Cook came westward, across the Pacific, with an expedition in 1769, to observe the Transit of Venus at Tahiti, and then sailed south-west to New Zealand. 8 He sighted land at Poverty Bay and sailed south as far as Cape Turnagain; then he went right round the North Island and through Cook Strait, until the Cape was again sighted, scattering English names and charting the coast as he passed. Next he circumnavigated the South Island, steering outside Stewart Island, which he imagined to be a peninsula; and so to Cape Farewell, in the north-west corner of South Island. He had obtained a fairly accurate idea of the nature of the coast, and had proved that New Zealand was not connected with the supposed Antarctic continent.
From Cape Farewell he struck westward, and sighted the mainland of Australia at Point Hicks, on April 19th, 1770, but failed to discover Bass Strait. From Point Hicks Cook sailed along the whole of the east coast to Cape York, giving to the bays and capes as he passed them the names of his crew, of British admirals, officials and politicians of all kinds at home. At various landing places he came into collision with the aborigines, and at Endeavour River he stayed for two months to repair his vessel which had been damaged through striking on the rocks. Finally, before sailing westward through Torres Strait, he landed on Possession Island and formally claimed the whole region discovered for the British Crown.
When, in 1798, Flinders and Bass proved that Van Diemen’s Land was an island, the rough work of discovery was complete. Australia, New Zealand and many of the smaller islands were known and charted, and the discoveries of the Spaniards and Dutch were linked up, by the aid of a great deal of miscellaneous exploration carried out by the French navigators who followed us in the South of Australia, in New Zealand, and in the islands of the Pacific.
The navigators, French and English, were in the habit of formally annexing the country wherever they landed; but annexation of this kind was of little value without effective occupation. This was to come later, during the course of the next half century. From 1800 onwards, we may say that the different parts of this vast region begin to have a separate and individual history and development, though behind all are the conditions common to most of the area, conditions which distinguish it sharply from the rest of the world even to-day, in spite of minor differences between its separate parts. There is ample room for variation, since the continent of Australia is about three-quarters the size of Europe, or seven times the area of Germany and France together; and it includes nearly every type of temperate and tropical climate.
Whether we look at the animals, plants, or aborigines of Australia, we are at once struck with the fact that they belong to an entirely different order of life from that which we find in the other great continents. The whole region seems, from a very early age, to have been cut off effectively from the rest of the world, and to have developed along lines peculiar to itself; though since the advent of the white man we have the artificial introduction of European and other plants and animals, which bid fair in many cases to oust the native products, just as the white man has displaced the original inhabitants.
The first animal which we naturally think of in connexion with Australia is the kangaroo. His family 9 is large and varied, from the giant standing six feet high, and dangerous to attack, to the dwarf measured 10 by a few inches. He is a creature of the wide open plains, living on grass, though in Queensland and New Guinea are to be found some which climb the tall gum trees and feed on their shoots. An ancestor of the present kangaroo, whose remains have been discovered, was a formidable monster standing twelve feet high.
The kangaroo is merely the best known representative of a very large group, the marsupials or pouched animals. Closely allied to the kangaroo is the wombat, a clumsy badger-like animal which feeds on leaves and burrows in the ground; he is quite harmless, though, like the kangaroo, he had a huge ancestor who seems to have been as large as a rhinoceros. The bandicoots, ratlike burrowing animals, are his cousins many times removed.
Next we have a group which looks very different but is really closely allied to the kangaroo: the phalangers, or opossums, as they are commonly called. The 11 name is adopted from America but is applied in Australia to the wrong group, as we shall see later. Nothing is more misleading than the names given by white settlers, ignorant of botany or biology, to native plants or animals, generally on the ground of some fancied and superficial resemblance. The so-called opossums are found all over Australia and New Guinea and in many of the islands of the Pacific; but owing to the value of their fur they are becoming scarce in many districts. They live in trees, and some of the family have their legs connected by a membrane, so that they can glide from one branch to another. Hence the name flying squirrel; though they do not fly and have no connexion with the squirrel which we know. Here is another of the same group, the koala, or native bear; though he again has nothing to do with bears. He is a sleepy-looking 12 animal, with no tail, and is not given to leaping or gliding; though his claws are useful for 13 climbing the gum trees in which he lives. He is quite harmless, and a child can play with him, as we see here.
Other members of the same great family are far from harmless: among them are the dasyures, or native cats, with dark bodies mostly spotted with white. Some smaller members of this family are called weasels and mice. To this family belongs also the Tasmanian Devil, 14 whose portrait we have here; he is very fierce though small. A larger animal, the size of a retriever, is the so-called Tasmanian wolf; he is carnivorous, while most 15 of the marsupials are vegetarian. It is rather doubtful whether he should be classed with the rest or go by himself.
The only existing allies of the marsupials of Australia are to be found in the opossums and some other less known animals of South America; but the opossum of South America resembles less his Australian namesake than the other group, the dasyures. In Europe and Asia the marsupials existed, but only in very remote geological ages, as their remains prove. It has been argued from the existence of the opossum family in America that at some time there must have been a land connexion between Australia and South America, either by way of the islands of the Pacific or by an Antarctic continent. But the isolation of Australia must have been very ancient, since it has given time for the development of the enormous differences which we have seen among the individuals of the same family.