Foot-prints of travel; or, Journeyings in many lands . on which the foot of a white man has never trod. Tar-tary has its steppes, America its prairies, Egypt its des-erts, and Australia its scrub. The plains, so called, arecovered by a low-growing bush, compact and almost im-penetrable in places, composed of a dwarf ajDpearance of a large reach of this scrub is deso-late indeed, the underlying soil being a sort of yellow sandwhich one would surely think could produce nothing else ;yet, wherever this land has been cleared and properly irri-gated it has proved to be remarkably fer
Foot-prints of travel; or, Journeyings in many lands . on which the foot of a white man has never trod. Tar-tary has its steppes, America its prairies, Egypt its des-erts, and Australia its scrub. The plains, so called, arecovered by a low-growing bush, compact and almost im-penetrable in places, composed of a dwarf ajDpearance of a large reach of this scrub is deso-late indeed, the underlying soil being a sort of yellow sandwhich one would surely think could produce nothing else ;yet, wherever this land has been cleared and properly irri-gated it has proved to be remarkably fertile. All of these colonial cities have botanical gardens, inthe cultivation and arrangement of which much skill andscientific knowledge is displayed. In that of Adelaide wesee the Australian bottle-tree, which is a native of thiscountry only. It receives its name from its resemblancein shape to a junk-bottle. This tree has the property ofstoring water in its hollow trunk, — a well-known fact,which has often proved a providential supply for thirsty. yOURNEYINGS IN MANY LANDS. 57 travellers in a country so liable to severe drought. Here,also, we see the correa, with its stiff stem and prickly-leaves, bearing a curious string of delicate, pendulousflowers, red, orange, and white, not unlike the fuchsia inform. The South Sea myrtle is especially attractive, ap-pearing when in flower with round clustering bunches ofbloom, spangled with white stars. The styphelia, a heath-like plant, surprises us with its green flowers. We areshown a specimen of the sandrach-tree, brought fromAfrica, which is almost imperishable, and from which theMohammedans invariably make the ceilings of theirmosques. The Indian cotton-tree looms up beside theSouth American aloe — this last, with its thick, bayonet-like leaves, is ornamented in wavy lines like the surface ofa Toledo blade. The grouping of these exotics, nativesof regions so far apart on the earths surface, yet quitedomesticated here, forms an
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade188, booksubjectvoyagesaroundtheworld
