Excerpt from Bluff Stakes Launceston, dainty premier city of Northern Tasmania, lay in the shadow of oncoming night. Summer had passed; the muggy heat of cloudless days was giving place to crisp April mornings and the bracing conquest of the autumn Winds. Rains beating in from the south-west had stilled the air and coaxed the parched bills to something of their former comeliness. Westwards, across the wide sweep of the coastline, where the undulating reaches of the foreshore lay open to the sea, the brown plains and windswept hollows of the more sparsely settled areas were experiencing to the full the cool comfort of the heat's remission. But in the city itself, set forty miles from the seaboard, and ringed about by Tiers of low hills, the air was still close and sultry. As the darkness deepened this oppressiveness seemed somehow intensified. Even the placid waters of the River Tamar, gleaming like a mirror from its framing of shadowed bush, reflected something of the night' s inherent discomfort. There was a suggestion of almost melancholy 1n the abortive fluttering of the evening breeze. From the roadway which climbed between the terraced houses on Trevallyn, the heart of the little city, pricked with tiny illuminations, as spangles upon the garment of the drowsing earth, appeared faintly outlined below. One by one the more familiar landmarks became merged with the dusk. Windmill Hill, the Sand-hills, the curve of white roadway abutting upon the Gorge Bridge, the delicate silhouette of tower and steeple - night caught and subdued them by turn. And so on to the Western Tiers of hills whose pencilled outlines seemed almost at one with the wide arc of the night sky. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.