"Only look at it!" exclaims the Captain: "the day comes in the middle of our nights! When we're turning in at home, they are turning out in Australia. Summer begins in the middle of winter; and for snow storms they get rain, thunder and lightning. About the time we are getting used to our woollens and hot fires of the holidays, they are roasting with heat, and going around in linen jackets and wilted dickeys. The land is full of flowers of every hue, gay and beautiful, gorgeous and sublime to look at, but as senseless to the smell and as inodorous as so many dried chips. The swans are numerous, but jet black. The few animals in the country are all provided with pockets in their 'overcoats,' or skin, in which to stow their young ones, or provender. Some of the rivers really appear," says the Captain, "to run up stream! I was completely taken down," says the Captain, "by a bunch of the finest pears you ever saw. Myself and a friend were up the country, and I sees a fine pear tree, breaking down with as elegant-looking fruit as I ever saw. "'Well, by ginger,' says I, 'them are about as fine pears as I've seen these twenty years!' "'Yes,' says my friend, who was a resident in the country; 'perhaps you would like to try a few?' "'That I shall,' says I; so I ups and knocks down a few, and it was a job to get them down, I tell you; and when I had one between my teeth I gave it a nip--see there, two teeth broke off," says the Captain, showing us the fact; "the fine pears _were mere wood!_ "The country is well supplied with fine birds; but they are dumb as beetles, sir--never heard a bird sing or whistle a note in Australia. The trees make no shade, the leaves hang from the stems edge up, and look just as if they had been whipped into shreds by a gale of wind; and you rarely see a tree with a bit of bark on it. "But what completely upset me, was the cherries, sir--fine cherries, plenty of them, but the _stones were all on the outside!_ The bees have no stings, the snakes no fangs, and the eagles are all white. The north wind is hot, the south wind cold. Our longest days are in summer; but in Australia, sir, the shortest days come in summer, and the longest in winter; and," says the Captain, "I can't begin to tell you how many curious didoes nature seems to cut, in that country; but, altogether, it's one of the queerest countries I ever did see, by ginger!" And we have come to the conclusion--it is. If the gold continues to "turn up" in such boulders and "nuggets" as recently reported, Australia is bound to be the richest and most densely populated, as well as _queerest_ country known to man. A General Disquisition on "Hinges."