y are not
absolutely imperative, you had better postpone them.'

"Ned and I overheard what he said and wondered what a burster was. We
said nothing, however, as we expected to find out by practical
experience.

"All through the forenoon the barometer continued to fall. The sky
remained clear until a little past noon, and the wind blew gently from
the northeast as before. Suddenly we saw a white cloud rolling up from
the northeast and spreading over the heavens until they were completely
covered. Masses of dust came with the wind, which increased in force for
a time and then lulled a little.

"Suddenly the wind went around to the south and blew a gale, yes, a
hurricane. It started off at about thirty miles an hour, but before it
ended its visit it was blowing fully seventy miles an hour, at least
that is what the papers said next day. I am told it sometimes reaches a
velocity of one hundred miles an hour, and has even been known to exceed
one hundred and forty miles. These tremendous winds do a great deal of
damage. They drive ships ashore or overwhelm them at sea; they devastate
fields and forests and level a great many buildings.

"The barometer fell rapidly in the forenoon, as I have mentioned; it was
the thermometer's turn in the afternoon. The mercury stood at about
ninety degrees Fahrenheit in the middle of the forenoon, and it remained
so until the wind chopped around to the south. An hour after the change
of wind it stood at seventy degrees, and an hour later at fifty. I am
told that it sometimes drops thirty degrees in half an hour, but such
occurrences are unusual.

"This is a good place to say that sudden changes in the temperature are
very common in Australia, and that the change from midday to midnight is
far greater than any to which we are accustomed in the United States.
When we have a change of twenty or thirty degrees in a single day we
regard it as unusual. What would you say to one hundred and ten degrees
at noon and fifty degrees at midnight? This is quite common in the
interior of Australia and not at all infrequent on the coast.

"The thermometer runs very high in this country, and it is not at all
rare for it to indicate one hundred and twenty-five or one hundred and
thirty degrees Fahrenheit. One traveler has a record of one hundred and
thirty-nine degrees in the shade and one hundred and seventy-two in the
sun. I am told that in South Melbourne the thermometer once made an
official record