present time. Everybody is talking about the time it is going to rain again or the time it is hoped it is go- ing to rain again. It was possible to see at one place a great many thousands of sheep that were all fenced off waiting to be sheared. They are evidently the ones whose wool will be sent on the first shipments in the holds of the Port Huron, the Tricolor and the other fast foreign freighters we saw anchored in the harbor of Sydney. The names which the Australians take for their business firms are the funniest things in the world. One of the butcher stores we passed on the road was called Meat Ltd., while another firm supplying power to one of the townships bore the name of Electricity Ltd. We raced the Katoomba Express over the moun- tains into Katoomba and defeated her badly. The scenery follows the line of the old East Australian Zigzag Rail- way.. This railway, according to the driver, is used as a sample of engineering schools all over the world to point out how in one piece of work all the aggregate professional mistakes in survey and design, execution and construction, can be accumulated. It was affection- ately called the Death Trap and was abandoned eighteen years ago after 51 per cent of all its patrons had been killed or mutilated. Had a very good lunch in the only hotel at Katoomba, an attractive town in the heart of the Blue Mountains, and afterwards walked down the main street eating ladyfingers to the great consternation of the