There are red-coated men taking the bags of mail from red wagons which have just come from our steamer, and other red wagons dash past us on their way to the trains.

The Post Office has many branches. We can see the signs over the doors. There is a postal savings bank, and next door are telegraph and telephone departments. All such things are under the government, the Australians believing that they should be managed at the lowest possible cost for the people. The government controls the railroads, and many of the cities own their street cars and give quite a long ride for two cents.

That great building up the street is the town hall, where the mayor and other city officials have their offices. It also contains an audience room for public amusements, where every week one can attend a concert free of charge. The city keeps an organist to play for the people, and it owns one of the largest organs of the world. The organ has nine thousand pipes, some as high as a three-story house and some as short as a pin and almost as small. In other cities we shall find similar halls, Melbourne having one with an organ that cost thirty-five thousand dollars.

There goes a party of boys in uniforms with flat bats in their hands. One is throwing up a ball and catching it as he runs. That is one of the cricket clubs of Sydney, and its members are on their way to play a match with the crack team of Melbourne. Let us follow and have

a look at the game. We find thousands of people at the playground. There are other clubs playing in different parts of the field, and as we go from one to another we hear nothing but talk about sports.

The Australians are a sporting people, and almost every

man, woman, and child gives a part of each week to play. Sydney has several thousand acres of parks devoted to public amusements, and in Melbourne alone there are one hundred parks and a dozen grounds especially for football and cricket. Cricket is the favorite game here. It holds about the same place that baseball does with us.

Coming back to the city, we visit the Domain, a park of about one hundred acres right in the heart of Sydney, facing the harbor. It is the most popular of all pleasure grounds here, being especially full upon Sundays, when any one who wishes can speak upon any subject if he can get the people to listen. There are no signs warning us to keep off the grass, and we roll over and over on the sod, rejoicing that our travels south of the Equator have turned winter to summer, and that all is so fresh and green when the snow covers the earth at our home.

OUR COLONIES-2

3. SHEEP AND WOOL IN AUSTRALIA

'HE annual sheep show is going on in Sydney. The

THE

city is full of squatters, as the farmers are called, and we can see sheep from all parts of the continent and from Tasmania and New Zealand as well. Sheep so thrive in this latitude that Australasia, made up of Australia and its neighboring islands, is one of the best sheep-rearing places upon earth. The two great sheep-rearing centers of the world are situated at about the same distance south of the Equator. Look on your map and you will see where they are. On one side of the globe is Australasia and on the other Argentina in South America. Argentina has a climate much like that of Australia, and it vies with it in fine sheep and wool.

Sheep farming is carried on in almost every settled part of the continent. Some of the stations, as such farms are called, are so large that it would take us several days to ride around one on horseback, and a single field often contains eight hundred acres, or more than five ordinary American farms.

One hundred sheep is quite a large flock in parts of our country. In New South Wales there are several men who each own one hundred thousand sheep, and one who has more than one million, or enough, supposing each sheep to weigh one hundred pounds, to give a slice of mutton to every man, woman, and child in our country and leave plenty over for a stew for our whole nation next day.

Australasia has all together one hundred million sheep,

so many that if they could be driven four abreast along the Equator, they would form a woolen belt about the waist of old Mother Earth; or, if shorn, would furnish sufficient wool to make a suit of clothes for every one of her American children, with many fragments for patches.

A woolen belt about the waist of old Mother Earth."

This great industry has grown up since the continent was discovered. There were no sheep here when Captain Cook landed, but shortly after settlements were established, some Spanish merinos were brought in. They did well and formed the start for the immense flocks of to-day.

Suppose we take the cars for the Agricultural Grounds. where the sheep show is held. We hear the bleating and baaing before we reach there, and we follow the sound.

We come at last to a great building whose floor is divided up into pens so built along aisles that we can

easily go to any part of it. There are seven hundred sheep in the building, and each has its own pen well bedded with straw. Some of the animals have blue or red ribbons about their necks. They are the ones that have taken the prizes.

What fine sheep they are! I venture to say you never saw so much wool on animals before. Take this prize ram! Don't be afraid he will butt you!

He is a gentle