and peculiarities as offer a strong contrast to modes of life in England.
It was a long while before I became accustomed to the change of seasons, and I seemed to lose my count of time with the absence of the landmarks (if such an expression may be permitted) that record its flight in the other hemisphere. There was even a feeling of inappropriateness about the Sunday lessons, which in the old country, long habit makes to harmonize with certain states of weather. For instance, the first morning lesson on the Ninth Sunday after Trinity seems well-timed at home, occurring as it does in the middle of summer, and increasing, by its apparent fitness to the season, our interest in the description of Ahab and Obadiah going different ways in their search for water; whereas on the southern side of the world the chapter falls due in the rainy season, and perhaps on that particular Sunday the children would bring me word that, as they came over the bridge to school, they had seen that "the river was beginning to run," an event which was brought about only by many successive days of rain.
But never did the weather seem so little in accordance with our feelings as at Christmas, when the heat was so great as to make all exertion a burden, excepting in the early hours of the morning. To this circumstance I attribute the little notice which that season of joy receives in Western Australia as compared with the acclamations that welcome it in northern countries; and though the traditional bill of fare is strictly adhered to, and the neglect of it would be esteemed an affront to
