d it, and still continue to read it,
as a choice specimen of the guide-book-maker's delirium:

"The first _coup d'oeil_ of Fremantle is a white scattered township on
an undulating plain fringed by a sea-beach and scant vegetation. As you
land you are struck on all sides with the unusual activity around you.
Long sinuous trains of loaded cargo trucks are coming and going,
locomotive whistles warning the pedestrian to beware, lines of rails
intersecting each other, crowds of lumpers, and the busy air of a large
shipping centre bewilder you, and you are carried back to some old-world
port where ships of all nations call and disgorge their lading."

[Illustration: COALING.]

There! Are you not anxious to go to a place with the assurance that you
will be struck on all sides as soon as you land with unusual activity?
Do you not burn to see what "a long sinuous train" is like? Are you not
willing to brave the dangerous locomotives crossing the intersecting
lines of railways, just to see those crowds of lumpers? Then to be
bewildered by the busy mercantile air, and before you have time to fully
realise all this you are to be "carried back to some old-world port
where ships of all nations call and disgorge their lading."

That last proposal settled my mind; no attractive trains or lumpers,
undulating plains or scant vegetation, or anything equally attractive,
would induce me to arrive at a place, after five or six weeks'
travelling to get there, to find myself at once carried back to some
old-world port before seeing something of the rest of Australia to repay
one for the long and tedious journey. I therefore avoided Fremantle.

There is one attraction to visit that port which the traveller from the
Old World will appreciate, after his experience of the fleecing dues and
charges at Adelaide, Melbourne, and other Australian ports, in which
officials all but tear the clothes off the visitor's back to tax them.
In this port your mantle at least is free.

In spite of the following paragraph from the same source: "Western
Australia has emerged into the full glare of the world's light and
renown, and not to know its golden wonders is to argue oneself unknown,"
I determined to remain in obscurity.

[Illustration]

The guide-books assure us Albany deserves more than "passing notice."
This is true enough, but travellers do not always get a chance of giving
the place its deserts. This was particularly the case with me on my
first