tombstones marks the site of the city of the dead. These look like the great white bones of stranded whales bleaching and glistening in the sun. To the extreme right a fine stately mass of warm-tinted buildings flanks the city, and affords a charming relief to the eye, as it crowns the low eminence on which it is set. This is Government House, and round about it, encompassing it with a band of silver, steals the gently flowing Derwent, winding past a broken chain of wooded bluffs, which terminate the vista in a confused mist of leafy luxuriance.
We are now nearing the massive wharf. There is timber enough in the structure to make a dozen of our modern wharves. What an old-world look the place has! Many of the houses are built of red bricks, the roofs are brown with lichen, and wrinkled with old age. And yet there is an absence of life and a want of energy and bustle. Lots of badly-dressed young hoodlums loll about, leaning against the great stacks of shingles (Hobart palings) which are piled up in vast quantities ready for export. Of these are the fruit-cases made, which take away the wealth of the orchards, for which the island is famous—groups of young girls saunter about arm-in-arm; queer old habitués, clad in quaint garments of antique cut, hobble about and exchange nautical observations with each other. Several dismantled whalers lie at their moorings, and the huge warehouses hem in the scene—silent, deserted, empty.
"There ain't no spurt about the place!"
