we had dressed and were ready to go and
breakfast at the comfortable railway hotel. There was just time for a
satisfactory talk about arrangements for future movements before
eleven o'clock, when the Mayor arrived to take us, in quite a
procession of buggies, to the hospital. Here Doctor Macdonald met us,
and I was put into a chair and carried through the various wards of an
excellently planned and perfectly ventilated building. Everything
looked scrupulously clean, and the patients appeared happy and well
cared for. Several instances were pointed out to me by Doctor
Macdonald in which the St. John Ambulance would have been of great
use. I heard of one case of a man who had come down 200 miles with a
broken leg, no attempt having been made to bandage it up. The poor
fellow arrived, as may easily be imagined, with the edges of the bone
all ground to powder and the tissues surrounding it much destroyed.
Then there was another case of an arm broken in the bush, and the poor
man lying all night in great agony; and again of another stockman who
crushed his knee against a tree while riding an unbroken horse. The
instances are too numerous to mention where the knowledge of how to
make the best of the available means of relief and transport would
have saved much needless suffering. There were some good rooms for
convalescent patients, besides paying wards.

Everything looked bright, cheerful, and sunny except the ophthalmic
wards, which, if I may use such an expression, displayed an agreeable
gloom. Here, all was painted dark green, and the system of ventilation
seemed quite perfect, for air without light was admitted and the
temperature equalised, this being an important factor in bad cases.
Ophthalmia appears to be quite a curse in Australia, as we have
already found to our cost, through Tom's suffering from it. There were
nice shady verandahs to this part of the hospital, and comfortable
chairs for the patients to sit and lounge in, besides a pretty garden.
Not far off, in the compound, stood the various quarters for the
nurses and servants, and the dead-house, and dissecting-room, with
other necessary though painful adjuncts to a hospital. The doctor's
cheerful bungalow, also near, was surrounded by a pretty garden.

A rough drive over a bad road took us to the Botanical Gardens, which
are enclosed by the most charming fence I have ever seen; or rather by
a fence made beautiful by the luxuriant creepers growing over it. A