Only one change had been made in the line of march since leaving Camden Bridge. The criminal disaster on the railway, when made known to Ayrton, had induced him to take precautions hitherto needless. The horsemen were not to lose sight of the cart. During the hours of encampment one of them was always on guard. Morning and evening the priming of the fire-arms was renewed. It was certain that a band of malefactors were scouring the country; and, although nothing gave cause for immediate suspicion, still it was necessary to be ready for any emergency.
In truth they had reason to act thus. An imprudence, or negligence even, might cost them dear. Glenarvan, moreover, was not alone in giving heed to this state of affairs. In the isolated towns and stations the inhabitants and squatters took precautions against any attack or surprise. The houses were closed at nightfall. The dogs were let loose within the palisades, and barked at the slightest alarm. There was not a shepherd, collecting his numerous flocks on horseback for the evening return, who did not carry a carbine suspended from the pommel of his saddle. The news of the crime committed at Camden Bridge was the reason for this excessive caution, and many a colonist who had formerly slept with open doors and windows now carefully locked his house at twilight.
After awhile, the cart entered a grove of giant trees, the finest they had hitherto seen. There was a cry of admiration at sight of the eucalyptuses, two hundred feet high, whose spongy bark was five inches in thickness. The trunks measured twenty feet in circumference, and were furrowed by streams of odorous sap. Not a branch, not a twig, not a wanton shoot, not even a knot, disfigured their perfect symmetry. They could not have issued smoother from the hand of the turner. They were like so many columns exactly mated, and could be counted by hundreds, spreading at a vast height into capitals of finely-shaped branches adorned with vertical leaves, from which hung solitary flowers, whose calices were like inverted urns.
Under this evergreen canopy the air circulated freely. A continual ventilation absorbed the moisture of the earth, and horses, herds of cattle, and carts could easily pass between these trees, which were widely separated and arranged in straight rows. It was neither a wood with thickets crowded and obstructed by brambles, nor a virgin forest barricaded with fallen trunks and entangled with inextricable parasites, where only axe and fire can clear a way for the pioneers. A carpet of herbage below, and a sheet of verdure above; long vistas of noble pillars; little shade or coolness; a peculiar light, like the rays that sift through a delicate tissue; shadows sharply defined upon the ground: all this constituted a strange sight. The forests of Oceanica are entirely different from those of the New World, and the eucalyptus—the "tara" of the aborigines—is the most perfect tree of the Australian flora.
The shade is not dense, nor the darkness profound, beneath these domes of verdure, owing to a strange peculiarity in the arrangement of the leaves of the eucalyptus. Not one presents its face to the sun, but only its sharp edge. The eye sees nothing but profiles in this singular foliage. Thus the rays of the sun glide to the earth as if they had passed between the slats of a window-blind.
Every one observed this and seemed surprised. Why this particular arrangement? This question was naturally addressed to Paganel, who replied like a man who is never at fault.
"What astonishes me," said he, "is not the freak of nature, for she knows what she does; but botanists do not always know what they say. Nature was not mistaken in giving to these trees this singular foliage; but men are wrong in calling them eucalyptuses."
"What does the word mean?" asked Mary Grant.
"It comes from the Greek words εῡ καλύπτω;, signifying I cover well. But you all see that the eucalyptus covers badly."