dangerous delay in the movement of troops in case of an invasion.
Returning, however, to Sydney; the first view from the sea front shows a city built largely in red and yellow sandstone, upon rolling coastal ridges, with little level ground anywhere. Some of the older buildings almost overhang the sea, as one often notices in some of the Mediterranean towns; though, apart from Sydney, this is not a characteristic of Australian ports. The city itself is something of an old-world jumble, dug out of its own cellars; the streets being narrow and irregular, unlike those of Melbourne, which the pioneer surveyors (who came from Sydney and profited by its mistakes) planned broad, stately, and in chess-board fashion, at the start. Sydney is said to have been laid out on the lines of the cattle-tracks made by the first imported cows, who wandered about the infant settlement. In leading thoroughfares, such as George and Pitt Streets, the crush of hansom cabs and omnibuses is exceptional, for an Australian city. The heart of the city is not cut up with tram lines, however, as in Melbourne; for the steam-motor cars pass along a single route, and almost at the limits of the city branch off to the different suburbs. The tram system, controlled by the Government, is really a railway system in miniature; and though it gives the advantage of fast travelling to the outer suburbs of Sydney, it has nothing else in its favour, being unsightly and dirty. It is soon, I hear, to be superseded in favour of an over-head electric system. For some years after the introduction of the motor trams, the number of accidents in the city streets was alarming; but either the drivers have become more clever or the population more cautious, for of late years accidents have been rare.
In one respect,—in an attempt, at all events, to live
