"I mounted and rode on. At the end of half a mile the track began to
dip more steeply, and finally emerged by a big clearing and the two
marble pillars of which Hewson had spoken; and here I tethered the
brown horse, and had a look around before walking down into
Eucalyptus. Within the clearing a few groups of Norfolk pines had
been left to stand, and between these were burial lots marked out and
numbered, with here and there a painted wooden cross; but the
inhabitants of this acre were few enough. Behind and above the
'Necropolis' the hill rose steeply; and there, high up, were traces
of the disused cinnabar mines--patches of orange-coloured earth
thrusting out among the pines.

"The road below the cemetery ran abruptly down for a bit, then heaved
itself over a green knoll and descended upon what I may call a very
big and flat meadow beside the river. It was here that Eucalyptus
stood; and from the knoll, which was really the beginning of the
town, I had my first good view of it--one long street of low wooden
houses running eastward to the river's brink, where a few decayed
mills and wharves straggled to north and south--a T, or headless
cross, will give you roughly the shape of the settlement. From the
knoll you looked straight along the main street; with a field-gun you
could have swept it clean from end to end, and, what's more, you
wouldn't have hurt a soul. The place was dead empty--not so much as
a cur to sit on the sidewalk--and the only hint of life was the
laughing and banjo-playing indoors. You could hear that plain
enough. Every second house in the place was a saloon, and every
saloon seemed to have a billiard-table and a banjo player. I never
heard anything like it. I should say, if you divided the population
into four parts, that two of these were playing billiards, one