Roger Acton

“ The only idea of a god known to be enter tained by these people, is that of Buddai, a gigantic old man lying asleep for ages, with his head resting upon his arm, which is deep in the sand. He is expected one day to awake and eat up the world. They have no religion beyond those gloomy dreams. ”

“ The useful and precious metals exist in considerable quantities in each of the five provinces of Australia. New South Wales has abundance of gold, copper, iron, and coal, as well as silver, lead, and tin. The mineral riches of Victoria, though almost confined to gold, have been the main cause of her rapid progress. South Australia possesses the most valuable copper mines. Queensland ranks next to the last-named province for copper, and excels her neighbours in the production of tin, while gold, iron, and coal are also found in considerable quantities. ”

“ The honey-eaters present a great diversity of plumage. There are also many kinds of game birds, pigeons, ducks, geese, plovers, and quails. The ornithology of New South Wales and Queensland is more varied and interesting than that of the other pro vinces. As for reptiles, Australia has a few tortoises, all of one family, and not of great size. The "leathery turtle," which is herbivorous, and , yields abundance of oil, has been caught at sea off the Illawarra coast so large as 9 feet in length. The saurians or lizards are numerous, chiefly on dry sandy or rocky ground in the tropical region. ”

“ It is, nevertheless, tolerably certain that all the natives of Australia belong to one stock. There appears reason to believe that their progenitors originally landed on the north-west coast, that of Cambridge Gulf or Aruhem Land, in canoes drifting from the island of Timor. They seem then to have advanced over the continent in three separate directions. By one route they moved, in the course of ages, directly across to the south coast, near the head of the Great Bight, Spencer Gulf, and the Gulf of St Vincent. ”

“ The vulture is wanting. Sixty species of parrots, some of them very handsome, are found in Australia. The emu, a large bird of the order Cursores, or runners, corresponds with the African and Arabian ostrich, the rhea of South America, and the cassowary of the Moluccas and New Guinea. In New Zealand this order is represented by the apteryx, as it formerly was by the gigantic moa, the remains of which have been found likewise in Queensland. Of the same species as the birds of paradise is the graceful Mcenura superba, or lyre bird, with its tail feathers spread in the shape of a lyre. ”

“ None of the cereal plants are indigenous, and very few of the fruits or roots that supply human food; but many Australian plants are likely to be valuable for medicinal or chemical manufactures. This continent, as might be expected, has some of the same botanical families that occupy South Africa, Polynesia, and South America. Its relations in that respect to Europe are shown by Alphonse de Candolle s tabular statements in the Geographic Botanique Raisonnée. He gives the exact number of species common to Australia and to France in each of the principal families or natural orders. ”

“ The eastern parts of this continent, New South Wales and Queensland, are very much richer, both in their botany and in their zoology, than any other parts of Australia. Much was done here for the former science, half a century ago, by Mr Allan Cunningham, whose monumental obelisk fitly stands in the Botanic Garden at Sydney. In general, the growth of trees on the north and north-west coasts is wanting in size and regularity, compared with their growth in eastern Australia. ”

“ In eastern Australia, where no Tertiary marine deposits are met with, there are deep accumulations of drift, such as transmuted beds of the Carboniferous formation, porphyry, and basalt, and other igneous rocks, and fragments of the older Palaeozoic strata. Many of the drift streams are not only highly auriferous, but contain gems of all kinds. Diamonds, though of small size, have been taken from the Cudgegong River, near Mudgee, in New South Wales, and likewise from the Macquarie River. ”

“ Three varieties of brush-tailed opossum are found, but one of them exists only in Tasmania ; and there are three ring- tailed varieties in almost every part of Australia. The great flying phalanger (Petaurista) is nearly allied to the last-mentioned genus ; it exists only in East Australia ; as does the small flying phalanger (Belideus) , which is re stricted to mountain districts. The interior of Australia and the west coast are wanting in these species, but two or three of them occur on the north coast. The smallest phalanger (Acrobata jiygmcea) is less than a mouse, and has a feathery tail. ”

“ Australia has no apes, monkeys, or baboons, and no rumi nant beasts. The comparatively few indigenous placental mammals, besides the dingo, or wild dog which, however, may have come from the islands north of this continent are of the bat tribe and of the rodent or rat tribe. There are four species of large fruit-eating bats, called flying foxes, twenty of insect-eating bats, above twenty of land-rats, and five of water-rats. The sea produces three different seals, which often ascend rivers from the coast, and can live in lagoons of fresh water ”

“ In the more settled and inhabited provinces of Australia there are the Brisbane, the Fitzroy, and the Burdekin, rivers of Queens land ; the Glenelg River, of Victoria ; and the Swan River, of West Australia. But this continent cannot boast of a Nile, an Indus, or a Mississippi, and the interior suffers from the want of water communication.
Geology. The interior plain of Australia, enclosed by the coast mountain ranges, is a vast concave table of sand stone, with a surface area of 1,500,000 square miles. The sedimentary rock, in some parts, has been washed away or scooped out ”

“ The more rapid increase of Victoria since that time, in wealth and number of inhabitants, has gained it a pre-eminence in the esteem of emigrants ; but the varied resources of New South Wales, and its greater extent of territory, may in some degree tend to redress the balance, if not to restore the character of superior importance to the older colony. The separation of the northern part of eastern Australia, under the name of Queensland, from the original province of New South Wales, took place in 1859. ”

“ The great crocodile of Queensland is 30 feet long ; there is a smaller one, 6 feet long, to be met with in the shallow lagoons of the interior. The monitor, or fork-tongued lizard, which burrows in the earth, climbs, and swims, is said to grow to a length of 8 or 9 feet. This species, and many others, do not extend to Tasmania. There are about twenty kinds of night-lizards, and many which hibernate. One species can utter a cry when pained or alarmed, and the tall-standing frilled lizard can lift its forelegs, and squat or hop like a kangaroo. ”

“ While the southern margin of the plain consists of walls of sandstone cliffs, extending along the sea-coast, the plateau on the east, south-east, the west, and partly on the north, is bordered by terraced ramparts of mountains. These elevations consist of granite and syenite on the west side, rising from 1000 to 3000 feet in height. On the east side, in New South Wales and Gipps Land, they rise to a much greater height, attaining 7000 feet at the south-east corner in the Australian Alps. ”

“ Of these tribes the wombats are closely allied to the phalangers, represented by the opossums and flying squirrels, with the native bear, while fossil remains of twenty extinct species have also been found. Of wombats now existing there are four species, all of nearly the same size, seldom exceeding 100 tt> in weight. They all burrow in the ground, and their habitat is in New South Wales, Tasmania, and South Australia. There is but one species of the singular animal miscalled the native bear, which is more like a sloth in its habits. ”

“ It is in the quartz formations of the mountain ranges, or in those at a great depth underground, reached by the sinking of shafts and regular mining operations, that Australian gold is henceforth to be chiefly procured. There are mines in Victoria 1000 feet deep, as at Clunes, and many others from 300 to 600 feet.
The copper mines of Burra Burra, in South Australia, proved very profitable some twenty-five years ago, yielding in a twelvemonth ore to the value of 350,000, and the Moonta mines, in 1872, were scarcely less productive. ”

“ The mean annual temperature of Sydney is 62° 4′ Fahr., almost equal to that of Lisbon in Portugal. The inland plains of this colony, how ever, west of the Blue Mountains, which suffer much from evaporation, experience in summer a heat which rises to 100° Fahr. in the shade, and sometimes as high as 140°. There are highland districts, on the contrary, such as Kiandra, 4640 feet above the sea-level, where frost, snow, and hail are endured through the winter. On the Australian Alps, cold being more intense in the dry air, the limit of perpetual snow comes down to 7145 feet. ”

“ In the rat kangaroo there is not the same disproportion of the limbs ; it approaches more nearly to the bandicoot, of which seven species exist, from the size of a rat to that of a rabbit. The carnivorous tribe of marsupials, the larger species at any rate, belong more to Tasmania, which has its "tiger" and its "devil." But the native cat, or dasyurus, is common to every part of Australia. Several different species of pouched rats and mice, one or two living in trees, are reckoned among the flesh-eaters. ”

“ Canoes of bent bark, for the inland waters, are hastily prepared at need ; but the inlets and straits of the north-eastern sea-coast are navigated by larger canoes and rafts of a better construction. Without claiming permanent ownership of the land, each native tribe was accustomed, till the English squatter came, to enjoy the recognised manorial dominion of its own hunting-ground, perhaps ten or twelve miles square. This was subdivided between the chief heads of families. The affairs of a tribe are ruled by a council of the men past middle age who are still in full vigour of mind and body. ”

“ In the Australasian the forehead is higher, the under jaw less projecting, the nose, though flat and extended compared with that of the European, is less depressed than in the African. His lips are thick, but not protuberant; and the eyes are sunken, large, and black. The colour of his skin is lighter of a dusky hue than that of the Negro. In stature he equals the average European, but tall men are rare, except in North Queens land ; his body and limbs are well shaped, strongly jointed, and highly muscular. The hind parts are not, as in the African, excessively raised ”

“ In every case of death from disease or unknown causes the sorcerers hold a public inquest, and pretend to ask the corpse how it was killed. Such deaths are invariably ascribed to witchcraft practised by a hostile or envious neighbouring tribe. The bodies of the slain in battle are sometimes eaten, or the fat of the kidneys, at least, is extracted for a feast of victory. But cannibalism in Australia is not confined to the flesh of enemies, nor is it generally associated with an insulting triumph. ”

“ Baron von Müller's Report of 1857 on the researches made by him alone in the North Australian exploring expedition under Mr Gregory, exhibits 2000 new species, representing more than 800 genera, which belong to 160 different orders. He could discover no new natural order, or fundamental form of the vegetable kingdom, in a minute examination of the flora of Arnhem Land, the country around the Gulf of Carpentaria, and the Victoria River, but 60 genera were found that had not been noticed by any earlier Australian botanist. ”

“ The abundance of good iron ore, in convenient vicinity to thick beds of excellent coal, ensures a future career of manufacturing prosperity to New South Wales, and not less to Queensland. The country north and south of Sydney, and west of that city 100 miles inland to the dividing range of mountains, is all of Carboniferous formation. ”

“ PLATE III.
land is also favoured with much mineral wealth, including tin. The semi-tropical climate of the latter colony is suit able for the culture of particular crops, needing only a supply of other than European labour. Meantime South Australia, besides its production of copper and a fair share of wool, has become the great wheat-growing province of the continent. The separate colonies of Australia are still in a some what transitional state, emigration being so continuous, and the country to be yet occupied so extensive. ”

“ The population of New South Wales in 1851 was 190,000; that of Victoria, 77,000; and that of South Australia about the same. At Summerhill Creek, 20 miles north of Bathurst, in the Macquarie plains, gold was discovered, in February 1851, by Mr E. Hargraves, a gold-miner from California, The intelligence was made known in April or May ; and then began a rush of thousands, men leaving their former employments in the bush or in the towns to search for the ore so greatly coveted in all ages. ”

“ A probable computation of the whole number of distinct vegetable species indigenous to Australia and Tasmania has been made by Baron Ferdinand von Miller, the Government botanist at Melbourne. He believes that, omitting the minute fungi, there will not be found above 10,000 species of Australian plants. ”

“ If a general view be taken of the tribes of Australia, and the state in which they existed independently of recent Euro pean intercourse, two or three extraordinary defects exhibit themselves. They never, in any situation, cultivated the soil for any kind of food-crop. They never reared any kind of cattle, or kept any domesticated animal except the dog, which probably came over with them in their canoes. They have nowhere built permanent dwellings, but con tented themselves with mere hovels for temporary shelter. ”