We got on the train yesterday evening at five o'clock, and it wants yet another four hours to complete our journey of 725 miles. Not that the trains are slow, but that the road is so difficult, and one would have said impracticable for a railroad had it not been done. Starting at sea level we made a con- page 23 tiunous ascent till we reached a height of nearly 5,000 feet. All day long we have been in the hills, up and down; round and about the curves on the high table land. Only now are we beginning the descent into the plains, the train constantly doubling on itself so that we see to the right of us the road we have left behind, and to the left our brave little engine ahead, making light work of the downward way.

And all the way the eucalyptus has kept us company. It was the last thing I saw in the growing darkness, which hid from us all the world beyond our small compartment. I distinguished it clearly by star-light as I looked out in the early hours of the morning, and now I can just make out the peculiar form, which struck me so when first I saw it at Madeira seventeen years ago, against the blue sky of evening. Sometimes it is little more than a tall shrub, sometimes here and there thinly scattered, sometimes a thick forest stretching up hill and down dale as far as the view extends. Now and then there is a small "township," built for the most part of corrugated iron, and in the neighbourhood clearings and homesteads, often little more than the barest shelter, and by the stations great wool sheds, where the farmers store their fleeces—but everywhere is the eucalyptus. Withered and bare through some old bush fire; killed by the ring which has been cut in its bark to make its fall the easier when the axe comes round to it; stretching bare white arms to heaven as if imploring pity; or showing its graceful form clothed in never-failing green; in many varieties and variously page 24 faring, it appears everywhere. Some complain of its monotony, its almost gloomy green; but the more I see of it the better I like it, and if there is missing here the charm of our English spring and autumn foliage, it is amply made up for by a never-fading summer. And now, too, the monotony begins to be relieved by the dull red bloom which tinges all the tree tops. Yet I doubt whether people are not the poorer for missing even the winters—the cold and mist and darkness of our English clime.

Since I began this letter I have received from the Chapel Treasurer the resolution which you passed at the Annnal Meeting. Of course it is very grateful to me to be assured of your sympathy and good wishes, and though I never doubted that I was possessed of them, yet it is good for us both that the feeling you so kindly entertain should be put into words and stand written in our records. If I were to draw up a proper acknowledgement in reply, I am afraid it would seem either cold and formal; or else, if I tried to express what I feel towards you all, the words would fail me to put it with due restraint and sufficient fulness. My life is identified with Mill Hill Chapel, and every year that passes draws the tie the closer.

G. H.