n carried in their
canisters was melted, and all their dogs destroyed.

The scourge of Australia is _drought_; and when a native of the British
Islands has lived a few years in that part of the world, he begins
to understand and feel better than he ever before did, the frequent
allusions in the holy Scriptures to water as an emblem and sign of the
greatest blessings. The Englishman in Australia soon learns what is
meant by the blessings of Christ's kingdom being compared to "rivers of
water in a dry place," or to "the shadow of a great rock in a weary
land,"[167] when that rock promises a spring of living water, a comfort
which in New Holland is occasionally found upon the bare top of a
mountain, where no other supply is to be had within thirty miles
round.[168] And the thankfulness of the inhabitants of our own green
islands may be awakened, the undue expectations of the English emigrant
may be checked, by reading complaints like the following, which are, at
intervals, only too well founded in many parts of the Australian
colonies. "We have now for upwards of four months been watching with
anxious interest the progress of every cloudy sky; but, overcast as the
heavens most usually are towards evening, the clouds have appeared to
consist more of smoky exhalations than moist vapours; and even when at
times they have seemed to break darkly over us, their liquid contents
have apparently evaporated in the middle air. The various arrivals in
our port (Port Macquarie) have brought us accounts of genial showers and
refreshing dews, which have visited the neighbouring districts; and even
the silence of our own parched coast has been broken by the sound of
distant thunderstorms, exhausting themselves on the eastern waves while
the sun has been setting in scorching splendour upon the horizon of our
western hills. Since the 30th of June last to the present date, October
28th, there have been but thirteen days with rain, and then the showers
were but trifling. In consequence, the surface of the ground, in large
tracts of the district, is so parched and withered, that all minor
vegetation has nearly ceased, and the wheat-crops that were sown in
June, are, we fear, doomed to perish."[169]

[167] See Isaiah xxxii. 2. The following proverbial saying in India may
serve to show how natural such comparisons are in the mouths of the
inhabitants of hot climates: "Ah, that benevolent man, he has long been
my shelter from the wind; h