Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/79

 for a very extensive course of travel. They seemed, indeed, to contain as many great cities as are now contained in the whole world.

Frequent references to another volume caused me to search for it. This volume, bound to match the other, proved to be a sort of album containing excellent views of picturesque or otherwise interesting localities, as well as of many cities visited by the artist. By dates and annotations on the margin, the views were shown to be the work of the owner of the diary. From the character of the work, the views were evidently the result of some kind of photographic process. What filled me with admiration. was, the minute care and fidelity to nature with which the views were colored. But, as I subsequently learned, all was the work of the sun. The photographer had long since mastered the problem of taking pictures as faithful in color as in form and shading.

One inference I was enabled to reach from a study of these views. Costume and architecture, making due allowance for differences of climate, were much the same throughout the Southern Hemisphere as in the city and country I had seen with such interest that day. I was especially interested in the views of the city of Olim and its environs.

On the maps of the present, the centre of Australia is represented as a waterless, untrodden waste. In this album were views of a great city occupying almost the centre of that region. Its streets were as stately as those I had seen in Nuiore: many of its edifices, especially those of its famous university, showed signs of a venera-