The Reach alwa3rs slept ; for nearly twelve miles it



We of the Never-Never 8i

lay, a swaying garland of heliotrope and purple water-
lilies, gleaming through a graceful fringe of palms and
rushes and scented shrubs, touched here and there with
shafts of sunlight, and murmuring and rustling with an
attendant host of gorgeous butterflies and flitting birds
and insects.
Dan looked on the scene with approving eyes. " Not a
bad place to ride through, is it ? " he said. But gradually
as we rode on a vague depression settled down upon us,
and when Dan finally decided he " could do with a bit more
sunshine," we followed him into the blistering noontide
glare with almost a sigh of relief.
It is always so. These wondrous waterways have httle
part in that mystical holding power of the Never-Never,
They are only pleasant places to ride through and —
leave behind ; for their purring slumberous beauty is
vaguely suggestive of the beauty of a sleeping tiger : — a
Bleeping tiger with deadly fangs and talons liidden under
a wonder of soft allurement ; and when exiles in the
towns sit and dream, their dreams are all of stretches of
scorched grass and quivering sun-flecked shade.
