A LADY’S VIEWS ON ADELAIDE.

Evening Star, Issue 3617, 25 September 1874, Page 3

A LADY’S VIEWS ON ADELAIDE.

The * Pastoral Times ’ states that a lady, -writing from Adelaide to a lady friend in Riverina, thus speaks:—“ We dislike this place most cordially, and look forward with anxious longing to the day when we shall be off Cape Leuwin, never to return. We have been a good deal about the world, but I never saw a place that I would not gladly see again until I came here; but I am sure nothing would ever induce us to return here. Everything is so excessively new ! Not an old building —not even a decent tree, nothing but these old gum trees, which are half dead, and stretch out their great bare skeleton arms in the most lamentable way. The tone of mind which all this newness engenders among the ‘colonials’ is as evident as it is disagreeable : they are insolent, and wanting in anything ike courtesy, deference, or rbverence or anything noble, beyond belief, The place is America, without the glorious Puritan ancestry and heroism which the Americans have to elevate the national character (not that it has done much to elevate it, I must say). * The place is just a horrid little republic, governed by the most successful butchers, ironmongers, and publichouse keepers. Our Governor is a mere automaton, who does nothing but play at royalty, with a somewhat ludicrous effect, when one remembers that the population of the whole Colony is not more than half that of Glasgow, or any big town at Home, ft is, indeed, ridiculous to hear the talk about the Upper House and the Lower House, and to see the Governor drive down to open Parliament with half a dozen policemen behind him, and to hear people talk about the ‘ debates’—discussions which might be fairly classed with the ‘ debates of a small provincial town council at Home, The place ought to be a Crown Colony, and governed absolutely by one man, with a head on his shoulders ; it is utterly unfit to govern itself. As for its much-boasted climate, we were never in a place where we suffered So much from the bad effects of climate,' Tfye heat is terrible for si* months, and the sudden changes most trying. The thermometer was often over 100 in our drawing-room, and imagine that, without punkahs, and with bad ice, and Colonial servants.” If this lady is married, the poor husband must have a pleasant time of it.