There it lay--the scattered, yet congested, unlovely wood and canvas settlement that was Ballarat.

At this distance, and from this height, it resembled nothing so much as a collection of child's bricks, tossed out at random over the ground, the low, square huts and cabins that composed it being all of a shape and size.

Some threads of smoke began to mount towards the immense pale dome of the sky.

The sun was catching here the panes of a window, there the tin that encased a primitive chimney.
They rode on, leaving the warmth of the early sun-rays for the cold blue shadows of the bush.

Neither broke the silence.