CHAPTER VIII

Summary

After driving for some miles nearly all up-hill, we stayed to breakfast at a small way-side public-house, where the slovenly slipshod women, dirty floors, and a powerful odour of stale tobacco-smoke, gave me no very favourable expectations of cleanliness or comfort. On the smoke-stained walls hung some very highly coloured and showily framed prints, representing young gentlemen with red cheeks and very blue coats trying to look very hard at young ladies in pink gowns with very large sleeves; and severally inscribed, “The Faithful Lovers;” “The Betrothed;” “The False One,” &c.; ingenious distinctions of character, which it would have been extremely difficult to discover from the portraits alone.

In many places you find some particular dish more generally in vogue than others, but in New South Wales one universal reply follows the query of “What can you give us to eat?” and this is, “'Am an' eggs, Sir;” “mutton-chops” forming the usual accompaniment, if required. So ham and eggs we had, and mutton-chops too; but from their being fried all together, in the same dark-complexioned fat, the taste of these viands was curiously similar, and both of impenetrable hardness. Unless great care is taken, meat spoils so soon in this climate, that the custom among most persons is to cook it almost as soon as killed, which of course precludes the possibility of its being tender.