Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/34

 *son on the list. At the captain's dinner the captain made another speech, in which he threw us gorgeous bouquets.

—The captain said we should see land on the morning of the 6th, at 8 o'clock. At almost exactly that hour, land appeared off the starboard beam (I take this to mean off to the right). When land first appears at sea, it is very faint, and is only distinguished from clouds with difficulty. At 10 we were in plain sight of Sydney's famous harbor, and saw other ships entering ahead of us. A half an hour later, we took on a pilot, and at 11 o'clock we stopped at quarantine to wait for a doctor. When this official came, we found him a huge man who would create a sensation in a museum. After the usual inspection, the "Sonoma" steamed toward her dock, eight miles away, and we had an opportunity to see the harbor In reading, you are almost constantly in sight of the statement that Sydney has the finest harbor in the world, and, after you have seen it, you are disposed to admit the truth of the statement. After passing in from the sea, a ship travels eight or ten miles to the city docks, and the course winds around through hills almost large enough to be called mountains. On either side are bays, and everywhere on top of the hills you see houses with red tile roofs. Sydney is a city of more than seven hundred thousand, and has doubled its population in the past twenty-five years. It is only a question of a few years until Sydney has a million population, and is destined to be