If Major Buckley thought Alice beautiful as he had seen her in the morning, he did not think her less so when she was seated on her beautiful little horse, which she rode gracefully and courageously in a blue riding-habit, and a sweet little grey hat with a plume of feathers hanging down on one side.
The cockatoo was on the doorstep to see her start, and talked so incessantly in his excitement that, even when the magpie assaulted him and pulled a feather out of his tail, he could not be quiet. Sam"s horse, Widderin, capered with delight, and Sam"s dog, Rover, coursed far and wide before them, with a joyful bark.
So the three went off through the summer"s day, through the grassy flat, where the quaff whirred before them and dropped again as if shot; across the low-rolling forest land, where a million parrots fled whistling to and fro, like jewels in the sun; past the old stockyard, past the sheep-wash hut, and then through forest which grew each moment more dense and lofty, along the faint and narrow track that led into one of the most abrupt and romantic gullies that pierce the Australian Alps.
Adapted from Geoffrey Hamlyn, a novel by Henry KingsleyAuthor.-Henry Kingsley (1839-1876), brother of Charles Kingsley, who wrote Westward Ho! Henry wrote Geoffrey Hamlyn-from which this piece is taken-and Ravenshoe, the former of which divides with Robbery Under Arms the honour of being probably the best Australian novel yet written.
General.-Where is the scene laid? What makes you think so? What persons are mentioned? What birds and beasts are mentioned? Where are the Australian Alps? Tracing the course of the ride-grassy and flat low forest, clearing, high forest, steep gully-say whether the trend was up-hill or down-hill. What gives the extract its joyous character?
