Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/156

 says that not long ago there, more than thirty-six inches of rain fell in one day; the government rain-gauge records thirty-six inches, but this filled, and ran over. It is a pity that the industrious Australians cannot have some of the rain that goes to waste in the Fiji Islands, where the inhabitants are shiftless Our first view of Adelaide was from a mountain, where the railroad runs. It is a city of 180,000, the capital of South Australia, and located on an extensive plain, between the sea and the mountain. Adelaide is not located on the sea, as I had imagined; its shipping is done at Port Adelaide, twelve miles away. We reached the city at 10, and went to the Grand Central Hotel, a large, new place, but we were almost the only guests; at one time, we saw only two others in the dining-room, and never more than fifteen. The dining-room is very large and very fine, and a good orchestra plays for dinner, but there are almost no guests. On our floor we see no one; we have it to ourselves. We like the quiet, but the proprietor of the hotel must be suffering. We asked a waiter for an explanation, and he said Saturday, Sunday and Monday are usually quiet days. The town is much like the hotel; it is not crowded. Here, as elsewhere in Australia and New Zealand, the people are exceptionally polite. We were standing on the street this afternoon, somewhat confused about the proper car to take, when a policeman stepped up and asked if he could do anything for us. I do not know where the people learned their exceptional politeness; they certainly did not learn it from the mother country, England In this dry country, people like to hover around the words "river"