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 scientists believe 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 are warm; 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.'