Peeps At Many Lands: Australia

ing of the English-Early explora

ent, delicately beautiful in her natural features, wonderfully rich in wealth of soil and of mine, left for many, many centuries hidden away from the life of civilization, finally

the continents is told in their rocks almost as clearly as though written in books. But Australia is very, very old as a

hemselves. That proves that for a very long time there has been no land connection between Australia and Asia; if there had been, the types of flower and of beasts would be more nearly kindred. There would be tigers and elephants in Australia and emus in Asia, and the kangaroo and other marsupials would probably have disappeared. The marsupial, it may be explained, is one of the mammalian orde

, with very high mountains facing the sea, and, where now is the great central plain, a lake or inland sea. As time wore on, the great mountains were ground down by the action of the snow and the rain and the wind. The soil which was thus made was in part carried towards the centre of the ring, and in time the sea o

s now known as Australasia. The Japanese, borrowing culture from the Chinese, framed their beautiful and romantic social system, and, having a brave and enterprising spirit, became seafarers, and are known to have reached as far as the Hawaiian Islands, more than halfway across the Pacific Ocean to Amer

mours of a great island in the Southern Seas. A writer of Chios (Greece) 300 years before the Christian era mentions that there existed an island of immense extent beyond the seas washing Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is tho

may refer to Australia; but he made no attempt to reach the land. Some old maps fill up the ocean from the East Indies to the S

t the definite discovery did not come until 1605, when De Quiros and De Torres, Spanish Admirals, sailed to the East Indies and heard of the southern continent. They sailed in search of it, but only succeeded in touching at some of the outlying island

Tasman-from whom Tasmania, a southern island of Australia, gets its name-made important discoveries as to the southern coast. He called the island first Van Diemen's Land, after Maria

e British blood, it seems, to colonize happily. The gardeners of the British race know how to "plant out" successfully. They shelter and protect the young trees in their far-away countries through the perils of infancy, and then let them grow up in healthy and vigorous independence. This wise method is borrowed from f

mpier. His reports on the new land were not very flattering. He spoke of its dry, sandy soil, a

, just a century after its first exploration by a British seaman, Australia was actually occupied by Great Britain, "the First Fleet" founding a settlement on the shor

. True, no wild animals or warlike tribes had to be faced; but vast distances of land which of itself produced little or no food for man, the long waterless stretches, the savage ruggedness of the mountains, set up obstacles far more awesome because more strange. Man had to contend, not with wild animals, whose teeth and claws he mig

e everything was exactly opposite to English conditions. There were no natural grain-crops; there were practically no food-animals good to eat. The kangaroo and wallaby provide nowadays a delicious soup (made from the tails

t different times the first settlement was in actual danger of perishing from starvation and of being abandoned i

st of Nature in Australia was perseveringly carried through, and Great Britain has the reward to-day in the existence of

HE BLUE MOUNTAIN

large

mountains were savagely wild. The explorer, following a ridge or a line of valley with patience for many miles, would come suddenly on a vast chasm; a cliff-face falling absolutely perpendicularly 1,000 feet or so would declare "No road here." Nowadays, when the Blue Mountains have been conquered, and they are traversed by roads and railways, tourists from all parts of the world find

from Windsor, about thirty miles north from Sydney. The passing of the Blue Mountains opened up to Australia the great tableland, on which the chi

ils always were of thirst and hunger. Very rarely did the blacks give any serious trouble. But many explorers perished from privation, such as Burke and Wills (who led out a great expedition from Melbourne, which was designed to cross the continent from

t Darwin, on the north coast, to Adelaide, in the south. Men lost in the Bush near to that line make for its route and cut the wire. That causes an interruption on

waterholes. The supply is scanty, and they have learned to regard the white man as wasteful and inconsiderate in regard to water. But a white explorer or traveller has been known to catch a native, and, filling his mouth with salt, to e

the "Swiss Family Robinson" made real. The little community, with its waggons and tents, its horses, oxen, sheep, dogs, perhaps also with a few poultry in one of the waggons, would have to live for many months an absolutely self-contained life. The family and its servants would provide wheelwrights, blacksm

m a larger work of mine, "Australia," an instance o

, or sign of servilit

r a job

you can go round

n hard. Perhaps you recollect me-Jim Ston

station which had not yet reached the dignity of fencing. The boss remembered that Jim Stone 'was a good sort,'

k I can put you on to some

s. Star

tanks, about thirty miles out. It's nort

Ye

k-dray out, with stores, and bring

re are the

six miles out'; he pointed indefinitely into the heat haze on the plain, where there seemed to be some trees on the horizon. 'Collar them,

here's t

l find some bar-iron and some timber at the blacksmith's shed. Knock out some y

ght-

t, grey, illimitable plain; then find the herd of milkers somewhere else in that vague vastness, and break seven of them to harness; fix up a dray

ve cleared out. That was the only real hardship, in his opinion, and the cattle had to suffer that. He was content to be surveyor, waggon-builder, blacksmit

kill a snake, find their way through the trackless forest by the sun or the stars, and cook a meal. In the cities, t

in and not help the country. And certainly in the very early days of the gold-digging rushes, much harm was done to the settled industries of the land through everybody rushing away to the diggings. Farms were abandoned, workshops deserted, the sailors left their ships, the shepherds their sh

hands could toil he tended the vineyard, and maintained his idle sons. But on his death-bed he feared for their future. So he made them the victims of a pious f

the buried treasure. They never came across any actual gold, but the good effect of their di

od by attracting people to the country in search of gold who, though

tural era began in Australia. Since then the growth of the country has been sound, and, if a little slow, sure. It has been slow because the ideal of the peo

to co