2. The plants found in Australia by the early explorers had, with few exceptions, never been seen in any other parts of the world. Strange to say, no wheat or any other cereal grew there, and but few fruits or vegetables fit for human food, although both soil and climate are in many parts so favourable to their growth that, since their introduction, they have thriven as well as in most countries.
3. The animals peculiar to Australia are even more strange than its plants. Of all the useful animals belonging to other countries, not a single representative was found here. All our domestic animals, however, have been introduced, and thrive remarkably well. One, indeed, the rabbit, has thriven so well as to form a serious pest. So rapidly do these animals multiply here that the colonists are obliged to incur much expense in the effort to keep down their numbers. Of the quadrupeds found elsewhere Australia only possessed, when first discovered, some species of rats and mice and a sort of wild dog, or dingo. Most of the native animals are pouched, like the kangaroo.
4. Dingoes cannot be trained for the service of man. They are always ready to prey upon his flocks. So great a pest are these animals, in certain parts, that each man on a sheep-station is expected to carry strychnine, in order to poison the carcase of any dead animal he may chance to find in his wanderings, with the view of destroying the dingoes that may happen to feed upon it. These animals destroy far more than they devour. On entering a sheepfold they bite and kill without stint or stay. There is, however, one drawback to their wholesale destruction, as they are the natural enemies of the kangaroo. Since the dingoes have become scarce, the kangaroo has multiplied greatly. In some districts droves of these animals are still seen, eating up every blade of grass and starving the sheep off the land.
5. As the native productions of Australia are of little service to man, it is not surprising to find the natives a low order of savages. There is no bond of union between them. They consist of many tribes, always ready to go to war with each other. It is supposed that about 50,000 survive, but through intemperance, wars and diseases, their numbers are gradually dwindling. They have already almost disappeared from the more settled parts, but as such a large proportion of Australia is uninhabitable by white men, they will probably long linger in the more remote quarters of the continent.
6. Like all wandering savages, their senses are remarkably acute, and their skill and cunning in hunting and snaring beasts and birds can hardly be surpassed. Advantage is taken of this fact by the Australians, who employ them to track out fugitives, when offenders against the law have to be pursued, or when cattle have strayed.
7. The natives were at first a source of great trouble to the settlers. They stole their sheep and ran off with their horses, caused their cattle to stampede, and killed their shepherds and herdsmen. But as the colonist never moved out of doors without his firearms, they soon gained a wholesome dread of his power. One tribe of "blacks" also was always ready to help the white man to pursue and punish the men of another tribe. In Queensland, indeed, a body of native police, officered by Europeans, was formed to cope with the disorders and depredations of the savages, who are bolder and more numerous in that part of Australia. But the experiment was attended by dreadful results, for a member of one tribe displays savage enjoyment in the slaughter of members of any other tribe. Among the settlers also were men who had been dangerous criminals, and who had no compunction in murdering "blacks," as if they were devoid of human souls.
8. One of the great bars to progress in Australia is the irregular supply of rain. Whilst droughts are not infrequent, there is occasionally an excessive downpour, causing disastrous floods. The amount of rain that falls from first to last would probably be sufficient to make Australia a well-watered country. But owing to the extreme irregularity of the rainfall the plains are liable to be alternately deluged and burnt up. Explorers have often been in danger of perishing with thirst from this cause; for instead of finding a large lake, where they had seen one on a former occasion, they find nothing but a stretch of baked mud.
9. In times of drought the rivers, too, dwindle into mere threads of water, or become too shallow for navigation. Even the Murray, the largest of Australian rivers, is at times but an indifferent waterway. Still worse, its mouth consists of shallow channels of shifting sand, so that no steamer can enter it from the sea. Large sums have been expended in trying to remove the bar at its mouth and form a harbour; but the attempt has been abandoned, for as fast as the sand is dredged away, fresh deposits of silt take its place.
10. These are some of the difficulties and drawbacks which the Australian colonists have had to fight against. But in spite of them an extraordinary advance has been made, thanks to their own energy and enterprise, to the mineral wealth of their country, and to their freedom from war. Contrary to the experience of nations, in other continents, the Australians have never had to fight a regular battle in their own land. This immunity from war they owe, in large measure, to the protecting arm of the mother-country, and to the wisdom she has shown in granting self-government to her Australian colonies as soon as they became fit to manage their own affairs.