Following the Equator eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 703 pages of information about Following the Equator.

Following the Equator eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 703 pages of information about Following the Equator.

               Sweet Nangwarry’s desolate, Coonamble wails,
               And Tungkillo Kuito in sables is drest,
               For the Whangerei winds fall asleep in the sails
               And the Booleroo life-breeze is dead in the west.

               Mypongo, Kapunda, O slumber no more
               Yankalilla, Parawirra, be warned
               There’s death in the air! 
               Killanoola, wherefore
               Shall the prayer of Penola be scorned?

               Cootamundra, and Takee, and Wakatipu,
               Toowoomba, Kaikoura are lost
               From Onkaparinga to far Oamaru
               All burn in this hell’s holocaust!

               Paramatta and Binnum are gone to their rest
               In the vale of Tapanni Taroom,
               Kawakawa, Deniliquin—­all that was best
               In the earth are but graves and a tomb!

               Narrandera mourns, Cameron answers not
               When the roll of the scathless we cry
               Tongariro, Goondiwindi, Woolundunga, the spot
               Is mute and forlorn where ye lie.

Those are good words for poetry.  Among the best I have ever seen.  There are 81 in the list.  I did not need them all, but I have knocked down 66 of them; which is a good bag, it seems to me, for a person not in the business.  Perhaps a poet laureate could do better, but a poet laureate gets wages, and that is different.  When I write poetry I do not get any wages; often I lose money by it.  The best word in that list, and the most musical and gurgly, is Woolloomoolloo.  It is a place near Sydney, and is a favorite pleasure-resort.  It has eight O’s in it.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do. 
                                  —­Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.

Monday,—­December 23, 1895.  Sailed from Sydney for Ceylon in the P. & O. steamer ‘Oceana’.  A Lascar crew mans this ship—­the first I have seen.  White cotton petticoat and pants; barefoot; red shawl for belt; straw cap, brimless, on head, with red scarf wound around it; complexion a rich dark brown; short straight black hair; whiskers fine and silky; lustrous and intensely black.  Mild, good faces; willing and obedient people; capable, too; but are said to go into hopeless panics when there is danger.  They are from Bombay and the coast thereabouts.  Left some of the trunks in Sydney, to be shipped to South Africa by a vessel advertised to sail three months hence.  The proverb says:  “Separate not yourself from your baggage.”

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Following the Equator from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.