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grotesque angles or lay prostrate beside the uncertain road. On the left, the travellers discerned a large isolated building partially collapsed. Broken masonry and up-jutting, ragged timber; roofs which sprawled upon, the ground or straddled the walls which had supported them; goods trucks, on a private siding, half-buried in debris which had fallen from the sheds beside them, combined to make a picture of utter desolation. It gave the impression that destruction had come from above instead of from the earth.

The railway track, which here ran beside the road, was twisted and useless. Weird bends and waves in the rails defied man’s most ingenious locomotive to negotiate them. A railway bridge was in a dangerous state of collapse.

The ominous clouds ahead changed slowly from red to black, from black to grey, as the sun came up. Rolling grey billows which rose heavily and spread like a pall over the burning towns. The air was charged with choking dust, an eerie fog which veiled the terrible brown gashes in the distant hills.

The car moved ever more slowly now—riding uneasily over a road which had become dangerous,—a single link in a chain which jerked and rattled northwards, swept by slowly drifting banks of fog and fouled with dust and smoke.

Ever more frequent were the southward-bound vehicles; and when the light had fairly come they formed a procession almost as continuous as that which proceeded north. Refugees fleeing from the place of death in fear; tourists, thankful for their preservation, moving to the next town in their itinerary days ahead of their schedule; commercial travellers abroad at an unearthly hour in the course of duty; crippled humans, making their way in agony to the nearest hospital.

Also, were many afoot. Men pushing wheelbarrows laden with household goods; women pushing perambulators in which delighted children laughed.