At last, on 16th November, we were able to make out our long-projected excursion to Campbelton, 33 miles distant, over a tolerably good, usually somewhat flat, country, traversed by railroad in about two hours.
On our arrival at this small but most industrious village we found, awaiting our arrival, our hospitable friend, Sir W. Macarthur, who took us to his estate adjoining, called Camden Park. Sir William belongs to one of the most distinguished families in the colony, and enjoys the double reputation of being at once the most important wine-grower of Australia, and of having the best wine in his cellar.
We drove to our host's house through very pretty scenery, and thus had a fresh opportunity of satisfying ourselves of the strange inaccuracy of former travellers, who related that the leaves in Australia were of wood and the stems of iron, that the bees had no stings, the birds no wings, and hair instead of feathers, the flowers no fragrance, the birds no melody, and the trees, like so many Peter Schlemils, no shadow. Although Nature has been guilty of some few freaks both in Australia and in New Zealand, and has created some extraordinary animals, such, for example, as the duck-billed platypus (_ornithorrhynchus paradoxus_), the ant-eater, the kiwi, &c., these are but exceptions, and there are here but few differences to be remarked in either the animal or vegetable world, such as should distinguish it for extravagance beyond all other countries. In Australia there are birds that sing, and odoriferous trees and flowers in great profusion, and the forests, at those places whither the axe of the busy settler has not yet penetrated or imparted to it a park-like aspect, are as dense, as thickly clothed with underwood, and as difficult to make one's way through, as in any other quarter of the globe under a similar latitude.
Close beside the elegant residence of Sir William are extensive vineyards, to superintend which he imported German vine-dressers from the Rheingau. Each of these families has his own hut, a plot of garden ground, and in addition to rations of milk, bread, and butter, receives £25 per annum wages. When these good folks heard that strangers, compatriots of theirs, were among them, with whom they could converse in their mother-tongue, a dozen or so at once assembled to bid us welcome. Most of these betrayed a certain amount of hesitation in expressing themselves in their own language, and, like the same class in Pennsylvania, whenever they were at a loss for a word supplied it by its English equivalent. There resulted from this a most comical jargon, sometimes most grotesque in its eccentricity, as, for instance, when, on our remarking to one of these vine-dressers who had been in Australia for ten years that he seemed to have quite forgotten his German, he replied, with an air of outraged national dignity, "Oh no! _wir_ keep it _immer_ in exercise."