The train was now exploring a beautiful hill country, and went twisting in and out through lovely little green valleys.  There were several varieties of gum trees; among them many giants.  Some of them were bodied and barked like the sycamore; some were of fantastic aspect, and reminded one of the quaint apple trees in Japanese pictures.  And there was one peculiarly beautiful tree whose name and breed I did not know.  The foliage seemed to consist of big bunches of pine-spines, the lower half of each bunch a rich brown or old-gold color, the upper half a most vivid and strenuous and shouting green.  The effect was altogether bewitching.  The tree was apparently rare.  I should say that the first and last samples of it seen by us were not more than half an hour apart.  There was another tree of striking aspect, a kind of pine, we were told.  Its foliage was as fine as hair, apparently, and its mass sphered itself above the naked straight stem like an explosion of misty smoke.  It was not a sociable sort; it did not gather in groups or couples, but each individual stood far away from its nearest neighbor.  It scattered itself in this spacious and exclusive fashion about the slopes of swelling grassy great knolls, and stood in the full flood of the wonderful sunshine; and as far as you could see the tree itself you could also see the ink-black blot of its shadow on the shining green carpet at its feet.

On some part of this railway journey we saw gorse and broom—­importations from England—­and a gentleman who came into our compartment on a visit tried to tell me which—­was which; but as he didn’t know, he had difficulty.  He said he was ashamed of his ignorance, but that he had never been confronted with the question before during the fifty years and more that he had spent in Australia, and so he had never happened to get interested in the matter.  But there was no need to be ashamed.  The most of us have his defect.  We take a natural interest in novelties, but it is against nature to take an interest in familiar things.  The gorse and the broom were a fine accent in the landscape.  Here and there they burst out in sudden conflagrations of vivid yellow against a background of sober or sombre color, with a so startling effect as to make a body catch his breath with the happy surprise of it.  And then there was the wattle, a native bush or tree, an inspiring cloud of sumptuous yellow bloom.  It is a favorite with the Australians, and has a fine fragrance, a quality usually wanting in Australian blossoms.

The gentleman who enriched me with the poverty of his formation about the gorse and the broom told me that he came out from England a youth of twenty and entered the Province of South Australia with thirty-six shillings in his pocket—­an adventurer without trade, profession, or friends, but with a clearly-defined purpose in his head:  he would stay until he was worth L200, then go back home.  He would allow himself five years for the accumulation of this fortune.