The St. Lawrence is 2200 miles in length, and its tributary, the Ottawa, 1000 miles in length, itself receives a tributary stream, the Gatineau, with a course of 420 miles. At 217 miles from its confluence with the Ottawa the Gatineau is still 1000 feet in width. At Albury, which even in winter is the head of navigation on the Murray, you are only some 600 or 700 miles by river from the open sea, or about the same distance as from Memphis in Tennessee to the mouth of the Mississippi. During six months of the year, however, the Murray is for wool-carrying purposes an important river. The railway to Echuca has tapped the river system in the Victorians’ favor, and Melbourne has become the port of the back country of New South Wales, and even Queensland. “The Riverina is commercially annexed” to Victoria, said the premier of New South Wales while I was in that colony, and the “Riverina” means that portion of New South Wales which lies between the Lachlan, the Murrumbidgee, and the Murray, to the northward of Echuca. Returning to the inn to escape the sun, I took up the _Riverina Herald_, published at Echuca; of its twenty-four columns, nineteen and a half are occupied by the eternal sheep in one shape or another. A representation of Jason‘s fleece stands at the head of the title; “wool” is the first word in the first line of the body of the paper. More than half of the advertisements are those of wool brokers, or else of the fortunate possessors of specifics that will cure the scab. One disinfectant compound is certified to by no less than seventeen inspectors; another is puffed by a notice informing flock-masters that, in cases of foot-rot, the advertiser goes upon the principle of “no cure, no pay.” One firm makes “liberal advances on the ensuing clip;” another is prepared to do the like upon “pastoral securities.” Sheep-chandlers, regardless of associations, advertise in one line their bread and foot-rot ointment, their biscuit and sheep-wash solution; and the last of the advertisements upon the front page is that of an “agent for the sale of fat.” The body of the paper contains complaints against the judges at a recent show of wool, and an account of the raising of a sawyer “120 feet in length and 33 feet in girth” by the new “snag-boat” working to clear out the river for the floating down of the next wool clip. Whole columns of small type are filled with “impounding” lists, containing brief descriptions of all the strayed cattle of each district. The technicalities of the distinctive marks are surprising. Who not to the manner born can make much of this: “Blue and white cow, cock horns, 22 off-rump, IL off-ribs?” or of this: “Strawberry stag, top off off-ear, J. C. over 4 off-rump, like H. G. conjoined near loin and rump?” This, again, is difficult: “Swallow tail, off-ear, [backwards-D] and illegible over F off-ribs, PT off-rump.” What is a “blue strawberry bull?” is a question which occurred to me. Again, what a phenomenon is