We had come up with the mail train from Albany, where the P. & O. steamers then called, and even Westralia's most ardent admirers would hesitate to claim comfort as one of the features of the Colony's railway system. So we arrived, after a long night's misery, dusty and travel-stained. No one attempts to keep clean in the land of "Sand, sin, and sorrow," for the simple reason that, according to the nature of things there, such a luxurious state of æsthetic comfort can never be attained. The streets were sandy, and as a natural sequence the atmosphere was not of ethereal quality. The people were sandy and parched-looking, and we found the interior of the hotel little better than the outside, so far as the presence of the powdery yellow grains was concerned.
In the darkened bedrooms the hum of the festive mosquito was heard, and my companions chuckled at the sound.
"It's a lang time since I heard they deevils," said Mac; then he proceeded, "Noo, oot on the Pampas——"
"D—n the Pampas!" roared Stewart, as he clutched wildly at one of the pests that had been quietly resting on his cheek for full half a minute.
"Ye've pushioned that onfort'nate beast," Mac retorted, with unruffled serenity; "noo, can ye no let the puir thing dee in peace?"
We remained but a short time in Perth; it is a neatly-laid-out little city with streets running off at right angles to each other, and containing a fair sprinkling of fine buildings, among which may be mentioned the General Post Office and Lands Offices, and they are palatial edifices indeed. The Botanical Gardens are small, yet very pretty; and here, instead of the usual garden loafer, may be found many weary-eyed and parchment-skinned gold-diggers from the "fields," whose one idea of a holiday lies in a visit to Perth or Fremantle, where they stroll about or recline on the artificially-forced grass plots of these towns, and wile the weary hours away.
The Swan River at Perth forms an exquisite piece of scenery, which redeems the environs of the sandy city from utter ugliness. Innumerable black swans swim hither and thither on its placid waters, and by the sloping banks, well fringed with rushes, many notable yachting clubs have their pavilions. There is nothing in this Capital of the Western Colony to attract. Even to the casual observer it is plain that the bustling, Oriental-looking town is essentially a gateway to the goldfields, and little more. Fremantle, on the other hand, is the Port, and chief engineering and commercial centre.
At this period I was, like most erratic travellers, without a definite object in view. In a certain hazy way I thought that we should visit the mining districts at once, as we had done in other and more impracticable countries; yet I was aware that the known Westralian goldfields were by no means so new as the "finds" in North-West Canada, and in consequence the ground might be over-pegged or long since rushed.
"The countrie is big enuff," said Mac when I mentioned my doubts, "an' we'll mebbe find anither Gold Bottom Creek faurer oot than onybody has gaed."