqueness. Leaving behind the comfortable verandahed houses of the European residents, we struck into a soft red road that led through