Many monographs on Miss Austen have been written, in addition to the authorizedLifeby her nephew J.E. Austen Leigh in 1870, and the collection of herLettersedited by Lord Brabourne in 1884. The chief books on her and around her areJane Austen, by S.F. Malden (1889);Jane Austen, by Goldwin Smith (1890);Jane Austen: Her Contemporaries and Herself, by W.H. Pollock;Jane Austen: Her Homes and Her Friends, by Constance Hill (1902);Jane Austen and Her Times, by G.E. Mitton (1905);Jane Austen’s Sailor Brothers, by J H. and E.C. Hubback (1906); and the essay on her in Lady Richmond (Thackeray) Ritchie’sBook of Sibyls(1883).
Many monographs on Miss Austen have been written, in addition to the authorizedLifeby her nephew J.E. Austen Leigh in 1870, and the collection of herLettersedited by Lord Brabourne in 1884. The chief books on her and around her areJane Austen, by S.F. Malden (1889);Jane Austen, by Goldwin Smith (1890);Jane Austen: Her Contemporaries and Herself, by W.H. Pollock;Jane Austen: Her Homes and Her Friends, by Constance Hill (1902);Jane Austen and Her Times, by G.E. Mitton (1905);Jane Austen’s Sailor Brothers, by J H. and E.C. Hubback (1906); and the essay on her in Lady Richmond (Thackeray) Ritchie’sBook of Sibyls(1883).
(E. V. L.)
AUSTERLITZ(CzechSlavkov), a town of Austria, in Moravia, 15 m. E.S.E. of Brünn by rail. Pop. (1900) 3145, mostly Czech. It contains a magnificent palace belonging to the prince of Kaunitz-Rietberg, and a beautiful church.
The great battle in which the French under Napoleon I. defeated the Austrians and Russians on the 2nd of December 1805, was fought in the country to the west of Austerlitz, the position of Napoleon’s left wing being almost equi-distant from Brünn and from Austerlitz. The wooded hills to the northward throw out to the south and south-west long spurs, between which are the low valleys of several rivers and brooks. The scene of the most important fighting was the Pratzen plateau. The famous “lakes” in the southern part of the field were artificial ponds, which have long since been drained. On the west or Brünn side of the Goldbach is another and lower ridge, which formed in the battle the first position of the French right and centre. On the other wing is the mass of hills from which the spurs and streams descend: here the Olmütz-Brünn road passes. The road from Brunn to Vienna, Napoleon’s presumed line of retreat, runs in a southerly direction, and near the village of Raigern (3 m. west of Monitz) is very close to the extreme right of the French position, a fact which had a great influence on the course of the battle. (The course of events which led to the action is described underNapoleonic Campaigns.) Napoleon, falling back before the advance of the allied Austrians and Russians from Olmütz, bivouacked west of the Goldbach, whilst the allies, holding, near Austerlitz, the junction of the roads from Olmutz and from Hungary, formed up in the valleys east of the Pratzen heights. The cavalry of both sides remained inactive, Napoleon’s by express order, the enemy’s seemingly from mere negligence, since they had 177 squadrons at their disposal. Napoleon, having determined to fight, as usual called up every available battalion; the splendid III. corps of Davout only arrived upon the field after a heavy march, late on the night of December 1st. The plan of the allies was to attack Napoleon’s right, and to cut him off from Vienna, and their advanced guard began, before dark on the 1st of December, to skirmish towards Telnitz. At that moment Napoleon was in the midst of his troops, thousands of whom had made their bivouac-straw into torches in his honour. The glare of these seemed to the allies to betoken the familiar device of lighting fires previous to a retreat, and thus confirmed them in the impression which Napoleon’s calculated timidity had given. Thus encouraged, those who desired an immediate battle soon gained the upper hand in the councils of the tsar and the emperor Francis. The attack orders for the 2nd of December (drawn up by the Austrian general Weyrother, and explained by him to a council of superior officers, of whom some were hostile, the greater part indifferent, and the chief Russian member, General Kutusov, asleep) gave the five columns and the reserve, into which the Austro-Russian army was organized, the following tasks: the first and second (Russians) to move south-westward behind the Pratzen ridge towards Telnitz and Sokolnitz; the third (Russian) to cross the southern end of the plateau, and come into line on the right of the first two; the fourth (Austrians and Russians under Kolowrat) on the right of the third to advance towards Kobelnitz. An Austrian advanced guard preceded the 1st and 2nd columns. Farther still on the right the 5th column (cavalry under Prince John of Liechtenstein) was to hold the northern part of the plateau, south of the Brunn-Olmutz road; across the road itself was the corps of Prince Bagration, and in rear of Liechtenstein’s corps was the reserve (Russians under the grand-duke Constantine). Thus, the farther the four main columns penetrated into the French right wing, the wider would the gap become between Bagration and Kolowrat, and Liechtenstein’s squadrons could not form a serious obstacle to a heavy attack of Napoleon’s centre. The whole plan was based upon defective information and preconceived ideas; it has gone down to history as a classical example of bad generalship, and its author Weyrother, who was perhaps nothing worse than a pedant, as a charlatan.
Napoleon, on the other hand, with the exact knowledge of the powers of his men, which was the secret of his generalship, entrusted nearly half of his line of battle to a division (Legrand’s) of Soult’s corps, which was to be supported by Davout, some of whose brigades had marched, from Vienna, 90 m. in forty-eight hours. But the ground which this thin line was to hold against three columns of the enemy was marshy and densely intersected by obstacles, and the III. corps was the best in theGrande Armée, while its leader was perhaps the ablest of all Napoleon’s marshals. The rest of the army formed in the centre and left. “Whilst they march to turn my right,” said Napoleon in the inspiriting proclamation which he issued on the eve of the battle, “they present me their flank,” and the great counterstroke was to be delivered against the Pratzen heights by the French centre. This was composed of Soult’s corps, with Bernadotte’s in second line. On the left, around the hill called by the French the Santon (which was fortified) was Lannes’ corps, supported by the cavalry reserve under Murat. The general reserve consisted of the Guard and Oudinot’s grenadiers.
The attack of the allies was begun by the first three columns, which moved down from their bivouacs behind the Pratzen plateau before dawn on the 2nd, towards Telnitz and Sokolnitz. The Austrian advanced guard engaged at daybreak, and the French in Telnitz made a vigorous defence; both parties were reinforced, and Legrand drew upon himself, in fulfilling his mission, the whole weight of the allied attack. The contest was long and doubtful, but the Russians gradually drove back Legrand and a part of Davout’s corps; numerous attacks both of infantry and cavalry were made, and by the successive arrival of reinforcements each side in turn received fresh impetus. Finally, at about 10A.M., the allies were in possession of the villages on the Goldbach from Sokolnitz southwards, and Davout’s line of battle had reformed more than a mile to rearward, still, however, maintaining touch with the French centre on the Goldbach at Kobelnitz. Between the two lines the fighting continued almost to the close of the battle. With 12,500 men of all arms the Marshal held in front of him over 40,000 of the enemy.
In the centre, the defective arrangements of the allied staff had delayed the 4th column (Kolowrat), the line of march of which was crossed by Liechtenstein’s cavalry moving in the opposite direction. The objective of this column was Kobelnitz, and the two emperors and Kutusov accompanied it. The delay had, however, opened a gap between Kolowrat and the 3rd column on his left; and towards this gap, and the denuded Pratzen plateau, Napoleon sent forward St Hilaire’s division of Soult’s corps for the decisive attack. Kutusov was pursuing this march to the south-west when he was surprised by the swift advance of Soult’s men on the plateau itself. Napoleon had here double the force of the allies; Kutusov, however, displayed great energy, changed front to his right and called up his reserves. The French did not win the plateau without a severe struggle. St Hilaire’s (the right centre) division was fiercely engaged by Kolowrat’s column, General Miloradovich opposed the left centre attack under Vandamme, but the French leaders were two of the best fighting generals in their army. The rearmost troops of the Russian 2nd column, not yet committed to the fight on the Goldbach, made a bold counter stroke against St Hilaire’s right flank, but were repulsed, and Soult now turned to relieve the pressure on Davout by attacking Sokolnitz. The Russians in Sokolnitz surrendered, an opportune cavalry charge further discomfited the allied left, and the Pratzen plateau was now in full possession of the French. Even the Russian Guard failed to shake Vandamme’s hold. In the meanwhile Lannes and Murat had been engaged in the defence of the Santon. Here the allied leaders displayed the greatest vigour, but they were unable to drive back the French. The cavalry charges in this quarter are celebrated in the history of the mounted arm; and Kellermann, the hero of Marengo, won fresh laurels against the cavalry of Liechtenstein’s command. The French not only held their ground, but steadily advanced and eventually forced back the allies on Austerlitz, thereby barring their retreat on Olmütz. The last serious attempt of the allies in the centre led to some of the hardest fighting of the day; the Russian Imperial Guard under the grand-duke Constantine pressed closely upon St Hilaire and Vandamme on the plateau, and only gave way when the French Guard and the Grenadiers came into action. After the “Chevalier Guards” had been routed by Marshal Bessières and the Guard cavalry, the allies had no more hope of victory; orders had already been sent to Buxhöwden, who commanded the three columns engaged against Davout, to retreat on Austerlitz. No further attempt was made on the plateau, which was held by the French from Pratzen to the Olmütz road. The allied army was cut in two, and the last confused struggle of the three Russian columns on the Goldbach was one for liberty only. The fighting in Telnitz was perhaps the hardest of the whole battle, but the inevitable retreat, every part of which was now under the fire of the French on the plateau, was terribly costly. Soult now barred the way to Austerlitz, and the allies turned southward towards Satschan. As they retreated, the ice of the Satschan pond was broken up by the French artillery, and many of the fugitives were drowned. In the twelve hours from 7A.M.to nightfall, the 65,000 French troops had lost 6800 men, or about 10%; the allies (82,500 engaged) had 12,200 killed and wounded, and left in the enemy’s hands 15,000 prisoners (many wounded) and 133 guns.
AUSTIN, ALFRED(1835- ), English poet-laureate, was born at Headingley, near Leeds, on the 30th of May 1835. His father, Joseph Austin, was a merchant of the city of Leeds; his mother, a sister of Joseph Locke, M.P. for Honiton. Mr Austin was educated at Stonyhurst, Oscott, and London University, where he graduated in 1853. He was called to the bar four years later, and practised as a barrister for a short time; but in 1861, after two comparatively false starts in poetry and fiction, he made his first noteworthy appearance as a writer with a satire calledThe Season, which contained incisive lines, and was marked by some promise both in wit and observation. In 1870 he published a volume of criticism,The Poetry of the Period, which was again conceived in a spirit of satirical invective, and attacked Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold and Swinburne in no half-hearted fashion. The book aroused some discussion at the time, but its judgments were extremely uncritical. In 1881 Mr Austin returned to verse with a tragedy,Savonarola, to which he addedSoliloquiesin 1882,Prince Luciferin 1887,England’s Darlingin 1896,The Conversion of Winckelmannin 1897, &c. A keen Conservative in politics, for several years he editedThe National Review, and wrote leading articles forThe Standard. On Tennyson’s death in 1892 it was felt that none of the then living poets, except Swinburne or William Morris, who were outside consideration on other grounds, was of sufficient distinction to succeed to the laurel crown, and for several years no new poet-laureate was nominated. In the interval the claims of one writer and another were much canvassed, but eventually, in 1896, Mr Austin was appointed. As poet-laureate, his occasional verses did not escape adverse criticism; his hasty poem in praise of the Jameson Raid in 1896 being a notable instance. The most effective characteristic of Mr Austin’s poetry, as of the best of his prose, is a genuine and intimate love of nature. His prose idylls,The Garden that I loveandIn Veronica’s Garden, are full of a pleasant, open-air flavour, which is also the outstanding feature of hisEnglish Lyrics. His lyrical poems are wanting in spontaneity and individuality, but many of them possess a simple, orderly charm, as of an English country lane. He has, indeed, a true love of England, sometimes not without a suspicion of insularity, but always fresh and ingenuous. A drama by him,Flodden Field, was acted at His Majesty’s theatre in 1903.
AUSTIN, JOHN(1790-1859), English jurist, was born on the 3rd of March 1790. His father was the owner of flour mills at Ipswich and in the neighbourhood, and was in good circumstances. John was the eldest of five brothers. One of his brothers, Charles (1799-1874), obtained great distinction at the bar. John Austin entered the army at a very early age; he is said to have been only sixteen. He served with his regiment under Lord William Bentinck in Malta and Sicily. He seems to have liked his profession, and to have joined in the amusements and even in the follies of his brother officers. Yet it appears from a journal kept by him at the time that he occupied himself with studies of a far more serious kind than is common amongst young officers in the army. He notes having read in the course of one year Dugald Stewart’sPhilosophical Essays, Drummond’sAcademical Questions, Enfield’sHistory of Philosophy, and Mitford’sHistory of Greece, and upon all of these he makes observations which disclose much thought and a capacity for criticism which must have come from extensive reading elsewhere. The prevailing note of this journal is one of bitter self-depreciation. He says in it that the retrospect of the past year (1811) “has hardly given rise to one single feeling of satisfaction,” and farther on he says that “indolence, always the prominent vice of my character,” has “assumed over me an empire I almost despair of shaking off.” It is difficult to believe that a man only just of age, whose serious reading consisted of such books, and who (as appears from the same journal) was in the habit of turning to the classics as an alternative, could have deserved the reproach of indolence.
In 1812, he resigned his commission in the army, and returned home. He then began to read law in the chambers of a barrister. He was called to the bar in the year 1818, and joined the Norfolk circuit, but he never obtained any large practice, and he finally retired from the bar in 1825. In 1819 he married Sarah Taylor (seeAustin, Sarah).
Although Austin had failed to attain success at the bar it was not long before he had an opportunity of exercising his abilities and in a manner peculiarly suited to his particular turn of mind. In 1826 a number of eminent men were engaged in the foundation of University College, and it was determined to establish in it a chair of jurisprudence. This chair was offered to Austin and he agreed to accept it. As he was not called upon to begin his lectures immediately, he resolved to proceed to Germany in order to prepare himself for his duties by studying the method of legal teaching pursued at German universities. He resided first at Heidelberg, and afterwards at Bonn, where he lived on terms of intimacy with such distinguished lawyers as Savigny and K.J.A. Mittermaier; and such eminent men of letters as Niebuhr, Brandis, Schlegel and A.W. Heffter. He began lecturing in 1828, and at first was not without encouragement. His class was a peculiarly brilliant one. It included a number of men who afterwards became eminent in law, politics and philosophy—Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Charles Buller, Charles Villiers, Sir Samuel Romilly and his brother Lord Romilly, Edward Strutt afterwards Lord Belper, Sir William Erie and John Stuart Mill were all members of his class. All of these have left on record expressions of the profound admiration which the lectures excited in the minds of those who heard them. But the members of his class, though exceptional in quality, were few in number, and as there was no fixed salary attached to the professorship, Austin could not afford to remain in London, and in 1832 he resigned. In that year he published hisProvince of Jurisprudence determined, being the first ten of his delivered lectures compressed into six.
There is ample testimony that Austin’s lectures were very highly appreciated by those who heard them. Their one fault was that they were over-elaborated. In his desire to avoid ambiguity, he repeats his explanations and qualifications to an extent which must have tired his hearers. Nevertheless the lectures excited an admiration which almost amounted to enthusiasm. Nor was Austin’s influence confined to his lectures. Sir William Erle says in a letter written to him in 1844, “The interchange of mind with you in the days of Lincoln’s Inn I regard as a deeply important event in my life, and I ever remember your friendship with thankfulness and affection.” John Stuart Mill, whose views on political subjects were entirely opposed to those of Austin, spoke of him after his death as the man “to whom he (Mill) had been intellectually and morally most indebted,” and he expressed the opinion “that few men had contributed more by their individual influence, and their conversation, to the formation and growth of the most active minds of the generation.”
In 1833 a royal commission was issued to draw up a digest of criminal law and procedure. Of this commission Austin was a member. The first report was signed by all the commissioners, and was presented in June 1834. Nevertheless it appears from some notes made at the time that Austin, though he thought it his duty to sign the report, strongly objected to some passages which it contained. It is pretty obvious from the nature of these objections that nothing would have satisfied him short of a complete recasting of the criminal law, whereas what the commissioners were ordered to produce was not a code but a digest. Probably Austin felt, as Mr Justice Wills felt some years later, that the anomalies which a code would remove would “choke a digest.”
In 1834 the benchers of the Inner Temple appointed Austin to give lectures on the “General Principles of Jurisprudence and International Law.” He delivered a few lectures in the spring of that year, but in June the course was by order of the benchers suspended on account of the smallness of the attendance, and it was never resumed. He then went to live with his wife and only child Lucie (afterwards Lady Duff-Gordon) at Boulogne. Here he remained for about a year and a half. He then accepted an appointment offered him by Sir James Stephen to go as royal commissioner to Malta in conjunction with Mr (afterward Sir George) Cornewall Lewis, to inquire into the nature and extent of the grievances of which the natives of that island complained.
The Austins remained in Malta until July 1838. After their return they lived a good deal abroad, and in 1844 they settled in Paris, where they remained until driven out of France by the revolution of 1848. They then took a house at Weybridge, and there Austin remained until his death in December 1859. He was urged by his friends to publish a second edition of theProvince of Jurisprudence, which was then out of print, and he went so far as to allow a prospectus to be issued by Mr Murray of an extended work on “The Principles and Relations of Jurisprudence and Ethics.” But nothing came of it.
In 1842 Austin published in theEdinburgh Reviewan attack upon Friedrich List’s system of trade protection (Das nationale System der politischen Okonomie). And in 1859 he published a pamphlet entitled “A Plea for the Constitution.” This was occasioned by the publication of Lord Grey’s essay on “Parliamentary Government.” Its main object was to show that the consequences to be anticipated from Parliamentary Reform were all of them either impossible of realization or mischievous. He thought any attempt on the part of the poorer classes to improve their position was barred by the inexorable laws of political economy; and that if they obtained power they would only use it to plunder the rich; whilst, on the other hand, he seems not to have had any suspicion that the “proprietary class” were likely to disregard the interests of the poor. He thinks that political power is safest in the hands of those possessed of hereditary or acquired property; and that without property even intelligence and knowledge afford no presumption of political capacity. Undoubtedly Austin was a utilitarian in the Benthamite sense, and remained so to the end of his life. It must be remembered that Bentham’s sole and immutable test of human action was the greatest happiness of the greatest number. This is a principle which an aristocrat may adopt if he chooses, no less than a democrat; an individualist no less than a socialist; and there is nothing in the “Plea for the Constitution” which contravenes this. But Austin thought, and in this no doubt he differed from Bentham, that the mass of the people did not know their own interests so well as “an aristocracy of independent gentlemen” who might be trusted to provide for the wants of all classes alike.
Austin’s position as a jurist is much more difficult to estimate. Twice his influence appeared likely to produce some impression upon English law, but upon both occasions it lasted only a short time, and never extended very far. The men whom he influenced were very eminent, but in numbers they were few. As a rule, students for the bar never at any time paid any attention to his teaching. The first published lectures were almost forgotten when Mr (afterwards Sir Henry) Maine was appointed to lecture on jurisprudence at the Inner Temple. Both in his private and public lectures Maine constantly urged upon his hearers the importance of Austin’s analytical inquiries into the meaning of legal terms. He used to say that it was Austin’s inquiries which had made a philosophy of law possible. Undoubtedly Maine’s influence revived for a short time the interest in Austin’s teaching. Maine was lecturing about the time of Austin’s death, and in 1861 Mrs Austin published a second edition of theProvince of Jurisprudence, and this was followed soon after by two volumes which contained in addition in a fragmentary form the remaining lectures delivered at University College and other notes (Lectures on Jurisprudence; or The Philosophy of Positive Law).
It cannot be said that Austin’s views of jurisprudence have had, as yet, any visible influence whatever on the study of English law. But if we consider what it was that Austin endeavoured to teach, it can hardly be said that the subject is one which a lawyer can with impunity neglect. He proposes todistinguish law from morals; to explain the notions which have been entertained of duty, right, liberty, injury, punishment and redress; and their connexion with, and relations to, sovereignty; to examine the distinction between rightsin remand rightsin personam, and between rightsex contractuand rightsex delicto; and further to determine the meaning of such terms as right, obligation, injury, sanction, person, thing, act and forbearance. These are some of the terms, notions and distinctions which Austin endeavoured to explain. They are daily in the mouth of every practising lawyer. The only portion of Austin’s work which has attracted much attention of recent years is his conception of sovereignty, and his dictum that all laws properly so called must be considered as sanctioned expressly or tacitly by the sovereign. This has been indignantly denied. It has been considered enough to justify this denial to point out that there are in existence states where the seat of sovereignty, and the ultimate source of law, cannot be accurately indicated. But this criticism is entirely misplaced; for as pointed out by Maine (Early History of Institutions, Lecture xii.), in an elaborate discussion of Austin’s views, which in the main he accepts, what Austin was engaged upon was not an inquiry into the nature of sovereignty as it is found to exist, but an inquiry into what was the connexion between the various forms of political superiority. And this inquiry was undertaken in order to enable him to distinguish the province of jurisprudence properly so called from the province of morality; an inquiry which was hopeless unless the connexion just stated was clearly conceived. Austin’s views of sovereignty, therefore, was an abstraction, useless it is true for some purposes, but by no means useless for others. “There is,” as Maine says, “not the smallest necessity for accepting all the conclusions of these great writers (i.e.Bentham and Austin) with implicit deference, but there is the strongest necessity for knowing what these conclusions are. They are indispensable, if for no other object, for the purpose of clearing the head.” These last words exactly express the work which Austin set himself to do. It was to clear his own head, and the heads of his hearers, that he laboured so hard. As Austin once said of himself, his special vocation was that of untying intellectual knots. The disentangling of classifications and distinctions, the separation of real from accidental distinctions, the analysis of ideas confusedly apprehended, these (as has been truly said) were the characteristics of Austin’s work which specially distinguished him. Austin thought that this somewhat irksome task was a necessary preliminary both to the study of law as a science, and to the production of a code. It is a curious reflection that whilst the lectures in which these inquiries were begun (though not completed) excited the admiration of his contemporaries, hardly any one now thinks such inquiries worth pursuing.
TheLectures on Jurisprudencewere reviewed by J.S. Mill in theEdinburgh Reviewof October 1863, and this review is republished in Mill’sDissertations and Discussions, vol. 3, p. 206. Professor Jethro Brown has published (1906) an edition of Austin’s earlier lectures, in which they are stated in an abbreviated form. There is a sketch of his life by his widow in the preface to theLectures on Jurisprudence, which she published after his death.
TheLectures on Jurisprudencewere reviewed by J.S. Mill in theEdinburgh Reviewof October 1863, and this review is republished in Mill’sDissertations and Discussions, vol. 3, p. 206. Professor Jethro Brown has published (1906) an edition of Austin’s earlier lectures, in which they are stated in an abbreviated form. There is a sketch of his life by his widow in the preface to theLectures on Jurisprudence, which she published after his death.
(W. Ma.)
AUSTIN, SARAH(1793-1867), English author, was born in 1793, the daughter of John Taylor (d. 1826), a wool-stapler and a member of the well-known Taylor family of Norwich. Her great grandfather, Dr John Taylor (1694-1761), had been pastor of the Presbyterian church there, and wrote a once famous polemical work onThe Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin(1738), which called forth celebrated treatises by Jonathan Edwards onOriginal Sin. Her mother, Susannah Cook, was an exceedingly clever woman who transmitted both her beauty and her talent to her daughter. Their friends included Dr Alderson and his daughter Mrs Opie, Henry Crabbe Robinson, the Gurneys and Sir James Mackintosh. Sarah Taylor married in 1820 John Austin (q.v.). They lived in Queen Square, Westminster, where Mrs. Austin, whose tastes, unlike her husband’s, were extremely sociable, gathered round her a large circle, Jeremy Bentham, James Mill and the Grotes being especially intimate. She received many Italian exiles, who found a real friend in her. In 1821 was born her only child, Lucie, afterwards Lady Duff-Gordon. Mrs. Austin never attempted any considerable original work, contenting herself chiefly with translations, of which the most important are theHistory of the Reformation in Germanyand theHistory of the Popes(1840), from the German of Leopold von Ranke,Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia(1834) from the French of V. Cousin, and F.W. Carove’sThe Story without an End(1864). After her husband’s death in 1859 she edited hisLectures on Jurisprudence. She also edited theMemoirs of Sydney Smith(1855) and Lady Duff-Gordon’sLetters from Egypt(1865). She died at Weybridge on the 8th of August 1867.
SeeThree Generations of Englishwomen(1888), by her grand-daughter, Mrs Janet Ross.
SeeThree Generations of Englishwomen(1888), by her grand-daughter, Mrs Janet Ross.
AUSTIN, STEPHEN FULLER(1793-1836), American pioneer, was born in Austinville, Wythe county, Virginia, on the 3rd of November 1793. He was the son of Moses Austin (1767-1821), a native of Durham, Connecticut, who in 1820 obtained from Mexico a grant of land for an American colony in Texas, but died before he could carry out his project. The son was educated in New London, Connecticut, and at Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky, and settled in Missouri, where he was a member of the territorial legislature from 1813 to 1819. In 1819 he removed to Arkansas Territory, where he was appointed a circuit judge. After his father’s death he obtained a confirmation of the Texas grants from the newly established Mexican government, and in 1821-1823 he established a colony of several hundred American families on the Brazos river, the principal town being named, in his honour, San Felipe de Austin. He was a firm defender of the rights of the Americans in Texas, and in 1833 he was sent to the city of Mexico to present a petition from a convention in Texas praying for the erection of a separate state government. While there, despairing of success for his petition, he wrote home recommending the organization of a state without waiting for the consent of the Mexican congress. This letter falling into the hands of the Mexican government, Austin, while returning home, was arrested at Saltillo, carried as a prisoner back to Mexico, and imprisoned for a year without trial. Returning to Texas in 1835, he found the Texans in armed revolt against Mexican rule, and was chosen commander-in-chief of the revolutionary forces, but after failing to take San Antonio he resigned the command, for which he had never considered himself fitted, and in November 1835 went to the United States as a commissioner to secure loans and supplies, and to learn the position the United States authorities would be likely to take in the event of a declaration of Texan independence. He succeeded in raising large sums, and received assurances that satisfied him that Americans would look with great favour on an independent Texas. Returning to Texas in the summer of 1836, he became a candidate, rather reluctantly, for the presidency of the newly established republic of Texas, but was defeated by Samuel Houston, under whom he was secretary of state until his sudden death on the 7th of December 1836.
SeeA Comprehensive History of Texas, edited by D.G. Wooten (2 vols., Dallas, 1898).
SeeA Comprehensive History of Texas, edited by D.G. Wooten (2 vols., Dallas, 1898).
AUSTIN,a city and the county-seat of Mower county, Minnesota, U.S.A., on the Red Cedar river and Turtle creek, (by rail) 105 m. S. of Minneapolis and 100 m. from St Paul. Pop. (1900) 5474; (1905, state census) 6489 (913 foreign-born); (1910, U.S. census) 6960. It is served by the Chicago Great Western and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways. Austin is the seat of the Southern Minnesota Normal College and Austin School of Commerce (1896), and has a Carnegie library, court house and city hall. It is a market for livestock, and for dairy and farm products, and has slaughtering and packing establishments, flour mills, creameries and cheese factories, canning and preserving factories, carriage works, a flax fibre mill and grain elevators. Brick, tile, sewer-pipe, and hydraulic cement are manufactured, and there are railway repair shops. A valuable water-power is utilized for manufacturing purposes. Fresh-water pearls of considerable valueand beauty are found in the Red Cedar river. The city owns and operates its own water-supply system and electric-lighting plant. Austin was settled in 1855, was incorporated as a village in 1868, and was chartered as a city in 1873.
AUSTIN,the capital of Texas, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Travis county, on the N. bank of the Colorado river, near the centre of the state and about 145 m. W.N.W. of Houston. Pop. (1890) 14,575; (1900) 22,258, of whom 5822 were negroes; (1910 census) 29,860. Austin is served by the Houston & Texas Central, the International & Great Northern, and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railways. The city is built on high bluffs 40-120 ft. above the river, which is spanned here by a bridge, built in 1874. The Texas State Capitol, a handsome building of red Texas granite, with a dome 318 ft. high, cost more than $3,500,000, and stands in a square in the centre of the city. It was built (1881-1888) by Chicago capitalists in exchange for a land grant of 3,000,000 acres. It is in the form of a Greek cross, with an extreme length of 556.5 ft. and an extreme width of 288.8 ft. Next to the National Capitol at Washington, it is the largest capitol building in the United States, and it is said to be one of the ten largest buildings in the world. Austin is the seat of the University of Texas (opened in 1883; co-educational); the medical department of the state university is at Galveston, and the departments in Austin are the college of arts, department of education, department of engineering, department of law, school of pharmacy, and school of nursing. The government of the university is vested in a board of eight regents nominated by the governor and appointed with the advice and consent of the state senate. At Austin are also state institutions and asylums for the insane, the blind, the coloured deaf and blind; the state school for the deaf and dumb; the state Confederate home; the Confederate woman’s home (1907; for wives and widows of Confederate soldiers and sailors), maintained by the Daughters of the Confederacy; St Mary’s Academy (Roman Catholic, under the supervision of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, founded 1875, chartered 1886); St Edward’s College (Roman Catholic, chartered 1885); the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (Presbyterian Church, South), opened in 1902 by the Synod of Texas, and after 1905 partly controlled by the Synod of Arkansas; Tillotson College (a negro school under Congregational control, founded by the American Missionary Association, chartered in 1877, and opened in 1881), and Samuel Huston College (for negroes; Methodist Episcopal; opened in 1900 and named in honour of an Iowan benefactor). The principal newspapers of Austin are theStatesman(Democratic, established in 1871), a morning paper, and theTribune(Democratic, established in 1891), an evening paper. TheQuarterly of the Texas State Historical Societyis published here. Austin is the principal trade and jobbing centre for central and western Texas, is an important market for livestock, cotton, grain and wool, and has extensive manufactories of flour, cotton-seed oil, leather goods, lumber and wooden ware; the value of the factory product in 1905 was $1,569,353, being 105.2% more than in 1900. The city owns and operates its water-supply system. In 1890-1893 one of the largest dams in the world, an immense structure of granite masonry, 1200 ft. long. 60-70 ft. high, and 18 to 66 ft. thick, was constructed across the Colorado river 2 m. above the city for the purpose of supplying water and power, creating a reservoir (Lake M‘Donald) about 30 m. long. Freshets in the spring of 1900, however, undermined the wall, and on the 7th of April the dam broke with a resulting loss of several lives and about $1,000,000 worth of property. The rebuilding of the dam was projected in 1907. Austin was first settled in 1838 and was named Waterloo, but in 1839, when it was chosen as the site of the capital of the Republic of Texas, it was renamed in honour of Stephen F. Austin, one of its founders. Under the influence of General Sam Houston the capital was for a time in 1842-1845 removed from Austin to Houston, but in 1845 an ordinance was passed making Austin the capital, and it remained the state capital after Texas entered the Union, although Huntsville and Tehuacana Springs in 1850 and Houston in 1872 attempted in popular elections to be chosen in its place. The first Anglo-American settlement in Texas, established on the Brazos river in 1823 by members of the Austin colony, was San Felipe de Austin now San Felipe. In 1909 Austin adopted a commission form of government.
AUSTRALASIA,a term used by English geographers in a sense nearly synonymous with the Oceania of continental writers. It thus comprises all the insular groups which extend almost continuously from the south-eastern extremity of Asia to more than half-way across the Pacific. Its chief divisions are Malaysia with the Philippines; Australia with Tasmania and New Zealand; Melanesia, that is, New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland, Admiralty, the Solomons, New Hebrides, Santa Cruz, Fiji, Loyalties and New Caledonia; Micronesia, that is, the Ladrones, Pelew and Carolines, with the Marshall and Gilbert groups; lastly, Polynesia, that is, Samoa, Tonga, Cook, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Ellice, Hawaii and all intervening clusters. The term is so far justified in that it harmonizes better than Oceania did with the names of the other continents, and also embodies the two essential facts that it is a south-eastern extension of Asia, and that its central and most important division is the great island-continent of Australia. In a more restricted sense the term Australasia corresponds to the large division including Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand.
SeeAustralasia, 2 vols. Stanford Compendium Series, new issue (London, 1907-1908).
SeeAustralasia, 2 vols. Stanford Compendium Series, new issue (London, 1907-1908).
AUSTRALIA,the only continent entirely in the southern hemisphere. It lies between 10° 39′ and 39° 11½’ S., and between 113° 5′ and 153° 16′ E. Its greatest length is 2400 m. from east to west, and the greatest breadth 1971 m. from north to south. The area is, approximately, 2,946,691 sq. m., with a coast line measuring about 8850 m. This is equal to 1 m. to each 333 sq. m. of land, the smallest proportion of coast shown by any of the continents.
Physical Geography
Physiography.—The salient features of the Australian continent are its compact outline, the absence of navigable rivers communicating with the interior, the absence of active volcanoes or snow-capped mountains, itsGeneral character.isolation from other lands, and its antiquity. Some of the most profound changes that have taken place on this globe occurred in Mesozoic times, and a great portion of Australia was already dry land when vast tracts of Europe and Asia were submerged; in this sense, therefore, Australia has been rightly referred to as one of the oldest existing land surfaces. It has been described as at once the largest island and the smallest continent on the globe. The general contours exemplify the law of geographers in regard to continents, viz. as to their having a high border around a depressed interior, and the highest mountains on the side of the greatest ocean. On the N. Australia is bounded by the Timor Sea, the Arafura Sea and Torres Strait; on the E. by the Pacific Ocean; on the S. by Bass Strait and the Southern Ocean; and on the W. by the Indian Ocean. It stands up from the ocean depths in three fairly well-marked terraces. The basal plain of these terraces is the bed of the ocean, which on the Pacific side has an average depth of 15,000 ft. From this profound foundation rise Australia, New Guinea and Melanesia, in varying slopes. The first ledge rising from the ocean floor has a depth averaging 8000 ft. below sea-level. The outer edge of this ledge is roughly parallel to the coast of Western Australia, and more than 150 m. from the land. Round the Australian Bight it continues parallel to the coast, until south of Spencer Gulf (the basal ledge still averaging 8000 ft. in depth) it sweeps southwards to lat. 55°, and forms a submarine promontory 1000 m. long. The edge of the abysmal area comes close to the eastern coasts of Tasmania and New South Wales, approaching to within 60 m. of Cape Howe. The terrace closest to the land, known as the continental shelf, has an average depth of 600 ft., and connects Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania in one unbroken sweep. Compared with other continents, the Australian continental shelf is extremely narrow, and there are points on the eastern coast wherethe land plunges down to oceanic depths with an abruptness rarely paralleled. Off the Queensland coast the shelf broadens, its outer edge being lined by the seaward face of the Great Barrier Reef. From Torres Strait to Dampier Land the shelf spreads out, and connects Australia with New Guinea and the Malay Archipelago. An elongation of the shelf to the south joins Tasmania with the mainland. The vertical relief of the land above the ocean is a very important factor in determining the climate as well as the distribution of the fauna and flora of a continent.
The land mass of Australia rises to a mean height much less than that of any other continent; and the chief mountain systems are parallel to, and not far from, the coast-line. Thus, taking the continent as a whole, it may be described as a plateau, fringed by a low-lying well-watered coast, with a depressed, and for the most part arid, interior. A great plain, covering quite 500,000 sq. m., occupies a position a little to the east of a meridional line bisecting the continent, and south of the 22nd degree, but portions of it stretch upwards to the low-lying country south of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The contour of the continent in latitude 30° 5′ is as follows:—a short strip of coastal plain; then a sharp incline rising to a mountain range 4000 ft. above sea-level, at a distance of 40 m. from the coast. From this a gently-sloping plateau extends to almost due north of Spencer Gulf, at which point its height has fallen almost to sea-level. Then there is a gentle rise to the low steppes, 500 to 1000 ft. above sea-level. A further gentle rise in the high steppes leads to the mountains of the West Australian coast, and another strip of low-lying coastal land to the sea.With a circumference of 8000 m. Australia presents a contour wonderfully devoid of inlets from the sea except on its northern shores, where the coast-line is largely indented. The Gulf of Carpentaria, situated in the north, is enclosed on the east by the projection of Cape York, and on the west by Arnheim Land, and forms the principal bay on the whole coast, measuring about 6° of long. by 6° of lat. Farther to the west, Van Diemen’s Gulf, though much smaller, forms a better-protected bay, having Melville Island between it and the ocean; while beyond this, Queen’s Channel and Cambridge Gulf form inlets about 14° 50′ S. On the north-west of the continent the coast-line is much broken, the chief indentations being Admiralty Gulf, Collier Bay and King Sound, on the shores of Tasman Land. Western Australia, again, is not favoured with many inlets, Exmouth Gulf and Shark’s Bay being the only bays of any size. The same remark may be made of the rest of the sea-board; for, with the exception of Spencer Gulf, the Gulf of St Vincent and Port Phillip on the south, and Moreton Bay, Hervey Bay and Broad Sound on the east, the coast-line is singularly uniform. There are, however, numerous spacious harbours, especially on the eastern coast, which are referred to in the detailed articles dealing with the different states. The Great Barrier Reef forms the prominent feature off the north-east coast of Australia; its extent from north to south is 1200 m., and it is therefore the greatest of all coral reefs. The channel between the reef and the coast is in places 70 m. wide and 400 ft. deep. There are a few clear openings in the outer rampart which the reef presents to the ocean. These are opposite to the large estuaries of the Queensland rivers, and might be thought to have been caused by fresh water from the land. The breaks are, however, some 30 to 90 m. away from land and more probably were caused by subsidence; the old river-channels known to exist below sea-level, as well as the former land connexion with New Guinea, seem to point to the conditions assumed in Darwin’s well-known subsidence theory, and any facts that appear to be inconsistent with the theory of a steady and prolonged subsidence are explainable by the assumption of a slight upheaval.With the exception of Tasmania there are no important islands belonging geographically to Australia, for New Guinea, Timor and other islands of the East Indian archipelago, though not removed any great distance from the continent, do not belong to its system. On the east coast there are a few small and unimportant islands. In Bass Strait are Flinders Island, about 800 sq. m. in area, Clarke Island, and a few other small islands. Kangaroo Island, at the entrance of St Vincent Gulf, is one of the largest islands on the Australian coast, measuring 80 m. from east to west with an average width of 20 m. Numerous small islands lie off the western coast, but none has any commercial importance. On the north coast are Melville and Bathurst Islands; the former, which is 75 m. long and 38 m. broad, is fertile and well watered. These islands are opposite Port Darwin, and to the westward of the large inlet known as Van Diemen’s Gulf. In the Gulf of Carpentaria are numerous islands, the largest bearing the Dutch name of Groote Eylandt.Along the full length of the eastern coast extends a succession of mountain chains. The vast Cordillera of the Great Dividing Range originates in the south-eastern corner of the continent, and runs parallel with and close to the easternMountains.shore, through the states of Victoria and New South Wales, right up to the far-distant York Peninsula in Queensland. In Victoria the greatest elevation is reached in the peaks of Mount Bogong (6508 ft.) and Mount Feathertop (6303 ft.), both of which lie north of the Dividing Range; in the main range Mount Hotham (6100 ft.) and Mount Cobberas (6025 ft.) are the highest summits. In New South Wales, but close to the Victorian border, are found the loftiest peaks of Australia, Mount Kosciusco and Mount Townsend, rising to heights of 7328 and 7260 ft. respectively. The range is here called the Muniong, but farther north it receives the name of Monaro Range; the latter has a much reduced altitude, its average being only about 2000 ft. As the tableland runs northward it decreases both in height and width, until it narrows to a few miles only, with an elevation of scarcely 1500 ft.; under the name of the Blue Mountains the plateau widens again and increases in altitude, the chief peaks being Mount Clarence (4000 ft.), Mount Victoria (3525 ft.), and Mount Hay (3270 ft.). The Dividing Range decreases north of the Blue Mountains, until as a mere ridge it divides the waters of the coastal rivers from those flowing to the Darling. The mass widens out once more in the Liverpool Range, where the highest peak, Mount Oxley, reaches 4500 ft., and farther north, in the New England Range, Ben Lomond reaches an elevation of 5000 ft. Near the Queensland border, Mount Lindsay, in the Macpherson Range, rises to a height of 5500 ft. In the latitude of Brisbane the chain swerves inland; no other peak north of this reaches higher than Mount Bartle Frere in the Bellenden Ker Range (5438 ft.). The Southern Ocean system of the Victorian Dividing Range hardly attains to the dignity of high mountains. An eastern system in South Australia touches at a few points a height of 3000 ft.; and the Stirling Range, belonging to the south-western system of South Australia, reaches to 2340 ft. There are no mountains behind the Great Australian Bight. On the west the Darling Range faces the Indian Ocean, and extends from Point D’Entrecasteaux to the Murchison river. North of the Murchison, Mount Augustus and Mount Bruce, with their connecting highlands, cut off the coastal drainage from the interior; but no point on the north-west coast reaches a greater altitude than 4000 ft. Several minor ranges, the topography of which is little known, extend from Cambridge Gulf, behind a very much broken coast-line, to Limmen Bight on the Gulf of Carpentaria. Nothing is more remarkable than the contrast between the aspect of the coastal ranges on the north-east and on the south-east of the continent. The higher Australian peaks in the south-east look just what they are, the worn and denuded stumps of mountains, standing for untold ages above the sea. Their shoulders are lifted high above the tree-line. Their summits stand out gaunt and lonely in an unbroken solitude. Having left the tree-line far behind him, nothing is visible to the traveller for miles around but barren peaks and torn crags in indescribable confusion. A verdure of herbage clothes the valleys that have been scooped from the summits downwards. But there are no perpetual snow-fields, no glaciers creep down these valleys, and no alpine hamlets ever appear to break the monotony. The mountains of the north-east, on the contrary, are clothed to their summits with a rich and varied flora. Naked crags, when they do appear, lift themselves from a sea of green, and a tropical vegetation, quite Malaysian in character, covers everything.The absence of active volcanoes in Australia is a state of things, in a geological sense, quite new to the continent. Some of the volcanoes of the western districts of Victoria have been in eruption probably subsequent to the advent of the black-fellow. In some instances the cones are quite intact, and the beds of ash and scoriae are as yet almost unaffected by denuding agencies. Late in the Tertiary period vast sheets of lava poured from many points of the Great Dividing Range of eastern Australia. But it is notable that all recent volcanic action was confined to a wide belt parallel to the coast. No evidences of recent lava flows can be found in the interior over the great alluvial plain, the Lower, or the Higher Steppes. Nor has the continent, as a whole, in recent times been subjected to any violent earth tremors; though in 1873, to the north of Lake Amadeus, in central Australia, Ernest Giles records the occurrence of earthquake shocks violent enough to dislodge considerable rock masses.Australia possesses one mountain which, though not a volcano, is a “burning mountain.” This is Mount Wingen, situated in a spur of the Liverpool Range and close to the town of Scone. Its fires are not volcanic, but result from the combustion of coal some distance underground, giving off much smoke and steam; geologists estimate that the burning has been going on for at least 800 years.The coastal belt of Australia is everywhere well watered, with the exception of the country around the Great Australian Bight and Spencer Gulf. Flowing into the Pacific Ocean on the east coast there are some fine rivers, but the majority haveRivers.short and rapid courses. In Queensland a succession of rivers falls into the Pacific from Cape York to the southern boundary of the state. The Burdekin is the finest of these, draining an area of 53,500 sq. m., and emptying into Upstart Bay; it receives numerous tributaries in its course, and carries a large body of fresh water even in the driest seasons. The Fitzroy river is the second in point of size; it drains an area of 55,600 sq. m., and receives several tributary streams during its course to Keppel Bay. The Brisbane river, falling into Moreton Bay, is important chiefly from the fact that the city of Brisbane is situated on its banks. In New South Wales there are several important rivers, the largest of which is the Hunter, draining 11,000 sq. m., and having a course of 200 m. Taking them from north to south, the principal rivers are the Richmond, Clarence,Macleay, Hastings, Manning, Hunter, Hawkesbury and Shoalhaven. The Snowy river has the greater part of its course in New South Wales, but its mouth and the last 120 m. are in Victoria. The other rivers worth mentioning are the Yarra, entering the sea at Port Phillip, Hopkins and Glenelg. The Murray (q.v.), the greatest river of Australia, debouches into Lake Alexandrina, and thence into the sea at Encounter Bay in South Australia. There are no other rivers of importance in South Australia, but the Torrens and the Gawler may be mentioned. Westward of South Australia, on the shores of the Australian Bight, there is a stretch of country 300 m. in length unpierced by any streams, large or small, but west of the bight, towards Cape Leeuwin, some small rivers enter the sea. The south-west coast is watered by a few streams, but none of any size; amongst these is the Swan, upon which Perth, the capital of Western Australia, is built. Between the Swan and North-West Cape the principal rivers are the Greenough, Murchison and Gascoyne; on the north-west coast, the Ashburton, Fortescue and De Grey; and in the Kimberley district, the Fitzroy, Panton, Prince Regent and the Ord. In the Northern Territory are several fine rivers. The Victoria river is navigable for large vessels for a distance of about 43 m. from the sea, and small vessels may ascend for another 80 m. The Fitzmaurice, discharging into the estuary of the Victoria, is also a large stream. The Daly, which in its upper course is called the Katherine, is navigable for a considerable distance, and small vessels are able to ascend over 100 m. The Adelaide, discharging into Adam Bay, has been navigated by large vessels for about 38 m., and small vessels ascend still farther. The South Alligator river, flowing into Van Diemen’s Gulf, is also a fine stream, navigable for over 30 m. by large vessels; the East Alligator river, falling into the same gulf, has been navigated for 40 m. Besides those mentioned, there are a number of smaller rivers discharging on the north coast, and on the west shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria the Roper river discharges itself into Limmen Bight. The Roper is a magnificent stream, navigable for about 75 or 80 m. by vessels of the largest tonnage, and light draught vessels can ascend 20 m. farther. Along the portion of the south shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria which belongs to Queensland and the east coast, many large rivers discharge their waters, amongst them the Norman, Flinders, Leichhardt, Albert and Gregory on the southern shore, and the Batavia, Archer, Coleman, Mitchell, Staaten and Gilbert on the eastern shore. The rivers flowing into the Gulf of Carpentaria, as well as those in the Northern Territory, drain country which is subject to regular monsoonal rains, and have the general characteristics of sub-tropical rivers.The network of streams forming the tributaries of the Darling and Murray system give an idea of a well-watered country. The so-called rivers have a strong flow only after heavy rains, and some of them do not ever reach the main drainage line. Flood waters disappear often within a distance of a few miles, being absorbed by porous soil, stretches of sand, and sometimes by the underlying bed-rocks. In many cases the rivers as they approach the main stream break up into numerous branches, or spread their waters over vast flats. This is especially the case with the tributaries of the Darling on its left bank, where in seasons of great rains these rivers overspread their banks and flood the flat country for miles around and thus reach the main stream. Lieutenant John Oxley went down the Lachlan (1817) during one of these periods of flood, and the great plains appeared to him to be the fringe of a vast inland sea. As a matter of fact, they are an alluvial deposit spread out by the same flood waters. The great rivers of Australia, draining inland, carve out valleys, dissolve limestone, and spread out their deposit over the plains when the waters become too sluggish to bear their burden farther. From a geological standpoint, the Great Australian Plain and the fertile valley of the Nile have had a similar origin. Taking the Lachlan as one type of Australian river, we find it takes its rise amongst the precipitous and almost unexplored valleys of the Great Dividing Range. With the help of its tributaries it acts as a denuding agent for 14,000 sq. m. of country, and carries its burden of sediment westwards. A point is reached about 200 m. from the Dividing Range, where the river ceases to act as a denuding agent, and the area of deposition begins, at a level of 250 ft. above the sea, but before the waters can reach the ocean they have still to travel about 1000 m.The Darling is reckoned amongst the longest rivers in the world, for it is navigable, part of the year, from Walgett to its confluence with the Murray, 1758 m., and then to the sea, a further distance of 587 m.—making in all 2345 m. of navigable water. But this gives no correct idea of the true character of the Darling, for it can hardly be said to drain its own watershed. From the sources of its various tributaries to the town of Bourke, the river may be described as draining a watershed. But from Bourke to the sea, 550 m. in a direct line, the river gives rather than receives water from the country it flows through.The annual rainfall and the area of the catchment afford no measure whatever as to the size of a river in the interior of Australia. The discharge of the Darling river at Bourke does not amount to more than 10% of the rainfall over the country which it drains. It was this remarkable fact which first led to the idea that, as the rainfall could not be accounted for either by evaporation or by the river discharge, much of the 90% unaccounted for must sink into the ground, and in part be absorbed by some underlying bed-rock. All Australian rivers, except the Murray and the Murrumbidgee, depend entirely and directly on the rainfall. They are flooded after rain, and in seasons of drought many of them, especially the tributaries of the Darling, become chains of ponds. Springs which would equalize the discharge of rivers by continuing to pour water into their beds after the rainy season has passed seem entirely absent in the interior. Nor are there any snowfields to feed rivers, as in the other continents. More remarkable still, over large tracts of country the water seems disposed to flow away from, rather than to, the river-beds. As the low-lying plains are altogether an alluvial deposit, the coarser sediments accumulate in the regions where the river first overflows its banks to spread out over the plains. The country nearest the river receiving the heaviest deposit becomes in this way the highest ground, and so continues until a “break-away” occurs, when a new river-bed is formed, and the same process of deposition and accumulation is repeated. As the general level of the country is raised by successive alluvial deposits, the more ancient river-beds become buried, but being still connected with the newer rivers at some point or other, they continue to absorb water. This underground network of old river-beds underlying the great alluvial plains must be filled to repletion before flood waters will flow over the surface. It is not surprising, therefore, that comparatively little of the rainfall over the vast extent of the great central plain ever reaches the sea by way of the river systems; indeed these systems as usually shown on the maps leave a false impression as to the actual condition of things.The great alluvial plain is one of Australia’s most notable inland features; its extent is upwards of 500,000 sq. m., lying east of 135° W. and extending right across the continent from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Murray river. The interiorSteppes.of the continent west of 135° and north of the Musgrave ranges is usually termed by geographers the Australian Steppes. It is entirely different in all essential features from the great alluvial plains. Its prevailing aspect is characterized by flat and terraced hills, capped by desert sandstone, with stone-covered flats stretching over long distances. The country round Lake Eyre, where some of the land is actually below sea-level, comes under this heading. The higher steppes, as far as they are known, consist of Ordovician and Cambrian rocks, with an average elevation of 1500 to 3000 ft. above sea-level. Over this country water-courses are shown on maps. These run in wet seasons, but in every instance for a short distance only, and sooner or later they are lost in sand-hills, where their waters disappear and a line of stunted gum-trees (Eucalyptus rostrata) is all that is present to indicate that there may be even a soakage to mark the abandoned course. The steppes cover a surface of 400,000 sq. m., and from this vast expanse not a drop of the scanty rainfall reaches the sea; there is no leading drainage system and there are no rivers. Another notable feature of the interior is the so-called lake area, a district stretching to the north of Spencer Gulf. TheseLakes.lakes are expanses of brackish waters that spread or contract as the season is one of drought or rain. In seasons of drought they are hardly more than swamps and mud flats, which for a time may become a grassy plain, or desolate coast encrusted with salt. The country around is the dreariest imaginable, the surface is a dead level, there is no heavy timber and practically no settlement. Lake Torrens, the largest of these depressions, sometimes forms a sheet of water 100 m. in length. To the north again stretches Lake Eyre, and to the west Lake Gairdner. Some of these lake-beds are at or slightly below sea-level, so that a very slight depression of the land to the south of them would connect much of the interior with the Southern Ocean.(T. A. C.)Geology.—The states of Australia are divided by natural boundaries, which separate geographical areas having different characters, owing, mainly, to their different geological structures. Hence the general stratigraphical geology can be most conveniently summarized for each state separately, dealing here with the geological history of Australia as a whole. Australia is essentially the fragment of a great plateau land of Archean rocks. It consists in the main of an Archean block or “coign,” which still occupies nearly the whole of the western half of the continent, outcrops in north-eastern Queensland, forms the foundation of southern New South Wales and eastern Victoria, and is exposed in western Victoria, in Tasmania, and in the western flank of the Southern Alps of New Zealand. These areas of Archean rocks were doubtless once continuous. But they have been separated by the foundering of the Coral Sea and the Tasman Sea, which divided the continent of Australia from the islands of the Australasian festoon; and the foundering of the band across Australia, from the Gulf of Carpentaria, through western Queensland and western New South Wales, to the lower basin of the Murray, has separated the Archean areas of eastern and western Australia. The breaking up of the old Archean foundation block began in Cambrian and Ordovician times. A narrow Cambrian sea must have extended across central Australia from the Kimberley Goldfield in the north-west, through Tempe Downs and the Macdonnell chain in central Australia, to the South Australian highlands, central Victoria at Mansfield, and northern Tasmania. Cambrian rocks occur in each of these districts, and they are best developed in the South Australian highlands, where they include a long belt of contemporary glacial deposits. Marine Ordovician rocks were deposited along the same general course. They are best developed in the Macdonnell chain incentral Australia and in Victoria, where the fullest sequence is known; while they also extended north-eastward from Victoria into New South Wales, where, as yet, no Cambrian rocks have been found. The Silurian system was marked by the retreat of the sea from central Australia; but the sea still covered a band across Victoria, from the coast to the Murray basin, passing to the east of Melbourne. This Silurian sea was less extensive than the Ordovician in Victoria; but it appears to have been wider in New South Wales and in Queensland. The best Silurian sequence is in New South Wales. Silurian rocks are well developed in western Tasmania, and the Silurian sea must have washed the south-western corner of the continent, if the rocks of the Stirling Range be rightly identified as of this age.The Devonian system includes a complex series of deposits, which are of most interest in eastern Australia. This period was marked by intense earth movements, which affected the whole of the east Australian highlands. The Lower Devonian beds are in the main terrestrial, or coarse littoral deposits, and volcanic rocks. The Middle Devonian was marked by the same great transgression as in Europe and America; it produced inland seas, extending into Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, in which were deposited limestones with a rich coral fauna. The Upper Devonian was a period of marine retreat; the crustal disturbances of the Lower Devonian were renewed and great quartz-pebble beaches were formed on the rising shore lines, producing the West Coast Range conglomerates of Tasmania, and the similar rocks to the south-east of Mansfield in Victoria. Intrusions of graniticmassifsin the Devonian period formed the primitive mountain axis of Victoria, which extends east and west across the state and forms the nucleus of the Victorian highlands. Similar granitic intrusions occurred in New South Wales and Queensland, and built up a mountain chain, which ran north and south across the continent; its worn-down stumps now form the east Australian highlands.The Carboniferous period began with a marine transgression, enabling limestones to form in Tasmania and New South Wales; and at the same time the sea first got in along the western edge of the western plateau, depositing the Carboniferous rocks of the Gascoyne basin and the coastal plain of north-western Australia. The Upper Carboniferous period was in the main terrestrial, and during it were laid down the coal-seams of New South Wales; they are best developed in the basin of the Hunter river, and they extend southward, covered by Mesozoic deposits, beyond Sydney. The Coal Measures become narrower in the south, until, owing to the eastward projection of the highlands, the Lower Palaeozoic rocks reach the coast. The coal-seams must have been formed in well-watered, lowland forests, at the foot of a high mountain range, built up by the Devonian earth movements. The mountains both in Victoria and New South Wales were snow-capped, and glaciers flowed down their flanks and laid down Carboniferous glacial deposits, which are still preserved in basins that flank the mountain ranges, such as the famous conglomerates of Bacchus Marsh, Heathcote and the Loddon valley in Victoria, and of Branxton and other localities in New South Wales. The age of the glacial deposits is later than theGlossopterisflora and occurs early in the time of theGangamopterisflora. Kitson’s work in Tasmania shows that there also the glacial beds may be correlated with the lower or Greta Coal Measures of New South Wales.The Permian deposits are best developed in New South Wales and Tasmania, where their characters show the continuation of the Carboniferous conditions. The Mesozoic begins with a Triassic land period in the mainland of Australia; while the islands of the Australasian festoon contain the Triassic marine limestones, which fringethe whole of the Pacific. The Triassic beds are best known in New South Wales, where round Sydney they include a series of sandstones and shales. They also occur in northern Tasmania.The Jurassic system is represented by two types. In Victoria, Tasmania, northern New South Wales and Queensland, there are Jurassic terrestrial deposits, containing the coal seams of Victoria, of the Clarence basin of north-eastern New South Wales, and of the Ipswich series in Queensland; the same beds range far inland on the western slopes of the east Australian highlands in New South Wales and Queensland and they occur, with coal-seams, at Leigh’s Creek, at the northern foot of the South Australian highlands. They are also preserved in basins on the western plateau, as shown by brown coal deposits passed through in the Lake Phillipson bore. The second and marine type of the Jurassics occurs in Western Australia, on the coastal plain skirting the western foot of the western plateau.The Cretaceous period was initiated by the subsidence of a large area to the south of the Gulf of Carpentaria, whereby a Lower Cretaceous sea spread southward, across western Queensland, western New South Wales and the north-eastern districts of South Australia. In this sea were laid down the shales of the Rolling Downs formation. The sea does not appear to have extended completely across Australia, breaking it into halves, for a projection from the Archean plateau of Western Australia extended as far east as the South Australian highlands, and thence probably continued eastward, till it joined the Victorian highlands. The Cretaceous sea gradually receded and the plains of the Rolling Downs formation formed on its floor were covered by the sub-aerial and lacustrine deposits of the Desert Sandstone.The Kainozoic period opened with fresh earth movements, the most striking evidence of which are the volcanic outbreaks all round the Australian coasts. These movements in the south-east formed the Great Valley of Victoria, which traverses nearly the whole of the state between the Victorian highlands to the north, and the Jurassic sandstones of the Otway Ranges and the hills of south Gippsland. In this valley were laid down, either in Eocene or Oligocene times, a great series of lake beds and thick accumulations of brown coal. Similar deposits, of approximately the same age, occur in Tasmania and New Zealand; and at about the same time there began the Kainozoic volcanic period of Australasia. The first eruptions piled up huge domes of lavas rich in soda, including the geburite-dacites and sölvsbergites of Mount Macedon in Victoria, and the kenyte and tephrite domes of Dunedin, in New Zealand. These rocks were followed by the outpouring of the extensive older basalts in the Great Valley of Victoria and on the highlands of eastern Victoria, and also in New South Wales and Queensland. Then followed a marine transgression along most of the southern coast of Australia. The sea encroached far on the land from the Great Australian Bight and there formed the limestones of the Nullarbor Plains. The sea extended up the Murray basin into the western plains of New South Wales. Farther east the sea was interrupted by the still existing land-connexion between Tasmania and Victoria; but beyond it, the marine deposits are found again, fringing the coasts of eastern Gippsland and Croajingolong. These marine deposits are not found anywhere along the eastern coast of Australia; but they occur, and reach about the same height above sea-level, in New Guinea, and are widely developed in New Zealand. No doubt eastern Australia then extended far out into the Tasman Sea. The great monoclinal fold which formed the eastern face of the east Australian highlands, west of Sydney, is of later age. After this marine period was brought to a close the sea retreated. Tasmania and Victoria were separated by the foundering of Bass Strait, and at the same time the formation of the rift valley of Spencer Gulf, and Lake Torrens, isolated the South Australian highlands from the Eyre Peninsula and the Westralian plateau. Earth movements are still taking place both along Bass Strait and the Great Valley of South Australia, and apparently along the whole length of the southern coast of Australia.The Flowing Wells of Central Australia.—The clays of the Rolling Downs formation overlie a series of sands and drifts, saturated with water under high pressure, which discharges at the surface as a flowing well, when a borehole pierces the impermeable cover. The first of these wells was opened at Kallara in the west of New South Wales in 1880. In 1882, Dr W.L. Jack concluded that western Queensland might be a deep artesian basin. The Blackhall bore, put down at his advice from 1885 to 1888, reached a water-bearing layer at the depth of 1645 ft. and discharged 291,000 gallons a day. It was the first of the deep artesian wells of the continent. As the plains on the Rolling Downs formation are mostly waterless, the discovery of this deep reservoir of water has been of great aid in the development of central Australia. In Queensland to the 30th of June 1904, 973 wells had been sunk, of which 596 were flowing wells, and the total flow was 62,635,722 cub. ft. a day. The deepest well is that at Whitewood, 5046 ft. deep. In New South Wales by the 30th of June 1903, the government had put down 101 bores producing 66 flowing wells and 22 sub-artesian wells, with a total discharge of 54,000,000 gallons a day; and there were also 144 successful private wells. In South Australia there are 38 deep bores, from 20 of which there is a flow of 6,250,000 gallons a day.The wells were first called artesian in the belief that the ascent of the water in them was due to the hydrostatic pressure of water at a higher level in the Queensland hills. The well-water was supposed to have percolated underground, through the Blythesdale Braystone, which outcrops in patches on the eastern edge of the Rolling Downs formation. But the Blythesdale Braystone is a small local formation, unable to supply all the wells that have been sunk; and many of the wells derive their water from the Jurassic shales and mudstones. The difference in level between the outcrop of the assumed eastern intake and of the wells is often so small, in comparison with their distance apart, that the friction would completely sop up the whole of the available hydrostatic head. Many of the well-waters contain gases; thus the town of Roma is lighted by natural gas which escapes from its well. The chemical characters of the well-waters, the irregular distribution of the water-pressure, the distribution of the underground thermal gradients, and the occurrence in some of the wells of a tidal rise and fall of a varying period, are facts which are not explained on the simple hydrostatic theory. J.W. Gregory has maintained (Dead Heart of Australia, 1906, pp. 273-341) that the ascent of water in these wells is due to the tension of the included gases and the pressure of overlying sheets of rocks, and that some of the water is of plutonic origin.1
The land mass of Australia rises to a mean height much less than that of any other continent; and the chief mountain systems are parallel to, and not far from, the coast-line. Thus, taking the continent as a whole, it may be described as a plateau, fringed by a low-lying well-watered coast, with a depressed, and for the most part arid, interior. A great plain, covering quite 500,000 sq. m., occupies a position a little to the east of a meridional line bisecting the continent, and south of the 22nd degree, but portions of it stretch upwards to the low-lying country south of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The contour of the continent in latitude 30° 5′ is as follows:—a short strip of coastal plain; then a sharp incline rising to a mountain range 4000 ft. above sea-level, at a distance of 40 m. from the coast. From this a gently-sloping plateau extends to almost due north of Spencer Gulf, at which point its height has fallen almost to sea-level. Then there is a gentle rise to the low steppes, 500 to 1000 ft. above sea-level. A further gentle rise in the high steppes leads to the mountains of the West Australian coast, and another strip of low-lying coastal land to the sea.
With a circumference of 8000 m. Australia presents a contour wonderfully devoid of inlets from the sea except on its northern shores, where the coast-line is largely indented. The Gulf of Carpentaria, situated in the north, is enclosed on the east by the projection of Cape York, and on the west by Arnheim Land, and forms the principal bay on the whole coast, measuring about 6° of long. by 6° of lat. Farther to the west, Van Diemen’s Gulf, though much smaller, forms a better-protected bay, having Melville Island between it and the ocean; while beyond this, Queen’s Channel and Cambridge Gulf form inlets about 14° 50′ S. On the north-west of the continent the coast-line is much broken, the chief indentations being Admiralty Gulf, Collier Bay and King Sound, on the shores of Tasman Land. Western Australia, again, is not favoured with many inlets, Exmouth Gulf and Shark’s Bay being the only bays of any size. The same remark may be made of the rest of the sea-board; for, with the exception of Spencer Gulf, the Gulf of St Vincent and Port Phillip on the south, and Moreton Bay, Hervey Bay and Broad Sound on the east, the coast-line is singularly uniform. There are, however, numerous spacious harbours, especially on the eastern coast, which are referred to in the detailed articles dealing with the different states. The Great Barrier Reef forms the prominent feature off the north-east coast of Australia; its extent from north to south is 1200 m., and it is therefore the greatest of all coral reefs. The channel between the reef and the coast is in places 70 m. wide and 400 ft. deep. There are a few clear openings in the outer rampart which the reef presents to the ocean. These are opposite to the large estuaries of the Queensland rivers, and might be thought to have been caused by fresh water from the land. The breaks are, however, some 30 to 90 m. away from land and more probably were caused by subsidence; the old river-channels known to exist below sea-level, as well as the former land connexion with New Guinea, seem to point to the conditions assumed in Darwin’s well-known subsidence theory, and any facts that appear to be inconsistent with the theory of a steady and prolonged subsidence are explainable by the assumption of a slight upheaval.
With the exception of Tasmania there are no important islands belonging geographically to Australia, for New Guinea, Timor and other islands of the East Indian archipelago, though not removed any great distance from the continent, do not belong to its system. On the east coast there are a few small and unimportant islands. In Bass Strait are Flinders Island, about 800 sq. m. in area, Clarke Island, and a few other small islands. Kangaroo Island, at the entrance of St Vincent Gulf, is one of the largest islands on the Australian coast, measuring 80 m. from east to west with an average width of 20 m. Numerous small islands lie off the western coast, but none has any commercial importance. On the north coast are Melville and Bathurst Islands; the former, which is 75 m. long and 38 m. broad, is fertile and well watered. These islands are opposite Port Darwin, and to the westward of the large inlet known as Van Diemen’s Gulf. In the Gulf of Carpentaria are numerous islands, the largest bearing the Dutch name of Groote Eylandt.
Along the full length of the eastern coast extends a succession of mountain chains. The vast Cordillera of the Great Dividing Range originates in the south-eastern corner of the continent, and runs parallel with and close to the easternMountains.shore, through the states of Victoria and New South Wales, right up to the far-distant York Peninsula in Queensland. In Victoria the greatest elevation is reached in the peaks of Mount Bogong (6508 ft.) and Mount Feathertop (6303 ft.), both of which lie north of the Dividing Range; in the main range Mount Hotham (6100 ft.) and Mount Cobberas (6025 ft.) are the highest summits. In New South Wales, but close to the Victorian border, are found the loftiest peaks of Australia, Mount Kosciusco and Mount Townsend, rising to heights of 7328 and 7260 ft. respectively. The range is here called the Muniong, but farther north it receives the name of Monaro Range; the latter has a much reduced altitude, its average being only about 2000 ft. As the tableland runs northward it decreases both in height and width, until it narrows to a few miles only, with an elevation of scarcely 1500 ft.; under the name of the Blue Mountains the plateau widens again and increases in altitude, the chief peaks being Mount Clarence (4000 ft.), Mount Victoria (3525 ft.), and Mount Hay (3270 ft.). The Dividing Range decreases north of the Blue Mountains, until as a mere ridge it divides the waters of the coastal rivers from those flowing to the Darling. The mass widens out once more in the Liverpool Range, where the highest peak, Mount Oxley, reaches 4500 ft., and farther north, in the New England Range, Ben Lomond reaches an elevation of 5000 ft. Near the Queensland border, Mount Lindsay, in the Macpherson Range, rises to a height of 5500 ft. In the latitude of Brisbane the chain swerves inland; no other peak north of this reaches higher than Mount Bartle Frere in the Bellenden Ker Range (5438 ft.). The Southern Ocean system of the Victorian Dividing Range hardly attains to the dignity of high mountains. An eastern system in South Australia touches at a few points a height of 3000 ft.; and the Stirling Range, belonging to the south-western system of South Australia, reaches to 2340 ft. There are no mountains behind the Great Australian Bight. On the west the Darling Range faces the Indian Ocean, and extends from Point D’Entrecasteaux to the Murchison river. North of the Murchison, Mount Augustus and Mount Bruce, with their connecting highlands, cut off the coastal drainage from the interior; but no point on the north-west coast reaches a greater altitude than 4000 ft. Several minor ranges, the topography of which is little known, extend from Cambridge Gulf, behind a very much broken coast-line, to Limmen Bight on the Gulf of Carpentaria. Nothing is more remarkable than the contrast between the aspect of the coastal ranges on the north-east and on the south-east of the continent. The higher Australian peaks in the south-east look just what they are, the worn and denuded stumps of mountains, standing for untold ages above the sea. Their shoulders are lifted high above the tree-line. Their summits stand out gaunt and lonely in an unbroken solitude. Having left the tree-line far behind him, nothing is visible to the traveller for miles around but barren peaks and torn crags in indescribable confusion. A verdure of herbage clothes the valleys that have been scooped from the summits downwards. But there are no perpetual snow-fields, no glaciers creep down these valleys, and no alpine hamlets ever appear to break the monotony. The mountains of the north-east, on the contrary, are clothed to their summits with a rich and varied flora. Naked crags, when they do appear, lift themselves from a sea of green, and a tropical vegetation, quite Malaysian in character, covers everything.
The absence of active volcanoes in Australia is a state of things, in a geological sense, quite new to the continent. Some of the volcanoes of the western districts of Victoria have been in eruption probably subsequent to the advent of the black-fellow. In some instances the cones are quite intact, and the beds of ash and scoriae are as yet almost unaffected by denuding agencies. Late in the Tertiary period vast sheets of lava poured from many points of the Great Dividing Range of eastern Australia. But it is notable that all recent volcanic action was confined to a wide belt parallel to the coast. No evidences of recent lava flows can be found in the interior over the great alluvial plain, the Lower, or the Higher Steppes. Nor has the continent, as a whole, in recent times been subjected to any violent earth tremors; though in 1873, to the north of Lake Amadeus, in central Australia, Ernest Giles records the occurrence of earthquake shocks violent enough to dislodge considerable rock masses.
Australia possesses one mountain which, though not a volcano, is a “burning mountain.” This is Mount Wingen, situated in a spur of the Liverpool Range and close to the town of Scone. Its fires are not volcanic, but result from the combustion of coal some distance underground, giving off much smoke and steam; geologists estimate that the burning has been going on for at least 800 years.
The coastal belt of Australia is everywhere well watered, with the exception of the country around the Great Australian Bight and Spencer Gulf. Flowing into the Pacific Ocean on the east coast there are some fine rivers, but the majority haveRivers.short and rapid courses. In Queensland a succession of rivers falls into the Pacific from Cape York to the southern boundary of the state. The Burdekin is the finest of these, draining an area of 53,500 sq. m., and emptying into Upstart Bay; it receives numerous tributaries in its course, and carries a large body of fresh water even in the driest seasons. The Fitzroy river is the second in point of size; it drains an area of 55,600 sq. m., and receives several tributary streams during its course to Keppel Bay. The Brisbane river, falling into Moreton Bay, is important chiefly from the fact that the city of Brisbane is situated on its banks. In New South Wales there are several important rivers, the largest of which is the Hunter, draining 11,000 sq. m., and having a course of 200 m. Taking them from north to south, the principal rivers are the Richmond, Clarence,Macleay, Hastings, Manning, Hunter, Hawkesbury and Shoalhaven. The Snowy river has the greater part of its course in New South Wales, but its mouth and the last 120 m. are in Victoria. The other rivers worth mentioning are the Yarra, entering the sea at Port Phillip, Hopkins and Glenelg. The Murray (q.v.), the greatest river of Australia, debouches into Lake Alexandrina, and thence into the sea at Encounter Bay in South Australia. There are no other rivers of importance in South Australia, but the Torrens and the Gawler may be mentioned. Westward of South Australia, on the shores of the Australian Bight, there is a stretch of country 300 m. in length unpierced by any streams, large or small, but west of the bight, towards Cape Leeuwin, some small rivers enter the sea. The south-west coast is watered by a few streams, but none of any size; amongst these is the Swan, upon which Perth, the capital of Western Australia, is built. Between the Swan and North-West Cape the principal rivers are the Greenough, Murchison and Gascoyne; on the north-west coast, the Ashburton, Fortescue and De Grey; and in the Kimberley district, the Fitzroy, Panton, Prince Regent and the Ord. In the Northern Territory are several fine rivers. The Victoria river is navigable for large vessels for a distance of about 43 m. from the sea, and small vessels may ascend for another 80 m. The Fitzmaurice, discharging into the estuary of the Victoria, is also a large stream. The Daly, which in its upper course is called the Katherine, is navigable for a considerable distance, and small vessels are able to ascend over 100 m. The Adelaide, discharging into Adam Bay, has been navigated by large vessels for about 38 m., and small vessels ascend still farther. The South Alligator river, flowing into Van Diemen’s Gulf, is also a fine stream, navigable for over 30 m. by large vessels; the East Alligator river, falling into the same gulf, has been navigated for 40 m. Besides those mentioned, there are a number of smaller rivers discharging on the north coast, and on the west shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria the Roper river discharges itself into Limmen Bight. The Roper is a magnificent stream, navigable for about 75 or 80 m. by vessels of the largest tonnage, and light draught vessels can ascend 20 m. farther. Along the portion of the south shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria which belongs to Queensland and the east coast, many large rivers discharge their waters, amongst them the Norman, Flinders, Leichhardt, Albert and Gregory on the southern shore, and the Batavia, Archer, Coleman, Mitchell, Staaten and Gilbert on the eastern shore. The rivers flowing into the Gulf of Carpentaria, as well as those in the Northern Territory, drain country which is subject to regular monsoonal rains, and have the general characteristics of sub-tropical rivers.
The network of streams forming the tributaries of the Darling and Murray system give an idea of a well-watered country. The so-called rivers have a strong flow only after heavy rains, and some of them do not ever reach the main drainage line. Flood waters disappear often within a distance of a few miles, being absorbed by porous soil, stretches of sand, and sometimes by the underlying bed-rocks. In many cases the rivers as they approach the main stream break up into numerous branches, or spread their waters over vast flats. This is especially the case with the tributaries of the Darling on its left bank, where in seasons of great rains these rivers overspread their banks and flood the flat country for miles around and thus reach the main stream. Lieutenant John Oxley went down the Lachlan (1817) during one of these periods of flood, and the great plains appeared to him to be the fringe of a vast inland sea. As a matter of fact, they are an alluvial deposit spread out by the same flood waters. The great rivers of Australia, draining inland, carve out valleys, dissolve limestone, and spread out their deposit over the plains when the waters become too sluggish to bear their burden farther. From a geological standpoint, the Great Australian Plain and the fertile valley of the Nile have had a similar origin. Taking the Lachlan as one type of Australian river, we find it takes its rise amongst the precipitous and almost unexplored valleys of the Great Dividing Range. With the help of its tributaries it acts as a denuding agent for 14,000 sq. m. of country, and carries its burden of sediment westwards. A point is reached about 200 m. from the Dividing Range, where the river ceases to act as a denuding agent, and the area of deposition begins, at a level of 250 ft. above the sea, but before the waters can reach the ocean they have still to travel about 1000 m.
The Darling is reckoned amongst the longest rivers in the world, for it is navigable, part of the year, from Walgett to its confluence with the Murray, 1758 m., and then to the sea, a further distance of 587 m.—making in all 2345 m. of navigable water. But this gives no correct idea of the true character of the Darling, for it can hardly be said to drain its own watershed. From the sources of its various tributaries to the town of Bourke, the river may be described as draining a watershed. But from Bourke to the sea, 550 m. in a direct line, the river gives rather than receives water from the country it flows through.
The annual rainfall and the area of the catchment afford no measure whatever as to the size of a river in the interior of Australia. The discharge of the Darling river at Bourke does not amount to more than 10% of the rainfall over the country which it drains. It was this remarkable fact which first led to the idea that, as the rainfall could not be accounted for either by evaporation or by the river discharge, much of the 90% unaccounted for must sink into the ground, and in part be absorbed by some underlying bed-rock. All Australian rivers, except the Murray and the Murrumbidgee, depend entirely and directly on the rainfall. They are flooded after rain, and in seasons of drought many of them, especially the tributaries of the Darling, become chains of ponds. Springs which would equalize the discharge of rivers by continuing to pour water into their beds after the rainy season has passed seem entirely absent in the interior. Nor are there any snowfields to feed rivers, as in the other continents. More remarkable still, over large tracts of country the water seems disposed to flow away from, rather than to, the river-beds. As the low-lying plains are altogether an alluvial deposit, the coarser sediments accumulate in the regions where the river first overflows its banks to spread out over the plains. The country nearest the river receiving the heaviest deposit becomes in this way the highest ground, and so continues until a “break-away” occurs, when a new river-bed is formed, and the same process of deposition and accumulation is repeated. As the general level of the country is raised by successive alluvial deposits, the more ancient river-beds become buried, but being still connected with the newer rivers at some point or other, they continue to absorb water. This underground network of old river-beds underlying the great alluvial plains must be filled to repletion before flood waters will flow over the surface. It is not surprising, therefore, that comparatively little of the rainfall over the vast extent of the great central plain ever reaches the sea by way of the river systems; indeed these systems as usually shown on the maps leave a false impression as to the actual condition of things.
The great alluvial plain is one of Australia’s most notable inland features; its extent is upwards of 500,000 sq. m., lying east of 135° W. and extending right across the continent from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Murray river. The interiorSteppes.of the continent west of 135° and north of the Musgrave ranges is usually termed by geographers the Australian Steppes. It is entirely different in all essential features from the great alluvial plains. Its prevailing aspect is characterized by flat and terraced hills, capped by desert sandstone, with stone-covered flats stretching over long distances. The country round Lake Eyre, where some of the land is actually below sea-level, comes under this heading. The higher steppes, as far as they are known, consist of Ordovician and Cambrian rocks, with an average elevation of 1500 to 3000 ft. above sea-level. Over this country water-courses are shown on maps. These run in wet seasons, but in every instance for a short distance only, and sooner or later they are lost in sand-hills, where their waters disappear and a line of stunted gum-trees (Eucalyptus rostrata) is all that is present to indicate that there may be even a soakage to mark the abandoned course. The steppes cover a surface of 400,000 sq. m., and from this vast expanse not a drop of the scanty rainfall reaches the sea; there is no leading drainage system and there are no rivers. Another notable feature of the interior is the so-called lake area, a district stretching to the north of Spencer Gulf. TheseLakes.lakes are expanses of brackish waters that spread or contract as the season is one of drought or rain. In seasons of drought they are hardly more than swamps and mud flats, which for a time may become a grassy plain, or desolate coast encrusted with salt. The country around is the dreariest imaginable, the surface is a dead level, there is no heavy timber and practically no settlement. Lake Torrens, the largest of these depressions, sometimes forms a sheet of water 100 m. in length. To the north again stretches Lake Eyre, and to the west Lake Gairdner. Some of these lake-beds are at or slightly below sea-level, so that a very slight depression of the land to the south of them would connect much of the interior with the Southern Ocean.
(T. A. C.)
Geology.—The states of Australia are divided by natural boundaries, which separate geographical areas having different characters, owing, mainly, to their different geological structures. Hence the general stratigraphical geology can be most conveniently summarized for each state separately, dealing here with the geological history of Australia as a whole. Australia is essentially the fragment of a great plateau land of Archean rocks. It consists in the main of an Archean block or “coign,” which still occupies nearly the whole of the western half of the continent, outcrops in north-eastern Queensland, forms the foundation of southern New South Wales and eastern Victoria, and is exposed in western Victoria, in Tasmania, and in the western flank of the Southern Alps of New Zealand. These areas of Archean rocks were doubtless once continuous. But they have been separated by the foundering of the Coral Sea and the Tasman Sea, which divided the continent of Australia from the islands of the Australasian festoon; and the foundering of the band across Australia, from the Gulf of Carpentaria, through western Queensland and western New South Wales, to the lower basin of the Murray, has separated the Archean areas of eastern and western Australia. The breaking up of the old Archean foundation block began in Cambrian and Ordovician times. A narrow Cambrian sea must have extended across central Australia from the Kimberley Goldfield in the north-west, through Tempe Downs and the Macdonnell chain in central Australia, to the South Australian highlands, central Victoria at Mansfield, and northern Tasmania. Cambrian rocks occur in each of these districts, and they are best developed in the South Australian highlands, where they include a long belt of contemporary glacial deposits. Marine Ordovician rocks were deposited along the same general course. They are best developed in the Macdonnell chain incentral Australia and in Victoria, where the fullest sequence is known; while they also extended north-eastward from Victoria into New South Wales, where, as yet, no Cambrian rocks have been found. The Silurian system was marked by the retreat of the sea from central Australia; but the sea still covered a band across Victoria, from the coast to the Murray basin, passing to the east of Melbourne. This Silurian sea was less extensive than the Ordovician in Victoria; but it appears to have been wider in New South Wales and in Queensland. The best Silurian sequence is in New South Wales. Silurian rocks are well developed in western Tasmania, and the Silurian sea must have washed the south-western corner of the continent, if the rocks of the Stirling Range be rightly identified as of this age.
The Devonian system includes a complex series of deposits, which are of most interest in eastern Australia. This period was marked by intense earth movements, which affected the whole of the east Australian highlands. The Lower Devonian beds are in the main terrestrial, or coarse littoral deposits, and volcanic rocks. The Middle Devonian was marked by the same great transgression as in Europe and America; it produced inland seas, extending into Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, in which were deposited limestones with a rich coral fauna. The Upper Devonian was a period of marine retreat; the crustal disturbances of the Lower Devonian were renewed and great quartz-pebble beaches were formed on the rising shore lines, producing the West Coast Range conglomerates of Tasmania, and the similar rocks to the south-east of Mansfield in Victoria. Intrusions of graniticmassifsin the Devonian period formed the primitive mountain axis of Victoria, which extends east and west across the state and forms the nucleus of the Victorian highlands. Similar granitic intrusions occurred in New South Wales and Queensland, and built up a mountain chain, which ran north and south across the continent; its worn-down stumps now form the east Australian highlands.
The Carboniferous period began with a marine transgression, enabling limestones to form in Tasmania and New South Wales; and at the same time the sea first got in along the western edge of the western plateau, depositing the Carboniferous rocks of the Gascoyne basin and the coastal plain of north-western Australia. The Upper Carboniferous period was in the main terrestrial, and during it were laid down the coal-seams of New South Wales; they are best developed in the basin of the Hunter river, and they extend southward, covered by Mesozoic deposits, beyond Sydney. The Coal Measures become narrower in the south, until, owing to the eastward projection of the highlands, the Lower Palaeozoic rocks reach the coast. The coal-seams must have been formed in well-watered, lowland forests, at the foot of a high mountain range, built up by the Devonian earth movements. The mountains both in Victoria and New South Wales were snow-capped, and glaciers flowed down their flanks and laid down Carboniferous glacial deposits, which are still preserved in basins that flank the mountain ranges, such as the famous conglomerates of Bacchus Marsh, Heathcote and the Loddon valley in Victoria, and of Branxton and other localities in New South Wales. The age of the glacial deposits is later than theGlossopterisflora and occurs early in the time of theGangamopterisflora. Kitson’s work in Tasmania shows that there also the glacial beds may be correlated with the lower or Greta Coal Measures of New South Wales.
The Permian deposits are best developed in New South Wales and Tasmania, where their characters show the continuation of the Carboniferous conditions. The Mesozoic begins with a Triassic land period in the mainland of Australia; while the islands of the Australasian festoon contain the Triassic marine limestones, which fringethe whole of the Pacific. The Triassic beds are best known in New South Wales, where round Sydney they include a series of sandstones and shales. They also occur in northern Tasmania.
The Jurassic system is represented by two types. In Victoria, Tasmania, northern New South Wales and Queensland, there are Jurassic terrestrial deposits, containing the coal seams of Victoria, of the Clarence basin of north-eastern New South Wales, and of the Ipswich series in Queensland; the same beds range far inland on the western slopes of the east Australian highlands in New South Wales and Queensland and they occur, with coal-seams, at Leigh’s Creek, at the northern foot of the South Australian highlands. They are also preserved in basins on the western plateau, as shown by brown coal deposits passed through in the Lake Phillipson bore. The second and marine type of the Jurassics occurs in Western Australia, on the coastal plain skirting the western foot of the western plateau.
The Cretaceous period was initiated by the subsidence of a large area to the south of the Gulf of Carpentaria, whereby a Lower Cretaceous sea spread southward, across western Queensland, western New South Wales and the north-eastern districts of South Australia. In this sea were laid down the shales of the Rolling Downs formation. The sea does not appear to have extended completely across Australia, breaking it into halves, for a projection from the Archean plateau of Western Australia extended as far east as the South Australian highlands, and thence probably continued eastward, till it joined the Victorian highlands. The Cretaceous sea gradually receded and the plains of the Rolling Downs formation formed on its floor were covered by the sub-aerial and lacustrine deposits of the Desert Sandstone.
The Kainozoic period opened with fresh earth movements, the most striking evidence of which are the volcanic outbreaks all round the Australian coasts. These movements in the south-east formed the Great Valley of Victoria, which traverses nearly the whole of the state between the Victorian highlands to the north, and the Jurassic sandstones of the Otway Ranges and the hills of south Gippsland. In this valley were laid down, either in Eocene or Oligocene times, a great series of lake beds and thick accumulations of brown coal. Similar deposits, of approximately the same age, occur in Tasmania and New Zealand; and at about the same time there began the Kainozoic volcanic period of Australasia. The first eruptions piled up huge domes of lavas rich in soda, including the geburite-dacites and sölvsbergites of Mount Macedon in Victoria, and the kenyte and tephrite domes of Dunedin, in New Zealand. These rocks were followed by the outpouring of the extensive older basalts in the Great Valley of Victoria and on the highlands of eastern Victoria, and also in New South Wales and Queensland. Then followed a marine transgression along most of the southern coast of Australia. The sea encroached far on the land from the Great Australian Bight and there formed the limestones of the Nullarbor Plains. The sea extended up the Murray basin into the western plains of New South Wales. Farther east the sea was interrupted by the still existing land-connexion between Tasmania and Victoria; but beyond it, the marine deposits are found again, fringing the coasts of eastern Gippsland and Croajingolong. These marine deposits are not found anywhere along the eastern coast of Australia; but they occur, and reach about the same height above sea-level, in New Guinea, and are widely developed in New Zealand. No doubt eastern Australia then extended far out into the Tasman Sea. The great monoclinal fold which formed the eastern face of the east Australian highlands, west of Sydney, is of later age. After this marine period was brought to a close the sea retreated. Tasmania and Victoria were separated by the foundering of Bass Strait, and at the same time the formation of the rift valley of Spencer Gulf, and Lake Torrens, isolated the South Australian highlands from the Eyre Peninsula and the Westralian plateau. Earth movements are still taking place both along Bass Strait and the Great Valley of South Australia, and apparently along the whole length of the southern coast of Australia.
The Flowing Wells of Central Australia.—The clays of the Rolling Downs formation overlie a series of sands and drifts, saturated with water under high pressure, which discharges at the surface as a flowing well, when a borehole pierces the impermeable cover. The first of these wells was opened at Kallara in the west of New South Wales in 1880. In 1882, Dr W.L. Jack concluded that western Queensland might be a deep artesian basin. The Blackhall bore, put down at his advice from 1885 to 1888, reached a water-bearing layer at the depth of 1645 ft. and discharged 291,000 gallons a day. It was the first of the deep artesian wells of the continent. As the plains on the Rolling Downs formation are mostly waterless, the discovery of this deep reservoir of water has been of great aid in the development of central Australia. In Queensland to the 30th of June 1904, 973 wells had been sunk, of which 596 were flowing wells, and the total flow was 62,635,722 cub. ft. a day. The deepest well is that at Whitewood, 5046 ft. deep. In New South Wales by the 30th of June 1903, the government had put down 101 bores producing 66 flowing wells and 22 sub-artesian wells, with a total discharge of 54,000,000 gallons a day; and there were also 144 successful private wells. In South Australia there are 38 deep bores, from 20 of which there is a flow of 6,250,000 gallons a day.
The wells were first called artesian in the belief that the ascent of the water in them was due to the hydrostatic pressure of water at a higher level in the Queensland hills. The well-water was supposed to have percolated underground, through the Blythesdale Braystone, which outcrops in patches on the eastern edge of the Rolling Downs formation. But the Blythesdale Braystone is a small local formation, unable to supply all the wells that have been sunk; and many of the wells derive their water from the Jurassic shales and mudstones. The difference in level between the outcrop of the assumed eastern intake and of the wells is often so small, in comparison with their distance apart, that the friction would completely sop up the whole of the available hydrostatic head. Many of the well-waters contain gases; thus the town of Roma is lighted by natural gas which escapes from its well. The chemical characters of the well-waters, the irregular distribution of the water-pressure, the distribution of the underground thermal gradients, and the occurrence in some of the wells of a tidal rise and fall of a varying period, are facts which are not explained on the simple hydrostatic theory. J.W. Gregory has maintained (Dead Heart of Australia, 1906, pp. 273-341) that the ascent of water in these wells is due to the tension of the included gases and the pressure of overlying sheets of rocks, and that some of the water is of plutonic origin.1