Every visitor gets a crick in his neck from looking skywards.
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Many blacks hang about the town. The roads are unmetalled. The loose soil is dark brown, and consists of sand mixed with particles of friable ironstone. The three varieties of tracks which show prominently everywhere are suggestive—a few of booted whites, many of sandalled Chinamen, and over and under all those of unshod natives.
* * * *
The thermometer does not register very high. But here there is a stuffy, suffocating, sweat-producing latent heat the whole year round, with very few weeks' cool to brace the enervated up.
One misses the heavenly blue of southern climes. The sky has ever in it a hazy dull metallic grey.
The town is on a table-land, and is well laid out. The drainage is good; hence malarial fever, once pretty prevalent, is now less common.
* * * *
The chefs are invariably Chinamen; this applies to most of the Northern Territory. Hence one hears the word "chow, chow" used commonly by the whites to denote meals or meal time—"Chow's ready," "come to chow," "There goes the Chow bell," and such like expressions.
A nobbler is disposed of with one indefinite "Chin, chin." Freely translated it means something between a votre sante and "another coffin nail."