Читать книгу An Australian Ramble; Or, A Summer in Australia онлайн

10 страница из 28

Of British manufactures I see little, except the biscuits of Huntley and Palmer or Peek and Frean. I see no shops with books except the depôt of the British and Foreign Bible Society—but the people manage to live, nevertheless. Meat is but sixpence a pound. You buy beautiful oranges at a shilling a hundred. The only dear thing in the place is house-rent. Not a room is to be had under five shillings a week. Some of my fellow-passengers dined at the leading hotel, and they think, and I agree with them, that the charge was rather high. Only goats’ milk is to be had, but as to cheap wine and low-priced spirits, they are to be procured in abundance, as two of our steerage passengers find out to their cost, as we leave them behind, and some who do manage to return may be termed rather fresh. The one great drawback of Gibraltar, as regards the resident, is the absence of fresh butter. Alas! ‘man never is, but always to be blest.’ Of what avail are cheap cigars and wine and meat without fresh butter? Many have their bread buttered on both sides, and surely the humblest of us have a right to its being buttered on one, at any rate. But I may not linger, as I know the Orizaba will sail at the appointed hour; but we seem long in getting out of the crowd of boats, full of oranges and cigars, the proprietors of which are doing a roaring trade with the steerage passengers, who let down the money from the deck and receive in exchange oranges that will set them up for the rest of their journey, and away we go, leaving the Rock, at the bottom of which nestle the yellow rows of streets and houses, all with green or white lattices, whilst on its lofty head rests a drizzly cloud worthy of Devonshire itself. On the other side of us are the brown African mountains—we steer between them as the day closes in, and early in the morning I open my eyes to see afar on our left, the rocky outline of Spain, and then we lose sight of land, and can see nothing but the Mediterranean till early on Saturday morning we pass the first lighthouse on the coast of Sardinia. We are now coming to ancient history, but for that I refer the reader to Rollin, the terror of British youth in an age of which the present reader, intelligent though he may be in his way, has but a faint idea.