And there were little villages, with neat stations well placarded with showy advertisements—mainly of almost too
self-righteous brands of "sheep-dip." If that is the name—and I think it is. It is a stuff like tar, and is dabbed on to
places where the shearer clips a piece out of the sheep. It
bars out the flies, and has healing properties, and a nip to it
which makes the sheep skip like the cattle on a thousand hills.
It is not good to eat. That is, it is not good to eat except
when mixed with railroad coffee. It improves railroad coffee.
Without it railroad coffee is too vague. But with it, it is quite
assertive and enthusiastic. By itself, railroad coffee is too passive; but sheep-dip makes it wake up and get down to business.
I wonder where they get railroad coffee?
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THINGS NOT SEEN.
We saw birds, but not a kangaroo, not an emu, not an ornithorhyncus, not a lecturer, not a native. Indeed, the land seemed quite destitute of game. But I have misused the word native. In Australia it is applied to Australian-born whites only. I should have said that we saw no Aboriginals—no "blackfellows." And to this day I have never seen one. In the great museums you will find all the other curiosities, but in the curio of chiefest interest to the stranger all of them are lacking. We have at home an abundance of museums, and not an American Indian in them. It is clearly an absurdity, but it never struck me before.
