Читать книгу Rambles in Australia онлайн

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The party that had been so long companions split up and were scattered. The writer of these lines became for an hour or so more single than any of them, for business took him at once into Perth, where he had to find Reuter’s Agency. So looking back, and sorting out his recollections, he remembers first the friendly host that met him and walked to the railway station at Fremantle; and after that the Swan River shining in the starlight as the train crossed it; and after that nothing but the soft Australian night stealing in through the open carriage windows and seeming to come through whispering trees—until the train drew up at the lighted terminus of Perth. And Perth? In the darkness it was much like any other town at which one should arrive at night. Not like Paris, where, as a Frenchwoman in Bâle once said to us, at ten o’clock “Ça commence,” nor yet like London, where, in times of peace, the streets are still open-eyed. But not unlike a provincial town; with some shops still brightly lighted, though most of them and the office buildings, are shut; a town with lights, but not lit; and with streets that are kept awake only by the street lamps. Through one such street I tracked down the office I sought, receiving much friendly aid by the way; and finally arriving at it in company with the publisher’s clerk of the Perth newspaper.