“Snow! man alive! It’s a small matter of snow comes down from the sky in this beautiful country, except, now and then, on the top of the Blue Mountains out there; though, as for frosts, it’s cold enough on the high ground in July and August, when the south wind blows, to make a fellow blow his fingers to keep them warm, and to think a blazing fire and a blanket pleasant companions.”
Sam thought that Larry was quizzing him, but still he did not like to accuse him directly. “It’s a strange country this, then, muster, I’m thinking,” he remarked cautiously.
“Strange! It is a strange country, faith!” answered Larry. “It is summer here when, by all dacent rules, it should be winter; the south wind is cold, and the north blazing hot. There are creatures with four legs which have ducks’ heads; and birds, with long legs and no wings, as tall as horses; while some of the animals stow their young away in a bag in front of them, instead of letting them follow properly at their heels, as pigs and ducks and hens do in the old country. The trees shed their bark instead of their leaves; and it’s only just surprising to me that the people walk on their feet instead of their heads, and that the sun thinks fit to rise in the east instead of the west; and it’s often when I wake in the mornin’ that I look out expecting to see that he’s grown tired of his old ways, and changed to suit the other things in the land.”
Sam, who could appreciate an English style of joke, was unable to make out whether or not the Irishman was in earnest; but he thought it wise to wait till he could learn the truth from his young friends, when they camped in the evening.
“It’s only just come out, ye are?” asked Larry.
Sam told him all about himself, as he had told Sykes, expecting an equal amount of communicativeness in return. “You’ve been some time in the country, master, I’m thinking? How did you come out?”
Larry looked at him with a twinkle in his eye. “Faith, that’s just a sacret between myself and them who knows all about it,” he answered, with a laugh. “It’s my belief that the big-wigs across the fish-pond had just an idea of the mighty great value I’d be to the country, and sent me out free of all charge to myself and family intirely.”
The scenery improved as the travellers advanced, and contrasted favourably with the dusty, stony, and worn-out region through which they had passed nearer the capital.
“Horrible farming!” observed James; “if such were practised in England universally, the whole country would become a desert in a few years.”
Sometimes they passed through scenery like that of a park in England, with open green pastures sprinkled with clumps of trees; some deserving the names of woods, others consisting but of a few trees. The greater number were Eucalypti the evergreen gum, and stringy-bark trees; but on the banks of streams and on the hillsides, and sometimes in rich, alluvial valleys, such as are found in the northern hemisphere and in less sunny climes, were to be seen flowers, of great size and beauty, such as flourish only in greenhouses in England; while a great variety of the orchis tribe, and geraniums, both large and small, were found in great profusion. The trees, the names of many of which were given by Larry, bore little or no resemblance to those of the same name at home. Among the most common were the box, wattle, and cherry; but undoubtedly the most prominent everywhere in the landscape were the old gum trees, and the huge iron stringy-bark trees, which, now with shattered and weird appearance, had braved the fierce storms of winter and the hot blasts of summer for centuries. Many strange birds flew by overhead, and still stranger wild animals started up from beneath some sheltering bush, and ran off along the fresh glades, all reminding the new-comers how far distant they were from the home of their childhood.