"it would be really worth your while to go up that road."
So up that road I went, but saw nothing but one dreary waste of mud, where once had been one of the finest, if not THE finest, macadamised roads in the country. From Parramatta to Penrith, I splashed my way through mud and rain, the one requiring all my attention to pilo: my steed, the other totally confining the range of vision to the fences or few houses that here and there bordered the road. Penrith seemed to me, so far as I had opportunity of looking at it, very much the same, as it wag when I saw it ten years back. It is a neat place enough in fine weather, but was then half under water, and the other half under mud, and of course under such circumstances looked neither comfortable nor pretty. The next morning, the weather was fine when I started, though the heavy clouds that hung around seemed to threaten mischief at no very distant period. Crossing the bridge over the Nepean and paying six- pence for the privilege to a shoeless urchin who swung himself down from an overhanging fence to take it from me, and then spit upon it for luck, I crossed Emu Plains, and commenced the ascent of Lapstone Hill. Many a tourist, many a newspaper scribe have gone before me on this route, and have described the frowning rocks that overhang the roadway on the one side, and the dark precipitous gullies that descend abruptly from it on the other; and consequently it would be a needless task on my part to attempt to draw a picture of this vast work of former days -- even if I were able. As it happens, however, I can do nothing of the kind; for, as if out of spite to me, I being exceedingly anxious to see some of the magnificent views that ore to be behold from different points of the route, Dame Nature drew a dark watery curtain before my eyes and cut me off from an inspection of anything but the rolling mists that came seething up from the depths below -- like -- like -- like some weekly washing day in. Pandemonium -- if ever such a thing occurs there. Looking down all was cloud rolling and twisting in untiring convolutions, whilst here and there the tree tops would now become visible, and now be lost in vapour as the watery curtain moved and shifted in its increasing course. The opposite hills were dim and indistinct, looking even farther off than they were from the uncertain view obtained of them; and the whole thing put together, with the fine rain and cold driving wind that found out all the button holes and crevices of one's dress, through which to torment the traveller, made one of the most grand and uncomfortable pictures that a graphic writer could well depict. Much time or opportunity was not however given me to look about me, for I had to pick my way very carefully, the mud in the road-way being up to the horse's knees, and through this, in some places, even the horseman is compelled to go; and so bad was the travelling that I thought I had done exceedingly well, when, after a long day's journeying, I found I had got over five and twenty miles of ground. I slept that night at an inn in about as bleak a spot as could have been well selected; and thanks to a broken pane of glass in my bedroom, found myself addressing everybody in a whisper, my voice having dwindled down to a most attenuated thread of sound. Through rain and mud the next day, I pushed along doggedly, being blessed, however, with one temporary gleam of sunshine just as I reached Mount Victoria, by which I was afforded a glance at the beautiful Vale of Clwyd. The mountains here, instead of coming down steeply and abruptly, as on their eastern face, take long graceful sweeps into the valley. On the more level ground farms are scattered here and there, the recently tilled land, looking either jet black or emerald green, as the sowing had been recent or otherwise; whilst through the trees, thinned out and of small growth, the cattle are seen dotted here and there, and giving a rural air to the picture. Down the face of the mount, and along the edge of the valley, the road descends almost in a straight line, seeming to terminate in what appears in the distance, a beautiful little English looking village, but which, on a closer acquaintance, becomes a mass of mud. This is the village of little Hartley, but why