iggling and plunging alongside the steamers, it is no easy matter to
get into them, and anyone but a sailor or a professional acrobat would
find it safest to be lowered over the side in a basket. The voyage to
the jetty at Largs Bay is a brief epitome of the Bay of Biscay, the
Australian Bight, and the monsoons of the Indian Ocean. When you reach
the jetty, you are hoisted on to it by practised hands as the launch
jumps to the right level. Then--splash! and up comes a green sea through
the boards and you are wet to the skin. Bathing, it seems, like
education, is "free and compulsory" at Adelaide. Perhaps this is a part
of the quarantine operations--disinfection by salt water. This sea bath
is, however, the only thing, as far as I am aware, that the traveller
gets for nothing in South Australia. Passengers' baggage is charged for
when it lands at the jetty at the rate of 1_s._ 3_d._ per cwt., and the
same has to be paid on leaving. When at last you get into the
train!--such a train! but perhaps the railway department does not like
the risk of having good carriages soiled by passengers' wet clothes--you
compare this "boat express" with those of Folkestone, Dover, Harwich,
and Southampton. The first-class carriages are not equal to the
third-class on the English lines. Being an express, this train runs more
than a mile without stopping. Then you have to change trains. When you
get along again, you notice that the railway to Port Adelaide runs along
the street without any fence whatever to prevent people from driving or
walking on to the line. Fatalities of course are common, and excite
little notice; bolting horses and consequent accidents are of almost
daily occurrence, and the local residents get quite to enjoy being
pitched out of their buggies. Life here cannot be dull, while it lasts.
Passengers are lucky if they reach Adelaide within an hour and a half
of leaving the steamer, the distance being about ten miles.

The Zoological Gardens of Adelaide are particularly fine. The situation
is lovely, the plan is excellent, and originality shown in the design of
the houses. The specimens are fairly numerous and all excellent of their
kind, and at most points, this is the best "Zoo" in the Colonies. The
most original house is that of the guinea-pigs, which is a huge doll's
house, complete with blinds and even a scraper at the door, and an
inscription outside, "School for Young Ladies--conducted by the Misses
Guinea Pig." The c