now perceived the small space within which ourselves, three persons, had passed the night on benches, chairs, and tables. The light of day did not belie the hospitality of our reception. The furniture was rude but clean. What most surprised us was the number of massive books which stood on a small shelf, carefully arranged. They were by much the most valuable part of the furniture, and the proprietor seemed to be aware of this. The books had been the property of a schoolmaster, who had exchanged their spiritual contents against spirits of another nature. The host gave "tick" to the schoolmaster, and thus gradually possessed himself of the entire collection, no inconsiderable number, of interesting works, which now passed from hand to hand on holidays or after the day's work was over; the desire for knowledge of the settlers in this primitive Australian forest thus finding ample room to expand itself in many useful and learned particulars of foreign lands and peoples.
Towards 1 P.M. we reached Campbelton. At the hotel where we alighted was installed a lodge of Odd Fellows, newly instituted. The first visible result of its organization was almost universal intoxication! In the streets and the public-houses, everywhere crowds of drunken men were staggering about. Every third house in Campbelton is a whisky shop! Throughout the colony the consumption of ardent spirits has reached an alarming height, being estimated at £6 per head of the entire population annually! Besides the spirits manufactured in the colony itself, New South Wales imports annually £1,000,000 of wine, beer, brandy, and other descriptions
of liquor; a greater consumption of spirits than in any other country of the globe![17]
The rest of our return journey being by rail was performed in two hours. The telegraph is in full activity between Campbelton and Sydney, the charge for a message of ten words being two shillings, and two-pence for each succeeding word. Towards 6 P.M. we reached Sydney, driving in the present instance to the Australian club, where accommodation had in the kindest manner been provided for us.
While one section of our staff had been making the excursion southwards which we have just described, among the forests and barrens of the Illawara district, another party visited the sources of Hunter River and the Newcastle coal-fields, whence they returned laden with botanical, mineralogical, entomological, and palæontological collections, samples of coal, fossil plants, and specimens of the Silurian formations.
The most interesting episode in their excursion was their stay on Ash Island, a small isle in the Hunter River, the property of A. W. Scott, Esq., M.L.A., who has settled there with his family. Two of his daughters are hardly more conspicuous by their loveliness and grace than by their profound acquaintance with entomology, which they pursue with the utmost zeal. In addition to geological and conchyliological collections, they have also a carefully classed collection of insects
and butterflies, and at the time of our visit were about publishing a large work upon Australian butterflies. They also have the lepidopterous fauna of New South Wales in great variety and in every stage of metamorphosis, in many cases from the very ovum, all copiously explained, and their distinguishing characteristics placed beneath in a series of above one hundred tables, which the two ladies, who are accomplished artists both in drawing and painting, have themselves lithographed and coloured.
An excursion was also made from Ash Island to the Sugar Loaf, 3288 feet high, the loftiest mountain in the district. As they had to do 40 miles in one day, the party sprang to their horses as soon as day dawned, and, accompanied by two settlers of Ash Island, laid themselves out for the day's work. First they ascended Hunter River for about a couple of miles, which a little further on headed to the northward, while the cavalcade kept to the left towards the hills. The forest was so clear of underwood, that one could almost ride along as though in a park. Despite the numerous traces of extensive fires, it seemed to have been but little altered by these from its primitive wildness. Occasionally huts and cultivated land were passed; the great proprietors usually give these runs to be cultivated as farms, or make them serve for their cattle, under their own drovers. In winter the cattle run at will in the "Bush," as the settlers call this characteristic scenery, wherever they can find the best pasture for themselves. In summer again, when the great heat dries
everything up, they are foddered with hay under shelter. The sunny forest consists of Eucalypti, Melaleuca, and other myrtaceæ, splendid casuarinas, Grevilleæ, Banksiæ, the native pear (Hylomelum), the highly prized Warratah (Telopea speciosissima), the all but shadowless Acacia, the indigenous cherry (Exocarpus), beautiful Papilionaceæ, and very peculiar Stylidiæ, &c. All these were old acquaintances however of the Austrian naturalists, who greeted them in this their native soil with redoubled interest and astonishment. Covered with blossoms they grew in wild unchecked profusion all around their path, so that the very horses frequently trod them under foot, scenting the air with an aroma which in Europe can only be obtained by lavish expenditure. Numerous birds, chiefly parrots, circled round the tops of the trees; the crow-like Strepera graculina, the bald-headed Tropidorhynchus corniculatus the "Jack ass" (Dacela gigantea), so highly regarded and carefully tended by the colonists on account of its admonishing them of the presence of poisonous serpents, quantities of chaffinches (frigellidæ), the fan-tailed flycatcher (Muscipiada), the Climacteris, which runs up and down the trunks of the trees like our own wood-pecker, the monitor lizard, four or five feet in length, which flits rapidly to and fro among the trees, the prickly chameleon, and beautiful specimens of fossil helix, all furnished a rich reward for the zoologist.
After a ride of three hours the party began to approach a steep wall of rock, where the horses were left, as they had now to prosecute their journey on foot, till at length they