Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/155

 attention to agricultural reports. The Australian farmers do, and greedily devour everything printed that concerns their business The dining-car in which we ate dinner has two sections: first and second class. We paid four shillings for dinner, and the second-class passengers paid two.

—When I awoke this morning, the train was running rapidly through the bleakest country I have seen in Australia or New Zealand. This is the land settlers are encouraged to "take up," and improve. It did not look to be worth ten dollars a quarter-section, but occasionally I saw a settler's cabin. A trainman told me that the original settler rarely did well, but that the man who bought him out for almost nothing, often did quite well. Suddenly we came in sight of the Murray river, the only considerable stream in Australia, and navigable for small boats a thousand miles above where I saw it. Soon after, we crossed the river at a little town, and stopped for breakfast. From the railroad bridge I saw several steamboats, and rather extensive facilities for loading and unloading freight Remember that in passing through the bleak, dry country referred to above, we were not fifty miles from the sea, and that the rainfall decreases toward the interior of the country This morning we began seeing plenty of rabbits; many times, forty or fifty were in view at the same time, and we are now satisfied A gentleman on the train who lives in the Fiji Islands,