not pay to carry them long distances on men's
backs, as most of the smuggled articles are carried.

Albury stands on the bank of the Murray River, five hundred and
thirty-one feet above the sea; it is about three hundred miles from the
source of that stream, and six hundred above its mouth. During the rainy
season, when the Murray is at its height, steamers run up to Albury, but
ordinarily the river is not navigable to that place. As our friends
drove along the edge of the stream, below the two bridges which span it,
they saw a small steamboat tied up at the bank, and having an
appearance of idleness about it. They stopped the carriage for a few
moments to inspect the boat, and found that it had been left there by a
sudden fall of the river, and was waiting for the next flood to come.

"It is a very light draft steamboat," said Harry in his notebook; "and
makes me think of those they talk about in the western part of the
United States, that can run on a heavy dew, or where a man goes ahead of
them with a sprinkling pot. It is a side-wheel boat, the wheels being
very large, but not dipping far into the water. The engine seems rather
small for such a large pair of wheels, but I suppose the boat was not
built for speed so much as for general utility. She has a saloon over
the engines, with cabins opening out of it, and there are quarters on
the main deck for the officers and crew. The rooms in the upper cabin
are intended for passengers, and as there are only ten of them on each
side, you can readily understand that the accommodations are limited.
They told me that the steamer was built at one of the towns lower down
the river, her engines having been made in Adelaide, and brought
overland to the place where the hull was constructed. They also told me
that the first steamer which ever ascended the Murray was named the
_Albury_, and arrived in the year 1855. I infer, from the name of the
boat, that it was owned by people living here, but on that point my
informant was unable to say anything definite."

When the party returned to the hotel for dinner, they were regaled with
a fish which was new to them. At Melbourne they had fish from the sea
almost daily, but when visiting the cattle and sheep stations they had
none at all, for the reason that no fish were to be obtained in those
localities, and it would be an expensive matter to bring them there from
the sea with the strong probability of their being unfit for eating at