The road was cream-white--a clayey kind of earth, apparently.
Along it toiled occasional freight wagons, drawn by long double files of oxen.

Those wagons were going a journey of two hundred miles, I was told, and were running a successful opposition to the railway! The railways are owned and run by the government.
Those sad gums stood up out of the dry white clay, pictures of patience and resignation.

It is a tree that can get along without water; still it is fond of it--ravenously so.

It is a very intelligent tree and will detect the presence of hidden water at a distance of fifty feet, and send out slender long root-fibres to prospect it.

They will find it; and will also get at it even through a cement wall six inches thick.