certainly it is the best laid out and one of the prettiest and most
conveniently situated. It nestles, so to speak, at the foot of a range of
high hills on a plain, which extends seven miles in length to the
seashore. The approach by rail from either Port Adelaide or Glenelg is
uninteresting, but directly you get out at the station the first
impression is pleasing. The streets are broad and laid out in rectangular
blocks as in Melbourne, and the white stone used for most of the
buildings makes the town look particularly bright and lively, showing off
the bustle and traffic to advantage. In the background are the hills,
while on one side is the suburb of North Adelaide, on an incline divided
from the city by a broad sheet of artificial water, running in the bed of
the river Torrens through a half-mile deep belt of 'park-lands,' which
encircle the square mile forming the city proper, and separate it from
the suburbs.

The conception of this belt of verdure, on which none but public
buildings may be erected, dividing the working part of the town from the
residential part, has always seemed to me a masterpiece of wisdom in city
planning, and hardly less admirable are the five open reserves inside the
city which serve as its lungs. Ultimately the city proper will probably
be almost entirely reserved for business purposes. Already very few
people live within the belts who can help it, although high prices are
given for sites for residences on each of the four terraces fronting the
belts. Except that Adelaide is perfectly flat, while Melbourne is built
on two sides of a valley, Adelaide may not inaptly be described in the
words of a visitor who was returning to England by the Peninsular and
Oriental route, as 'a smaller but better Melbourne.' The style of
architecture is not quite so florid, but the extreme squatness of the
buildings is far more noticeable here. It is no merely that the buildings
are actually lower, but the look lower from being built on the flat.