The harbor, commercially the finest in the world, is not without a singular beauty if seen at the best time. By the “hot-wind sunrise,” as I first saw it, the heat and glare destroy the feeling of repose which the endless succession of deep, sheltered coves would otherwise convey; but seen from shore in the afternoon, when the sea-breeze has sprung up, turning the sky from red to blue, all is changed. From a neck of land that leads out to the Government House, you catch a glimpse of an arm of the bay on either side, rippled with the cool wind, intensely blue, and dotted with white sails; the brightness of the colors that the sea-breeze brings almost atones for the wind‘s unhealthiness. In the upper portion of the town the scene is less picturesque; the houses are of the commonplace English ugliness, worst of all possible forms of architectural imbecility, and built, too, as though for English fogs, instead of semi-tropical heat and sun. Water is not to be had, and the streets are given up to clouds of dust, while not a single shade-tree breaks the rays of the almost vertical sun. The afternoon of New Year‘s day I spent at the “Midsummer Meeting” of the Sydney Jockey Club, on the race-course near the city, and found a vast crowd of holiday-makers assembled on the bare red earth that did duty for “turf,” although there was a hot wind blowing, and the thermometer stood at 103° in the shade. For my conveyance to the race-course I trusted to one of the Australian hansom cabs, made with open fixed Venetian blinds on either side, so as to allow a free draught of air.