SYDNEY AND ITS HARBOR.
In the early part of this century Australia had three classes of inhabitants—free settlers, convicts, and emancipists—the latter being convicts who had served out their sentences and become free men. The free settlers refused to associate with them, and they in turn would not associate with the convicts; the free settlers were inclined to be tyrannical, and wished to have the emancipists deprived of civil rights, and long and bitter quarrels were the result of their demands. The governors generally took the side of the emancipists as a matter of justice, and thus made themselves unpopular with the rest of the colony.
While studying the early history of the Australian colonies, Frank and Fred obtained considerable information from a gentleman who seemed to be thoroughly familiar with the subject. As he made no allusion in any way to his ancestry, the youths thought it just possible that he might be the son or grandson of one of the "involuntary emigrants" of early days. Desiring to respect his reserve as much as possible, they did not make any entry of his name in their note-books. Their suspicions were strengthened by a remark which he dropped, that it was not considered polite in Australian society to ask who and what a man's father was.
"The term 'convict' is of course odious," said he, "no matter what the circumstance that has caused it to be applied to a man. Many of the convicts who were sent to Australia owed their transportation to no worse offences than sympathizing with a rebellion, snaring a hare, or catching a fish out of somebody's preserved pond. I knew a man who was transported for seven years for nothing else than twisting the neck of a partridge, and his case was very far from being a solitary one. In the eye of the British law he was a criminal, a convict; but in the eye of common-sense and humanity his respectability was not greatly tarnished. The Irish rebellion of 1798 caused great numbers of Irishmen to be transported; they were treated as criminals, and all sorts of indignities were heaped upon them, but their only crime was that of seeking to free their country."
Frank asked how the convicts were treated on the voyage from England to Australia and after they arrived there.
"According to all accounts," was the reply, "they were very cruelly used. On the transport-ships they were closely herded together, poorly fed, and severely flogged for the least infraction of the rules. Manydied on the voyage in consequence of the inhuman treatment they received; in some cases the deaths were a fourth of the entire number. On their arrival in Australia they were put at work in Government establishments, or on public roads and wharves, or were hired out to agricultural and other colonists. You must remember that those were the days of brute force, and no officer in charge of convicts ever thought of such a thing as moral suasion and kindness, however much combined with firmness. Flogging was of daily and almost hourly occurrence, and administered for trivial offences; a historian of the colony says that any man who failed to go to church on Sundays received twenty lashes on his bare back. Prisoners were put in irons often at the mere caprice of their keepers, their food was scanty, their clothing often insufficient for the weather, and if a man ventured to run away he was pursued by blood-hounds and bull-dogs and brought back, unless killed by the natives or dead from starvation.
THE TOWN HALL, SYDNEY.
"Settlements were formed at several places along the coast of Australia and in Van Dieman's Land (now Tasmania). The first convict settlement in Tasmania was on a peninsula, and a row of bull-dogs was chained across the narrow isthmus that connected the peninsula with the main-land, so close together that it was impossible for a man to pass between any two of them."
"I suppose the prisoners rarely managed to escape?" said Frank.
"Very rarely," said the gentleman. "There were many runaways, but they were generally brought back and punished, and if their escape was accompanied with violence they were hanged or shot. In the bush they were liable to starve, and many a convict's bones are whitening where he perished of hunger; the natives were hostile, and if a runaway escaped recapture and starvation, he was very likely to fall before the spear of a black man.
"Some of the Irish convicts of 1798 were so struck by the similarity between the Blue Mountains, about eighty miles from Sydney, and the Connaught Hills of Ireland that they rushed off expecting to reach their homes without difficulty. One man who had tried on the voyage out to fathom the mystery of the mariner's compass felt sure that he could find his way home if he only had the thing to steer by. He stole a copy of a work on navigation, and tore out the first leaf, which had the picture of a compass upon it. His theft was detected and punished, and he never had an opportunity to try his system of paper-compass navigation.
"A goodly portion of the emigrants thought China was only a littleway overland from Sydney, and many tried to reach it. There used to be a story of a runaway who had wandered for days in the bush, and suddenly came to a hut in which was an acquaintance. He anxiously asked how his friend had got to China, and was much astonished to learn that he had reached a farm a few miles from Sydney, and his acquaintance had been hired there as a laborer.
SENTENCED TO HARD LABOR.
"If you wish to learn how the convicts were brought from England to Australia," continued their informant to Frank and Fred, "how they lived when they got here, and how they were treated, read a story entitled 'His Natural Life,' by Marcus Clarke, an Australian journalist and littérateur. In the form of a novel he has preserved much of the history of the old convict days. It is not altogether agreeable reading, though it is instructive.
"All the colonists except the convicts themselves, and they had no voice in the matter, protested against Australia being peopled by these objectionable individuals, and protest after protest was made to the Home Government. These protests had their effect, and in 1840 transportation to New South Wales came to an end; an attempt was afterwards made to renew it, but was never carried out. It was continued later in Van Dieman's Land and other colonies, and in West Australia until 1868, when it was brought to an end, not so much at the wish of the people of West Australia as of those of the other colonies.
"And let me say in conclusion," he remarked, "that there are many prominent citizens of Australia whose fathers or grandfathers were transported, and nobody in his senses thinks any the worse of them in consequence. There are some gentlemen high in official position—of course it would not be polite for me to name them—who are thus descended, and so are some of the wealthiest and most prominent citizens in civil life. Everybody may be aware of it, but nobody talks of it in public.
"In our political contests the opposing candidates use as hard language about one another as the same class of men do in political contests in the United States; they may say anything they please except that the man they are denouncing is the descendant of a transported convict. Whenever this is done, although the statement may be perfectly true, the injured man can bring a suit for slander, and be certain of high damages. Only a few years ago an aspirant for office was compelled to pay ten thousand pounds for saying in a public speech that the man against whom he was contending was the son of an 'involuntary emigrant' from England."
The gentleman paused, and Fred took the opportunity to ask what a ticket-of-leave man was in the days of transportation.
VIEW OF SYDNEY FROM PYRMONT, DARLING HARBOR.
"As to that," was the reply, "tickets-of-leave are in use to-day in other countries as well as in England, though they are not known by that name. In the United States you have a system of remitting part of a sentence in case of good conduct, and we do the same in England.Well, this is what the ticket-of-leave was in Australia: a man received a conditional pardon consequent upon good conduct up to the time it was granted, and also conditioned upon continued good conduct during the time it was in force. In Australia a ticket-of-leave man was required to remain in a certain prescribed district, where his conduct could be observed; in practice it often happened that the man ran away and sought a home elsewhere than under the British flag. A good many ticket-of-leave men found their way to the Feejee, Samoa, Society, and other islands of the Pacific, where they led lives that often were not in accordance with civilized rules. In consequence of their violation of the permit granted them, they were always greatly alarmed when a British ship appeared in the offing.
HOME OF AN EMANCIPIST.
"Many ticket-of-leave men became good citizens; some of them obtained grants of land, and established farms where they supported themselves, and not a few of this class became prosperous and wealthy. The mechanics found plenty of occupation in the cities and towns, and thus there gradually grew up a population of emancipists, who have been mentioned already. In the disputes about the rights of the emancipists their cause was warmly espoused by Governor Macquarie, who earned the title of 'The Prisoner's Friend.' Some excesses followed the adoption of this policy, but the colony was benefited by it, and ultimately all classes of freemen were admitted to an equal footing, and the cessation of transportation in time caused a perfect commingling of classes and an extinction of the old feud."
A TICKET-OF-LEAVE MAN.
The conversation terminated here, and the youths thanked their informantfor what he had told them on this interesting subject. They closed their note-books as soon as the interview ended, and then went out for a stroll. Curious to see the shipping in the harbor, they directed their steps to the Circular Quay, the modern name of Sydney Cove, where the original expedition landed, in 1788. The founders of the settlement could hardly recognize the cove should they revisit it to-day.
"Circular Quay," said Fred, in his account of their walk, "is at the head of the cove, and has a length of one thousand three hundred feet, available for the largest vessels. It has piers and pavilions for the ferry-steamers, which are numerous and active, and the Government has made a liberal expenditure for extending the wharfage accommodations and erecting sheds for the storage of goods. The Australian Steam Navigation Company have their wharves here, and several of their vessels were loading or discharging at Circular Quay all at once.
"To give an idea of the commerce of Sydney with other parts of the world, let me mention the various steamship lines whose vessels were visible from this quay. One of the first to come within our line of vision was a great steamer of the Peninsular & Oriental Company, familiarly known as the 'P. & O.,' and not far from it was another equally large steamer belonging to the Orient line. Each of these companies has a fortnightly service each way between England and Australia, and the sharp competition between them has had the effect of reducing the price of passage and securing rapid voyages. A little farther away was a steamer flying the tricolor of France; it belonged to the 'Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes,' a rival of the P. & O. in Asiatic waters, and at the principal ports of Asiatic and Australasian lands. The Austrian flag was visible on a steamer of the Austrian Lloyds, and the German flag upon a magnificent vessel of the North German Lloyds, or 'Bremen Line.'
JUST ARRIVED IN PORT.
"Australia has an abundance of steam communication with the rest of the world. The P. & O. line has a fortnightly service each way between London and Sydneyviathe Suez Canal, the other Australian ports included in its itinerary being Melbourne, Adelaide, and King George's Sound; the Orient line has a similar fortnightly service, also by the Suez Canal, but omits King George's Sound from its list of Australian ports. The North German Lloyds has a service each way every four weeks between Sydney and Bremen, its Australian ports being Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide; the Messageries Maritimes—French mail-line—has a similar four-weekly service each way between Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Marseilles. Then there is a four-weekly service each way of the British India Steam Navigation Company, between Brisbane and Aden, connecting at Aden with the same company's line, to and from London, and touching at Batavia, Java, on every voyage. The New Zealand Shipping Company and the Shaw Savill & Albion Company have each a four-weekly service from London to New Zealand by way of the Cape of Good Hope and Hobart, Tasmania, andtheir steamers return to London by way of the Strait of Magellan, Rio Janeiro, and the Canary Islands. Last, but by no means least, is the four-weekly service each way between Sydney and San Francisco, which has been already mentioned.
SHIP YARD SCENE.
"All these steamship lines receive subsidies from the colonial governments, and all, with the exception of the American one, receive subsidies from their home governments. It is a curious circumstance, and a humiliating one, to Americans in Australia or having relations with the antipodes, that the American line between San Francisco and Australia is subsidized by the colonies, but receives nothing from the United States, under whose flag it sails. Our commerce with Australia and New Zealand now exceeds twelve millions of dollars annually, and could be greatly increased by the encouragement of regular and permanent steam communication with the colonies.
"An officer of one of the steamers running to San Francisco spoke to us, and remarked that he had met us in the last-named city just as we were taking passage for Honolulu. He told us we could start from Sydney for 'Greenland's icy mountains or India's coral strand,' or for any other mountains or strands on the globe. 'That wharf to the east,' said he, 'is called Wooloomooloo; it was built at a heavy cost, but the water near it is too shallow for sea-going vessels of the deepest draught, and it is principally used for coasting-vessels, of which you see there are a great many.'
"Then he told us that Darling Harbor, on the western side of the city, had its entire frontage covered with wharves and quays. Grafton Wharf, with its building, covers an area of more than three acres. As for dry-dock accommodations, he pronounced Sydney one of the best ports he had ever seen. There are two or three docks that were good enough for the ships of twenty years ago, but are of less importance to-day. A few years ago the Government built a dock four hundred and fifty feet long, and wide in proportion, and it was thought sufficient for all necessities for years to come; but hardly was it completed before it was found too short for the largest modern steamships, and so another has been built that is six hundred and eighty feet long, one hundred and eight feet wide between the walls, and eighty-five feet in the entrance-gate. How long will it be before they will find this dock too small for the wants of commerce?
"In one year (1885) the number of British and foreign ships that entered Port Jackson was 2601, with an aggregate tonnage of 2,088,307 tons. There are several ship building and repairing establishments here; that of the Australian Steam Navigation Company alone covers more than six acres, and employs nearly five hundred persons. A hundred years ago this was a howling wilderness; that is, if the Australian savages were accustomed to howl, and I presume they were.
"We could give figures about Sydney that would make your head 'an ant-hill of units and tens,' as Doctor Holmes says; but perhaps you've had enough to convince you of the importance of the city. It has six daily papers, weeklies so numerous that the list would be monotonous, and as for schools, churches, hospitals, clubs, hotels, and other institutions of a great city, there are all that could be reasonably expected. As to manufacturing industries, it has a great many factories, founderies, and engineering establishments; for clothing alone there are more than fifty factories, employing from fifty to four hundred hands each, and the other manufacturing concerns are in similar proportion."
ON THE PARAMATTA RIVER.
Our friends went on a steamboat excursion to Paramatta, which lies up the river of the same name, about fifteen miles from Sydney. Next to Sydney, it is the oldest town in the colony, having been foundedin November, 1788; it was originally called Rosehill, but the name was afterwards changed to the aboriginal one of Par-a-mat-ta. The first grain raised in the colony was grown at Paramatta, and here the earliest grants of land were made to convicts who had served their time at hard labor and were entitled to become colonists. It is now a prosperous town with from eight to ten thousand inhabitants, and has a considerable business in manufacturing. Along the banks of the river and in the neighborhood of Paramatta, there are many flower-gardens, from which Sydney is abundantly supplied with boutonnieres, bouquets, and huge baskets of flowers at all seasons of the year.
IRRIGATING AN ORANGE GROVE.
"Our chief interest in Paramatta," said Fred, "was to see the orange-groves, which have made the place famous throughout Australia. We were accompanied by a gentleman who was well known both in Paramatta and in Sydney, and he took us at once to the orangery of the late Mr. Pye, who devoted the greater part of his life to the introduction and cultivation of this excellent fruit. They told us that more than ten thousand oranges had been gathered in one season from a single tree! We have never eaten finer oranges in any part of the world than at Paramatta, and the other fruits grown in the orchards of the place are said to be equally good in their season. The oranges are best in December, but they are gathered ripe during every month of the year. Of course they wanted us to inspect some of the factories, hospitals, and other public buildings, but our time was too limited, and were returned to Sydney by railway instead of taking the steamboat back again."
Other excursions were made in the suburbs of Sydney, and Doctor Bronson and his nephews received invitations to visit some of the interior towns of the colony. One of their excursions was to Botany Bay, which lies five miles from Sydney by land, the distance by sea being fully fifteen miles. A horse-railway connects the village with Sydney, and the ride is quite a pretty one. The chief object of interest is the monument which marks the spot where Captain Cook landed in 1770, and took possession of the place in the name of the British Crown.
The consideration of the up-country invitations was postponed until the return of the party from Queensland, whither they went as soon as the sights of Sydney were exhausted. How they went and what they saw will be told in the next chapter.
FROM SYDNEY TO BRISBANE.—POLITICAL DIVISIONS OF AUSTRALIA.—ORDER IN WHICH THE COLONIES WERE FOUNDED.—EXPLORATIONS AND THEIR EXTENT.—DOCTOR BASS AND CAPTAIN FLINDERS.—ABSENCE OF WATER IN THE INTERIOR OF AUSTRALIA.—A COUNTRY OF STRANGE CHARACTERISTICS.—NATURE'S REVERSES.—HOW THE COLONIES ARE GOVERNED.—RELIGION AND EDUCATION.—JEALOUSY OF THE COLONIES TOWARDS EACH OTHER.—NEWCASTLE AND ITS COAL.—RAILWAY TRAVELLING IN NEW SOUTH WALES.—TENTERFIELD AND STANTHORPE.—COBB'S COACHES.—AUSTRALIAN SCENERY.—THE EUCALYPTUS, OR GUM-TREE.—THE TALLEST TREES IN THE WORLD.—SILVER STEMS AND MALLEE SCRUB.—BRISBANE.—RELICS OF THE CONVICT SYSTEM.—QUEEN STREET AND THE BOTANICAL GARDENS.
INTERIOR OF A COAL-BREAKER.
A coasting steamer carried Doctor Bronson and his young companions to Newcastle, a town which resembles the English one of the same name in being an important centre of the coal-trade. The distance from Sydney is about seventy-five miles, and consequently the voyage was of only a few hours' duration; even this limited time was utilized by a conversation about the political divisions of Australia and the relations between the colonies.
The conversation began with a question from Doctor Bronson as to what the youths had learned on the subject since their arrival at Sydney or on the voyage from New Zealand. Frank was the first to reply.
"We have read to you our notes," said he, "about the settlement of New South Wales by the fleet of ships that came out from England by order of the Government. New South Wales was thus the parent colony, and the others, with one exception, are offshoots from it. In 1790 New South Wales established a penal colony on Norfolk Island, which has since been given up to the Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the mutineers of theBounty. Van Dieman's Land, or Tasmania, was settled as a penal colony in 1803, by Lieutenant Bowen, who was sent from Sydney with a few convicts and their guards, and formed a settlement near the spot where the city of Hobart now stands. Queensland, under the name of Moreton Bay District, was settled in 1825 from Sydney, and became a separate colony in 1859. Victoria, then known as Port Phillip, and forming part of New South Wales, was colonized in 1803, and afterwards abandoned; it was permanently settled from Tasmania in 1835, and on July 1, 1851, the colony was separated from New South Wales and became independent.
"South Australia was colonized by emigrants from Great Britain in 1836, and West Australia by a detachment of soldiers and convicts from Sydney in 1826. New South Wales can thus claim the parentage of all the colonies of the continent and its adjacent island, Tasmania, with the single exception of South Australia.
"West, or Western, Australia is described by its name, as it occupies the entire western part of the continent. South Australia is a misnomer; the parent colony is in the southern part of the continent, but its jurisdiction extends from ocean to ocean to the northern shore, and includes the so-called Northern Territory, or Alexandra Land, which will one day, no doubt, form an independent government. To the eastward of the Northern Territory and South Australia is Queensland, and south of Queensland and eastward of South Australia is the parent colony of New South Wales. Then comes the colony of Victoria, south of New South Wales; territorially it is the smallest of all the colonies, but it isn't small in any other way. Tasmania is a hundred and fifty miles south of Victoria, from which it is separated by Bass's Strait, which preserves the name of its discoverer, Dr. George Bass of the Royal Navy."[10]
Frank paused a moment and gave Fred an opportunity to speak of something he had just read about Doctor Bass. "He made his first expedition," said Fred, "in 1796, in an open boat eight feet long, in company with Midshipman (afterwards Captain) Flinders and a crew of oneboy. They narrowly escaped being drowned in the sea, and later in being killed by the natives when the wind drove them ashore. In the following year Doctor Bass went in a whale-boat, with a crew of six men and provisions for six weeks, and found that the coast trended so far to the west as to indicate the separation of Tasmania from the main-land, and in the next year (1798) he obtained a sloop, and in company with Captain Flinders actually sailed through the strait and determined the question."
GOLD-FIELDS OF MOUNT ALEXANDER, AUSTRALIA.
"I see you have been reading to advantage," the Doctor remarked. "And please add to your notes that this same Doctor Bass is supposed to have died a slave in the mines of Chili. He was arrested at Valparaiso in consequence of a dispute with the authorities, and was never again seen or heard of by his friends. There was a rumor that he had been sent to the mines, and that was all."
"If the Australian continent were divided into one hundred equal parts," said Frank, "Victoria would include three, New South Wales ten, Queensland twenty-three, South Australia thirty, and West Australia thirty-four. The greatest length of Australia is about 2400 miles, and its greatest width, between Cape York on the north and Wilson's Promontory on the south, is 1971 miles. It has about 7750 miles of coast-line, and an area of 2,944,628 square miles. A good idea of the extent of Australia may be had by comparing it with other countries. It is about twenty-six times the area of Great Britain and Ireland, fifteen times the size of France, about one-sixth smaller than the whole of the United States of America, and only about one-fifth smaller than the whole of Europe."
Fred asked who gave it the appellation of Australia.
"The name was given by Captain Flinders, of whom we were speaking a few moments ago," replied the Doctor. "His memory is preserved in a river and a mountain-range of the continent whose coast he explored. On his return to Europe he was captured by the French, and was held a prisoner from 1806 to 1810. He died in England in 1814, shortly after publishing his book, 'A Voyage to Terra Australis.'"
"There is a great part of the country not yet explored," said Frank, as the Doctor paused. "A writer on this subject says that the unexplored region of the present day is almost entirely confined to Western Australia and a large part of the northern territory of South Australia. New South Wales and Victoria have an area of four hundred thousand square miles, almost every mile of which is fairly known; Queensland may still have a small extent of unknown land in the far northern peninsula;South Australia has at least two hundred and fifty thousand miles unexplored or but little known; and West Australia has fully half a million square miles that have been crossed at intervals by the tracks of a few explorers. In round figures, the extent of unexplored or partially known country in Australia is more than double that of the thoroughly known portion. The continent is almost fairly bisected by the overland telegraph line, which follows closely the track of Macdouall Stuart, the explorer, and the telegraph may be considered a line of demarcation between the explored and unexplored portions."
"And have you ascertained why the continent has not yet been thoroughly examined?" Doctor Bronson queried.
CLEARING IN AN AUSTRALIAN FOREST.
"I have," Fred replied, with alacrity, "and I presume Frank has done so too. It is because there is no water in the interior of the continent, or but very little. If you look on the map you will see very few rivers, and none of those that exist is of great size. Australia is nearly as large as Europe, and see the difference in the rivers. Europe has the Danube, Rhine, Volga, Don, Vistula, Seine, Rhone—all large rivers—together with more than twice as many of lesser note, but all of them important; while Australia has only a single river of consequence, the Murray. There are hundreds of miles of coast line together where not a single stream, great or small, flows into the sea, and some of the interior rivers dry up and disappear in the hot season."
"I read about that too," said Frank; "the Murray and its tributaries,the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee, are lasting streams; but the Darling, a river of considerable size, flowing into the Murray from the north, has the Australian peculiarity of disappearing into quicksands and marshes. With the exception of the Murray, all the other permanent streams of Australia are short, and of little consequence; and, like the rivers of New Zealand, they have been clogged with water-cress, which was introduced from England in the expectation that it would be a great luxury."
A WATERLESS REGION.
"You have hit exactly upon the obstacle which has baffled Australian explorers," said the Doctor. "All who have sought to penetrate the interior have suffered terribly from thirst, and some expeditions that have never been heard from are supposed to have perished from the same cause. The rainfall in the interior of the continent is slight, the heat in summer is intense, and even in winter the thermometer sometimes runs to a high figure."
"Then it is fair to suppose that the interior of Australia is practically of no use," Frank remarked.
"It is fair to suppose so," was the reply; "but some scientistsbelieve that good pasture-land and habitable country will yet be found in the interior, where the few explorers who have been there report only a desert unfit to sustain human life and impracticable for settlement. Artesian wells have been bored in many places, and a fair proportion of them have succeeded in finding water. There is so much territory in Australia that it is not likely the capabilities or disadvantages of all parts of it will be thoroughly known for many years to come.
AUSTRALIAN LYRE BIRDS.
"And now," he continued, as he glanced at a book he held in his hand, "let us read what an English author has written concerning this strange country:
"'Almost everything in nature is, in Australia, the reverse of what it is in England. When we have winter they have summer; when we have day they have night; we have our feet pressing nearly opposite to their feet. There the compass points to the south, the sun travels along the northern heavens, the barometer rises with a southerly and falls with a northerly wind. The animals are disproportionately large in their lower extremities, and carry their young in a pouch; the plumage of the birds is beautiful, their notes are harsh and strange; the swans are black, the owls screech and hoot only in the daytime; the cuckoo's song is heard only in the night. The valleys are cool, the mountain-tops arewarm; the north winds are hot, the south winds are cold, the east winds are healthy. The bees are without sting; the cherries grow with the stone outside; one of the birds has a broom in its mouth instead of a tongue. Many of the beautiful flowers are without smell; most of the trees are without shade, and shed their bark instead of their leaves; some, indeed, are without leaves; in others the leaves are vertical. And even the geological formation of the country, as far as ascertained, is most singular. In other parts of the world coal is black, but in Australia they have bituminous coal as white as chalk."'Taken as a whole, the country, as far as explored, exhibits less hill and dale, with less compact vegetation, than in most other parts of the world. In the interior there is a bare, barren, stony desert, totally unfit for man or beast. A more or less broken chain of mountains extends from Spencer Gulf, round the south coast, all along the eastern coast, and round the northern coast, nearly to Limming's Bight. The rivers are few in number; the watercourses are very low in summer, and frequently dried up; no dense forest exists, as in America; the herbage generally is thin, the grasses, although highly nutritious, growing in patches. The highest peak is Mount Kosciusko, 6510 feet above sea, at the head of the Murray, which is the largest Australian river, 2500 miles long."'Australia contains no antiquities, and the tourist who expects to find the ruins of temples, palaces, and pagodas is doomed to disappointment. It was discovered by the Portuguese about 1530, and visited by the Spaniards in 1605, and by several navigators down to Captain Cook in 1770, and settled in 1788. All its cities are of modern foundation and growth; and Australia may be compared, in a general way, to that part of the United States west of the Mississippi River.'
"'Almost everything in nature is, in Australia, the reverse of what it is in England. When we have winter they have summer; when we have day they have night; we have our feet pressing nearly opposite to their feet. There the compass points to the south, the sun travels along the northern heavens, the barometer rises with a southerly and falls with a northerly wind. The animals are disproportionately large in their lower extremities, and carry their young in a pouch; the plumage of the birds is beautiful, their notes are harsh and strange; the swans are black, the owls screech and hoot only in the daytime; the cuckoo's song is heard only in the night. The valleys are cool, the mountain-tops arewarm; the north winds are hot, the south winds are cold, the east winds are healthy. The bees are without sting; the cherries grow with the stone outside; one of the birds has a broom in its mouth instead of a tongue. Many of the beautiful flowers are without smell; most of the trees are without shade, and shed their bark instead of their leaves; some, indeed, are without leaves; in others the leaves are vertical. And even the geological formation of the country, as far as ascertained, is most singular. In other parts of the world coal is black, but in Australia they have bituminous coal as white as chalk.
"'Taken as a whole, the country, as far as explored, exhibits less hill and dale, with less compact vegetation, than in most other parts of the world. In the interior there is a bare, barren, stony desert, totally unfit for man or beast. A more or less broken chain of mountains extends from Spencer Gulf, round the south coast, all along the eastern coast, and round the northern coast, nearly to Limming's Bight. The rivers are few in number; the watercourses are very low in summer, and frequently dried up; no dense forest exists, as in America; the herbage generally is thin, the grasses, although highly nutritious, growing in patches. The highest peak is Mount Kosciusko, 6510 feet above sea, at the head of the Murray, which is the largest Australian river, 2500 miles long.
"'Australia contains no antiquities, and the tourist who expects to find the ruins of temples, palaces, and pagodas is doomed to disappointment. It was discovered by the Portuguese about 1530, and visited by the Spaniards in 1605, and by several navigators down to Captain Cook in 1770, and settled in 1788. All its cities are of modern foundation and growth; and Australia may be compared, in a general way, to that part of the United States west of the Mississippi River.'
"We shall have an opportunity to verify many of these statements," said the Doctor, "when we travel in the interior." Then, turning to Frank, he asked that youth what he had learned concerning the government of the colonies.
"I learned that they are wholly independent of each other," was the reply, "and furthermore, that there is great jealousy between them. Each of the colonies must be considered in many respects a distinct province, having its own government, local laws, and customs regulations. With the exception of West Australia, they all enjoy responsible government, and that colony will no doubt have the same constitutional privileges as the others before many years. The form of government is a modification of the British Constitution, the sovereign being represented by the Governor, who is appointed by the Crown; the House of Lords by the legislative council, nominated or elected; and the House of Commons by the legislative assembly, elected by the people.
"The imperial laws are in force unless superseded by local enactments, and all acts passed by the colonial legislatures must receive the assent of the sovereign before they can become laws. In each of the colonies the qualifications for exercising the franchise are placed very low, and manhood suffrage is practically the rule. An effort has been made to league the Australian colonies into one great confederation;the friends of the movement are confident of its success in course of time, but local jealousies have thus far prevented it."
A MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATURE.
"It doesn't take long to find out that the colonies are very jealous of one another," Fred remarked. "It's a pity that this state of affairs exists; but after all, it has done a great deal towards the development and population of the country. Jealousy between communities and colonies is the basis of enterprise, and many things have been done here in consequence of competition that without it would never have been done at all. When one colony sends out an exploring expedition another does the same; when one establishes a system of cheap emigration the rest will not be left behind. And so it goes through all their enterprises. It is exactly like the rivalry that existed between our Western States and cities twenty years ago, and still exists to some extent."
"Spoken like a statesman," said the Doctor, as he nodded approvingly towards his nephew. "Put your remarks on paper and send them home; they may be beneficial to some of our friends in St. Louis and Chicago."
Fred promised to do so, and when some time later he wrote out his views he added the following:
"It's very funny to hear the people of one city or colony talk about those of another. Each decries all the rest, and represents his own region as the only perfect one. Talking about the climate, a Sydney man will tell you that the capital of New South Wales is quite exempt from the cold winds that make life unbearable in Melbourne and Adelaide. The Melbourne man tells how you suffer from 'brickfielders' (hot and dusty winds from the interior) at Sydney, and how the poor wretches in Adelaide are perspiring at every pore with a temperature and humidity like those of a Russian bath.
"Each colony has its own postal regulations, its own postage-stamps, and its own rates for letters and other mail matter. New South Wales is a land of free-trade, while Victoria, its neighbor, is a land of protective tariffs; each can demonstrate the advantages of its particular system, and on the other hand each has a minority party that wants its laws patterned after those of its rival. The gauges of the railways are different, so that there is a break at every frontier; consequently passengers are obliged to change trains, and all freights bound across the line must be transshipped. The enactments of the colonial legislatures are often hostile to one another, and sometimes the rivalry expresses itself so strongly that it seems unfortunate that the colonies have a common language.
"None of the colonies has any State Church, and all religions are placed on the same footing. The Episcopalians are the dominant body so far as numbers are concerned, the Roman Catholics are next, and then come the Presbyterians, and after them the Methodists. These are the four great denominations; far below them in numbers and in their order of strength are the Lutherans and German-Protestants, Baptists, Congregationalists, Jews, Bible Christians, Church of Christ, Unitarians, and Free Presbyterians. The Asiatic proportion of the population adds Moslems, Confucians, and Pagans to the list of religionists. Considering the recent settlement of the colonies, the proportion of places of worship to the population will compare favorably with other countries.
"There is a tendency to exclude religious teaching from the public schools, and in place of this there is a wide-spread interest in Sunday-schools, which abound all over the continent wherever it has been settled. In the matter of education the colonies are happily actuated by the same impulse, all believing that it is one of the vital principlesof good government. The children are taught either wholly or partially by the aid of the State funds of each province, and in nearly all the colonies a separate department, under a minister of the Crown, controls the machinery of education.
INFANT CLASS IN AN INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL.
"The leading principles of education in Australia are that it is free, or very nearly so. It is compulsory, and it is secular, though not in all cases, to the absolute exclusion of Bible-reading. The latest reports at hand show that there are 5844 State schools in Australia, with 553,191 pupils and 11,890 teachers. There are numerous high-schools, academies, and denominational schools in the cities and larger towns, and there are colleges and universities at Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide."
We will now drop the journals and statistics of Frank and Fred, and attend to what they saw and heard on their journey.
We left them on their way to Newcastle, which they reached without mishap. A fellow-passenger told them that several disastrous wrecks had occurred at the entrance of Newcastle Harbor, which was formerly very dangerous when the wind blew heavily from the south-east. A breakwater has been constructed that greatly diminishes the danger, as it protects the bar from the heavy seas which formerly swept over it. Newcastle is the outlet of a considerable extent of country, but its principal business is in coal, of which it ships more than two million tons annually. The town has many evidences of prosperity, and its appliances for handling coal are extensive and excellent.
One of the citizens volunteered to show our friends the coal-mines. While they were making the round of the place he said that a careful estimate showed that the coal-seams now being worked contained enough coal to keep up the present rate of production for five hundred and twelve years. There are thirty-five seams of coal, varying from five to twelve feet in thickness, and one seam—the Greta—is twenty-one feet thick. Nearly five thousand miners are employed underground, and one thousand at the mouths of the mines. The deepest workings are those of the Greta, four hundred and fifty feet, and the Stockton, three hundred and eighty feet. The authorities of Newcastle believe they have the finest appliances for handling coal that are to be found anywhere, and Doctor Bronson said he certainly did not know of any that surpassed them.
COMPLETING THE RAILWAY.
Since the visit of our friends we are told that the railway from Sydney to Newcastle has been completed, and also the line which connects with the one from Brisbane, at the frontier between New South Wales and Queensland. From Newcastle they went by land to Brisbane; near Tenterfield they left the railway for a coach-ride of forty miles, which brought them to Stanthorpe, where they found a train to carry them to their destination. At several points on their coach-ride they saw the working-parties making cuttings and fillings along the route for the railway that now completes the connection between the capitals of the colonies of Queensland and New South Wales. There is now continuous railway communication from Brisbane to Adelaide, a distance of very nearly eighteen hundred miles.
The train left Newcastle at 7.15 in the morning, and brought them to Tenterfield at a little past midnight, the distance being three hundred and eighty-one miles. It carried them through a country ofvaried characteristics—hill, valley, plain, mountain, forest, and open country presenting themselves in succession. "It can be briefly described," said Frank, "as an agricultural, pastoral, and mining region, some of it being of great value, and other parts quite forbidding in aspect, owing to the scarcity of water. We passed through some of the gold-fields of New South Wales, but did not stop to visit them. We were told that considerable quantities of diamonds had been obtained near Bingera, one hundred and ten miles north from Tamworth, an important town on the railway, about half-way between Newcastle and Tenterfield.
"The names of stations on the line of railway are a curious mixture of native and foreign words; the foreign ones including English, Scotch, Irish, and American, together with some that were difficult to classify. For example, there were Murrurundi, Boggabri, Currabubula, and Moonbi, all of Australian origin; and then we found Hamilton, Lochinvar, Dundee, Stonehenge, Emerald Hill, Kentucky, and other familiar words. Then followed Doughboy Hollow, Honeysuckle Point, Kelly's Plains, and Willow Tree, which reminded us of names that we had heard in the Pacific States of America.
"Occasionally we saw herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, and were not surprised to learn that the country is considered an excellent region for raising those animals. We passed through forests of gum-trees,as they are called here, the ordinary appellation of the Eucalyptus, of which there are many varieties. Compared with the trees of England and America, the gum-tree is not beautiful, and no one would think of growing it for ornament alone, but on the whole it is by no means ill-looking. The leaves do not spread out horizontally, but depend vertically from the boughs. Consequently the tree gives little shade in the daytime, but the traveller who passes through a gum forest at night blesses this peculiarity of the tree, as it admits the light of the moon and stars, to the great advantage of the wayfarer. Compared with European trees, the verdure of the Eucalyptus is scanty, and its green is rather sombre. Some of the varieties of this tree are far more attractive than others, the handsomest of all being the Banksia, named after Sir Joseph Banks.