Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/161

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

hero of that particular voyage of the "Sonoma.". . . This has been as hot a day as I have ever experienced anywhere, and the tea-drinking has been enormous. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon we were attracted by a sign reading, "Strawberries and cream," and the place was crowded with women shoppers drinking tea. No one was buying ice-cream, or the "American soda-water" advertised, but all were drinking tea; every woman was served with a pot, and usually she drank two cups. This is the universal rule here; tea in the afternoon. When we went back to the hotel, the girl clerk was taking her afternoon tea, which had been brought to her from the kitchen. By-the-way, business is picking up at the Grand Central; thirty-one came in to luncheon today. The hotel could easily accommodate three hundred. All the other hotels we have visited have been crowded. Before I leave Adelaide I must ask some one what the trouble is with the Grand Central. Perhaps one trouble is, it has rooms with baths, and other up-to-date improvements. . . . The best exhibit at the Adelaide zoölogical garden is the roses; I doubt if the famous rose show at Portland, Oregon, can show a greater variety or finer flowers. It seems to me that one-half of the area of Adelaide is taken up with parks, zoölogical gardens, botanical gardens, hospitals, museums, playgrounds, and other public utilities, and in the mountains not far away is a national park of thousands of acres. The people here do not neglect exercise or amusement. You see almost as many people in the parks on Monday as on Sunday. . . . Another peculiarity here is that in all small orchestras the flute is used instead of the clarinet. I