g these were women from the shores of the
river and harbor, with baskets of cut-flowers for the Sydney market.
They were all neatly dressed, bright-looking girls and women, as rosy as
their lovely wares. Some of them had two long light frames of wire which
they carried in each hand, and in the openings of which were double
rows of flowers, enabling each girl to carry a score and more of
bouquets. These were glowing with morning freshness imparted by "some
sweet mystery of the dew," and were composed of camellias in three or
four colors, lilies of the valley, blue violets, and tea-roses, with
sheltering borders of maiden's-hair fern and other varieties of green.
All these were of out-door growth. Truly, flowers are appreciated,
cultivated, and loved all over the world; even here in Eldorado they
delight the eye with their beauty and the senses with their fragrance.

A brief day devoted to a trip from Sydney to the town of Parametta will
well repay the visitor; and to vary the scene one should go thither by
steamboat and return by the Sydney and Bathurst Railroad. This excursion
gives one a better idea of the harbor in detail than can be acquired in
any other manner. The comfortable little passenger-boat skirts the shore
and winds among the small islands, stopping at many of them to land or
to take up passengers. These islands are clotted with villas and
cottages, each having a two-story veranda, generally decked with vines,
and all overlooking the bay. The boat passes under a picturesque iron
bridge painted white, which crosses an arm of the sea. Skilled oarsmen
are constantly pulling up and down the Parametta River in their long,
pointed, egg-shell boats, for here is the famous boat-race course.
Verdant and well-wooded lawns of exquisite green sweep grandly down to
the water's edge. Orange and lemon trees, with here and there a group
of bananas and other tropical plants, bend gracefully over the tide. Now
and again the Australian ivy beautifies the shore, creeping over the
quaint little cottages and bursting out at times in clouds of yellow
blossoms on rocky promontories and gently swelling knolls. One
recognizes also the scarlet nasturtium and beds of soft blue violets
intermingling with fragrant jonquils. The lily of the valley, forgetting
that it is winter here, opens its bell-like blossom of snowy-white and
fills the whole air with dainty sweetness. The green and striped aloe
grows wild in clusters affording variety