Lord Derby, however, goes deeper into the springs of action. Verses composed in sleep are by no means uncommon, but apart from Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” are perhaps seldom as consecutive as these.
CHAPTER XII
FURTHER AUSTRALIAN IMPRESSIONS—NEW ZEALAND AND NEW CALEDONIA
Lady Galloway came out to us towards the end of 1891, and in January she accompanied us on one of our amusing expeditions. This time it was about three days’ tour through a hilly—indeed mountainous country. The hills in Australia do not, as a rule, attain great height; it is because they are so ancient in the world’s history that they have been worn down by the storms of ages and the ravages of time. We went, however, to open another range of caverns of the same kind as the Jenolan Caves. These, the Yarrangobilly Caves, had been explored, and to a certain extent excavated, within more recent years, and were now to be made accessible to tourists.
Mr. Dibbs and other officials and Members of Parliament, notably some Labour Members, came also; and a mixed multitude, said to amount to about five hundred people in all, took part more or less in what was called “The Governor’s Picnic.”
YARRANGOBILLY CAVES
These did not follow us all through the hills, but camped in the valley near the caves. Here a comic incident occurred. For the first part of the tour we were in one district, for the last in another, but somehow in the middle we fell between two stools. In Number One and Number Three we were entertained by hosts who displayed the usual lavish hospitality, and all the way we were conveyed by kindly charioteers, and accompanied by a splendid voluntary mounted escort, but in Number Two, the valley near the caves, something had gone wrong. A wooden hut with several rooms had been prepared for our reception, but no food! It was a sort of debatable ground, and either through misunderstanding or, as was hinted, through local jealousy, it was nobody’s business to act host on the border land.
The poor Premier and other officials were desperate when they discovered our plight, and in the end Dibbs possessed himself of one of the troopers’ swords and rushed off to a party of picnickers who were innocently sitting down to enjoy the supper which they had brought with them, asking what they meant by eating cold mutton while the Governor and his party were destitute!