to avoid the delays and extortions of the
steamboat, or the boatmen of William's
Town.

At Liardet's Beach, the two sailors, having
learned to build in wood, built up a large
shed, called a store, for the storage of
passengers' boxes, cases, and bales, who were
going to the Diggings. In the town a shilling
a week was charged for each box and package.
The sailors at once undersold the town, and
chalked up "Ninepence a week!" Moreover,
as they caught the passengers directly on
landing, and in the full excitement of "being
off to the gold-fields," they soon had abundance
of customers. They took payment for
a month in advance—to save trouble, or
change of mind. They took no responsibility;
they demanded cash for six weeks in advance,
where the boxes were very large, and
apparently of no great value in contents. They
did not guarantee against robbers, fire, water,
or other casualty which might damage,
destroy, or lose property; and they stipulated,
as labour was so scarce (being at times
impossible to obtain), that passengers wanting
their luggage out of the store, should "get it
out themselves." The passengers, in full
drive of imagination, agreed to anything—
they little foresaw what work the last
stipulation might involve, as the chests,
packages, and bales were all to be packed up
solid, one on the top of the other.

Our two sailors have only started their
store a week, and they are one-third full.
This shed, when as full as it will hold—i.e.,
packed up solid—at the rate of ninepence
a week each box, bale, &c., will produce them
an income of one hundred and twelve pounds
a week—more, if there are a preponderance
of small packages. Our sailors are, therefore,
about to build another store. They have
discovered that there are various means of
making money in Australia, with much less
labour, greater profit, and with far more
certainty than digging.

COUNTRY NEWS.

Now and then there is delivered to me by
the faithful postman a newspaper, published
in some unknown part of England—known
perhaps to somebody, but to me as Timbuctoo
—within which I find, carefully coiled up,
a communication from the Postmaster-
General. This communication is to the
effect, that several newspapers having
escaped from their covers that morning, they
had been recaptured, and an attempt had
been made to restore them to their proper
places; but that if the paper sent to me didn't
happen to be the right one, the Postmaster-
General deprecated malediction on my part,
since the blame lay with my friends and not
with him. I never once in my life did get
the right newspaper in company with such
an intimation. I blame nobody, but I put it
to the Postmaster-General, how he would
himself have liked it, living out of town, if,
when he expected to receive the Times
containing Mr. Gladstone's Budget, there had
been put into his hands the Kelso Warder
of the previous week.

Instead of a paper that I love, which comes
to me dotted over with small ships from a
great seaport town, there was brought to me
one day last week the Brocksop, Garringham,
and Washby Standard. I never in my life
was near Brocksop, Garringham, or Washby,
and I know no creature living within twenty
miles of any of those places. The desire to
project itself into the unknown is one of the
grandeurs of the human soul; I plunged at
once into the Brocksop, Garringham, and
Washby Standard, craving to learn something
about Brocksop, Garringham, and Washby.
"Let me," I said, ''know the ways and wants
of people who inhabit those remote regions
of England. They are my countrymen, and
why should we be strangers to each other?
Of strange places, moreover, I may hear
strange news."

So I folded the paper suitably, and nursed
it on my knee, and thought I would begin
with the large early gooseberries and the
small paragraphs. I felt at first a little timid
at the prospect of getting over head and ears
into a deep article, and I said, "I will paddle
and not plunge into this paper." So I began
with a RARA AVIS, whereof there came news
from Biddesham. For some classical reasons
I had always supposed a rara avis to be a
blackbird as big as a swan. I found,
however, that the R. A. at Biddesham was like
a skylark. These two little paragraphs
led me on hopefully to the next below
them, which, to be sure, looked rather dull
and political, being headed The Coffee
Question—People's Question. It led through
some serious reflections to a shop of which
I had read before in a discourse upon
adulterations; and, as its coffee is of a kind which
I suppose nobody praises but its manufacturer,
I took that laudatory article to be an emanation
from the counting-house, paid for in due
course out of the till. In this opinion I was
strengthened by the fact, that the next
article was on the subject of Pectoral Candy,
and the next below was an account of a
surprising cure of Asthma of eighteen years standing,
with wasting of the flesh. Thinking it an
odd remedy for asthma to thin down the
sufferer, I read that article, and found that I had
totally misunderstood. Mr. Johnson has for
the last four years been, he says—I quote his
own words—been "so distressingly bad, that
if I attempted to lie down I was in fear of
being suffocated, and I became almost a
skeleton from loss of flesh." The almost
suffocated skeleton being given up last month
—only last month—by his medical man, "was
recommended to give Doodle's Asthmatic
Balsam a trial." He bought a bottle ot
Mr. Binharn, chemist of his town, only last