People, at home, attempt to judge Australia as they judge some people. “Oh, all the Smiths have tempers!” they will say, and imagine that thereby they have disposed in half a dozen words of twice as many individualities, and root and branch of the entire Smith family, whose characters may be as divergent as the points of the compass; and:—“Awful place for drought, isn’t it?” is the almost inevitable question asked when I have mentioned Australia; usually followed by the remark, “Awfully hot, too.” Size means nothing whatever to such people; if they have any idea of any variety of climate in Australia, they think that it must be “cooler up north,” quite ignoring all that they have ever heard of Queensland and the Northern Territory, which alone covers 523,620 square miles. Victoria is the smallest state in Australia; still, it contains, roughly speaking, 87,884 square miles and an extraordinary diversity of climates. About eight years ago I met a Victorian schoolmaster whose little boy of seven had never seen rain; and shortly after that another who lived in a district that was under snow during the greater part of the year. There are dense forests—notably those in the Western districts, where the trees grow so closely together that the people spend their lives in a sort of semi-twilight: while the mud is so deep along the forest tracks that they have to do all their travelling on horseback; and their carting by means of sledges, the runners of which will slide along over the top of the mud instead of sinking and sticking in it as wheels would do. Once I was staying with some people near Camperdown whose parlour-maid hailed from the depths of the forest, some thirty miles away. An afternoon a week off to see her parents was out of the question, but occasionally she had a couple of days’ holiday, and then thought nothing of the thirty miles or so on horseback each way. Though to my English mind it seemed an odd way for a parlour-maid to take an outing. And such an immaculate parlour-maid, too! waiting at table in such a neat black frock, with such snowy apron and cap, that it was difficult to realize her rising at dawn and riding off cross-legged on the wiry little steed, which the servants had for their special use, into the mysterious twilight of the forest.