Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/164

 floods. Australia has always had a battle with drouth and hot winds, but has steadily prospered in spite of these drawbacks. Its people are learning what to do, and what not to do, and great tracts of land formerly worthless are now productive. This is true everywhere; it is true in our own western states and territories. In the United States the rain belt is not extending westward, but the intelligence belt is The shop windows of a strange city are an interesting exhibit to a traveler; they are a complete history of the industrial habits of the inhabitants. The most interesting window I have seen in Adelaide contains photographs of amateur Lady Bathers. A clever genius who runs a bathing-house at the beach offered prizes of twenty guineas to the Lady Bathers receiving the greatest number of votes for perfection of figure. A great many young women who had a secret notion that they had Great Shapes, entered the contest, and an enterprising photographer is displaying pictures of the leading contestants. All the contestants must have visited the gallery and posed for pictures in bathing costumes. All of them pose in imitation of some classic figure, and the result is very amusing, for an amateur showing her figure is quite as amusing as an amateur appearing in a concert or in a dramatic performance. Some of the figures are so bad that you wonder their owners ever thought they were good, and all the poses are so awkward that the display is extremely amusing. You have no doubt been familiar with contests where young ladies ran for prizes as the most beautiful woman, or the most popular woman, in town, and wondered that the contestants considered themselves either beau