Show the arthe hot winds of melbourne ir having mentioned in passing a hot wind let me endeavor to convey some notion of what what a hot wind I 1 really is it la early morning ai ad and as you look from your window in the suburbs of sydney you see a thin white vapor rising from the far off bush the sheep out there in the distance are congregated beneath the trees while the old cows COMB are standing knee deegin those ajaye cree creeks kapf of water that trickle from the rocks above you have hive seen all alt this thia before and know too vell lvell what it means before breakfast time there wili bely beil bell be a hot wind incomes it comes the white earth cracks as it passes over it as though it were a globe of crystal struck by some invisible and mighty hand hind the air is hot and birky as the breath from an oven and you see trees wither the fruit shrivel and drop from the vines as though the last seal were sere opened and the breath of the destroying angel had bad gone forth the cicodes seem to shrink brink 11 their shrill note Is always sotillo st 1 in hot weather and the birds drop dead from the trees the dogs in the street j le down and abd bide their dry protruding tyl I 1 ues aes ip lp the he dust higher ht hiher L her and higher rises t the mercury in th the a class glass ass until now at noon it stands at deg you stop up every keyhole e and crevice in ybur room to keep leep out the burning sirocco and endeavor perhaps to read jn in a minute stars dance before your eyes es and your 5 our temples throb like pulses of hot ezot ejot iron you allow the boohr to fall from your hands and strive to drop to sleep until the change cba aba D arrives the southerly buster 1 aa as this stange change is called generally cormea cornea early in the evening A cloud of dust the they y call all ali it in sydney a aa thicker t than any london feg fog heralds its approach a and nd moves like a compact wall across the country in a minute the temperature will sink fifty or sixty degrees and so keenly does the bodden sodden change affa affect act the system that hot toddy loddy takes the place of the eberry buerry cobbler and your great coat I 1 is S buttoned tightly around you yuu until a fire can call be lighted now if you look from your window in the direction where you saw that white vapor ascending in the morning a spectacle ca e terrible in its magnificence ice will meet your eye for miles around as far as the gaze can reach bugh buth fires are bazing you bee see the trail trait of the flame extending into the interior until it grows faint and thin along the hill tops aa as though a wounded deer had moved breedin beeding Me eding upon the road roal nearer however the sight ig Is gradd grand and awful awin and hints of the final apocalypse when the stars shall fall like those charred branches that drop with a crash and scatter a clond cloud of glowing embers them no matter where you live in adney sydney looking looking from your window across the arbor harbor into tee te surrounding bush you ou can always see eights sigus like this after a hot wind the reflection rf upon the water itself ia is very fine the emerald changes into ruby thia tuff water into thel me white sails of boats become of purple and their prows of beaten beatta gold everything see bee seems ins ing bathed in an atmosphere of romance and if the impresa impression itin were not lowered by the idea the sheets of daede daeda in the distance might be taken for the crim cruzso walls of gladdins Alad dins palace gleaming C through the woods sometimes these hot winds last for two or three days and hen then ben the effects are ate something lamentable scarcely a blade of vegetation is left in the ground the sere lere leaves fall fail f all ail from the trees as in a blast of autumn the same week that 1 I landed in sydney a hot wind lasted for four days on the last of which no less than thirty persons dropped dead in the streets af I 1 remember I 1 had a little garden to my bous and the white starred jessamine was in lph ilni flower in front of the lower windows before 13 the thi wind was over Hg remained hut lut a bunch of dry sticks kept I 1 to a the wall by b jy the tb pieces of cloth with which they southern lights ligha and shadows cr life in by fraak frank fowier fowler |