assimilate the lessons that the correspondence teacher at a distance is sending by post to the schoolroom under the hayrick or by the evening fire. An hour after leaving Perth the track picked up the Kalgoorlie water main, which thereafter ran beside the rails, a half-buried steel conduit thirty inches thick, all the way to the goldfields. This water main is one of the most wonderful in the world. It daily delivers at the mines five million gallons of pure water, after conveying it 350 miles from the Mundaring Reservoir. This reservoir has a masonry weir a hundred feet high, which has been built right across a river-valley, thereby impounding the water and forming a lake seven miles long, holding four seasons' supply. The difficulty of building the works was much increased by the height up which the water has to be forced in the course of its journey. In all, the pipe-line climbs 1,290 feet between Mundaring Reservoir and Bulla Bulling, the highest point upon the circuit, a lift which requires some of the most powerful pumps in the world to negotiate. The installation is essential for the people of Kalgoorlie, whose city is in the midst of the desert, with no other source of supply fit for human consumption, as the water that accumulates in the mine workings is definitely brackish, though cattle will drink it in some cases. Fine rain shaded off into showers as the train proceeded eastward. Further on grey skies were replaced by brilliant sunshine. The country grew continually drier; wheatfields changed into scraggy forest. The forest thinned out and was succeeded by vast expanses of nondescript scrub and desolate bluish salt bush, through which the train sped throughout the night. When the Prince awoke the following morning he was in desert country. Coolgardie, his first stepping-off place, proved to be a dying city. Its original sixteen thousand inhabitants are now represented by only a few hundreds. The majority have moved to the still active mines of Kalgoorlie. Many lie in France, for no community enlisted more freely or fought more bravely than did the men of this far-off town. All that were left had turned out to meet the Prince. It was a curious assemblage, largely consisting of men past work and women and children, who still cling to wooden shanties fast falling into decay, amidst spoil heaps and ruins of fine public buildings, a great place once but a sad spectacle now. The big water main enters Coolgardie, and is sparingly tapped there, but its contents are too precious to be used for irrigation by the way, and without water for this purpose it was impossible for Coolgardie to follow the example of Ballarat in turning its miners into cultivators when the gold gave out. The shy buzzard of the desert now perches fearlessly where once was heavy traffic. The wild dingo has come in from the plains, and makes its home in what were once busy crushing mills and palatial business houses.