CHAPTER XIV.
We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard; but our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that.
-- Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
My health had broken down in New York in May; it had remained in a doubtful but fairish condition during a succeeding period of 82 days; it broke again on the Pacific.

It broke again in Sydney, but not until after I had had a good outing, and had also filled my lecture engagements.

This latest break lost me the chance of seeing Queensland.
In the circumstances, to go north toward hotter weather was not advisable.
So we moved south with a westward slant, 17 hours by rail to the capital of the colony of Victoria, Melbourne--that juvenile city of sixty years, and half a million inhabitants.

On the map the distance looked small; but that is a trouble with all divisions of distance in such a vast country as Australia.

The colony of Victoria itself looks small on the map--looks like a county, in fact--yet it is about as large as England, Scotland, and Wales combined.