winking, leaving people to wait on themselves;
doctors left what few patients they had, and bolted for the fields of
Ophir; lawyers packed up and cut stick, following their clients and
victims to the brighter fields of "causes" and effects. The newspapers
became so short-handed that dailies were knocked into weeklies, and the
weeklies into cocked hats, or something near it--mere eight-by-ten
"handbills."

These "discoveries" wrought as sudden as singular a revolution in men,
manners, and things. As we said before, Australia was the very apex of
singularities in the way of Dame Nature's fancy-work, long before the
gold mania broke out; but now she seemed bent on a general and
miscellaneous freak, making the staid, matter-of-fact Englishmen as full
of caprice as the land they were living in.

"Only look at it!" exclaims the Captain: "the day comes in the middle of
our nights! When we're turning in at home, they are turning out in
Australia. Summer begins in the middle of winter; and for snow storms
they get rain, thunder and lightning. About the time we are getting used
to our woollens and hot fires of the holidays, they are roasting with
heat, and going around in linen jackets and wilted dickeys. The land is
full of flowers of every hue, gay and beautiful, gorgeous and sublime to
look at, but as senseless to the smell and as inodorous as so many dried
chips. The swans are numerous, but jet black. The few animals in the
country are all provided with pockets in their 'overcoats,' or skin, in
which to stow their young ones, or provender. Some of the rivers really
appear," says the Captain, "to run up stream! I was completely taken
down," says the Captain, "by a bunch of the finest pears you ever saw.
Myself and a friend were up the country, and I sees a fine pear tree,
breaking down with as elegant-looking fruit as I ever saw.

"'Well, by ginger,' says I, 'them are about as fine pears as I've seen
these twenty years!'

"'Yes,' says my friend, who was a resident in the country; 'perhaps you
would like to try a few?'

"'That I shall,' says I; so I ups and knocks down a few, and it was a
job to get them down, I tell you; and when I had one between my teeth I
gave it a nip--see there, two teeth broke off," says the Captain,
showing us the fact; "the fine pears _were mere wood!_

"The country is well supplied with fine birds; but they are dumb as
beetles, sir--never heard a bird sing or whistle a note in Australia.
The t