Victoria has so far progressed in riches and civilization that it has turned its back upon the past, and shows principally its wheat, skins, paraffine, wine, gold, antimony, lead, iron, tin, coal, timber, cloth and a large range of productions which have little peculiar about them, but are interesting in showing what a country of 88,198 square miles, with a population of 224 persons in 1836, can attain to in forty years. It has now 840,300 inhabitants, and exports over $56,000,000 annually. Its total production of gold is about £200,000,000 sterling. Though one of the smallest colonies on the mainland, it is about equal in population to three-fourths of the sum of all the others, and its largest town, Melbourne, with a population of 265,000, is said to be the ninth city of the British world. Passing by the evidences of prosperity and enterprise—which are, however, nothing but what ordinary retail houses would show—we pause for a while at the excellent collection of native tools and implements, and the weapons employed in war and the chase by the aboriginal inhabitants—wooden spears of the grass tree, and, among many others barbed for fishing and variously notched for war, one which does not belong to Australia, but has evidently been brought from the Philippines, and should not have been included. The same might be said of several Fijian clubs and a Marquesas spear barbed with sharks' teeth, which are well enough in their way, but not Victorian. The collection of shields, clubs and boomerangs is good and is highly prized, as they are becoming scarce in the colony, but the types prevail over the greater part of the island continent, and no alarm need be felt about the speedy extirpation of the natives when we think of Western Australia with 26,209 inhabitants in a territory of 1,024,000 square miles, most of it fine forest, and consequently fertile when subdued to the uses of civilization.
South Australia, with its 900,000 square miles of land, extending over twenty-seven degrees of latitude from the Indian to the Southern Ocean, and with a width of twelve degrees of longitude, is stated to be the largest British colony, but has a population of only 225,000. The appearance of the South Australian Court differs from the Victorian in the greater predominance of raw materials and the smaller proportion of manufactures. Copper in the ore as malachite, and in metal and manufactured forms, is one of the principal features of the court. Emeu eggs, of a greenish-blue color and handsomely mounted in silver as goblets, vases and boxes, are the most peculiar: they formed quite a striking feature at the Centennial. The resemblance of the climate to that of California is indicated in the cultivation of wheat in immense fields, which is cut by the header and threshed on the spot, also by the enormous size of the French pears, which grow as large as upon our Pacific coast. The olive also is becoming a staple, as in California, and the grape is fully acclimated and makes a very alcoholic wine. The product in 1876 was 728,000 gallons.
Western Australia is among the latest settled, and has a territory of 1280 by 800 miles, of which the so-called "settled" district has an area about the size of France, with 26,209 inhabitants. It can hardly be considered to be crowded yet. Its mineral exhibits are lead, copper and tin ore; silks, whalebone; skins, those of the numerous species of kangaroo and of the dingo or native dog predominating. The woods are principally eucalypti, as might be supposed, but endogenous trees are found toward the north, and are shown. Corals and large tortoise-shells show also that the land approaches the tropics. The collection of native implements includes waddies and boomerangs, war- and fishing-spears, shields of several kinds—including one almost peculiar to the Australians, made very narrow and used for parrying rather than intercepting a missile. The netted bag of chewed bulrush-root is similar to that shown at the Centennial, but the dugong fishing-net, made by the natives of the north-west coast from the spinifex plant, I have not before observed. Western Australia was not represented at the Centennial.
Queensland is the most recently established Australian colony, and comprises the whole north-east corner—between a fourth and a fifth—of the island. As it extends twelve degrees within the tropics, its productions partake of a different character from those of the older colonies, and sugar, corn and cotton are staples. The Tropic of Capricorn crosses the middle of the province. The southern portion has 7,000,000 sheep, but the exports of the gold, copper and tin mines exceed those of the animal and vegetable industries. The colony has the finest series of landscapes in the Exhibition, painted upon photographs, which may be recollected by those who visited the Centennial. The cases contain corals, shells—especially very fine ones of the huitre perlière—bêche-de-mer, so great a favorite in China for stews; dugong-hides, with the oil and soap made therefrom; silk, tobacco, manioc, fossils, furs and wool.
New Zealand has but a small show, but it is very peculiar. The Maoris are a very fine race of men, both physically and intellectually, and have many arts. The robes of New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax), and especially the feather robes, evince their aptitude and taste. They are very expert workers of wood, and their spears, canoes, feather-boxes and paddles are elaborately carved, and frequently ornamented with grotesque faces with eyes of shell. Their idols are peculiarly hideous, and have a remarkable similarity in their postures and expression to those of British Columbia in the National Museum at Washington.
The section occupied by the Cape of Good Hope is somewhat larger than that at the Centennial, but is perhaps hardly as interesting. The wars against the Kaffirs, and the want of harmony between the Dutch settlers and the dominant English race, have produced an uneasy feeling not compatible with a general interest in so distant a matter as a European exposition. The Cape, with its dependencies, has an area of 250,000 square miles and a population of nearly 750,000. Prominent in the collection are the elephants' tusks and horns of the numerous species of antelope, which are found in greater variety in South Africa than in any other part of the world. Horns of bles-boks, spring-boks, water-boks, rooi-boks, koodoos, elands, hartebeests and gnus ornament the walls, in company with those of the native buffalo and the wide-reaching horns of the Cape oxen, of which fourteen or sixteen yoke are sometimes hitched to the ponderous Dutch wagons. Hippopotamus-teeth and ostrich-feathers indicate clearly enough the section we are in. Maize has been fully acclimated in Africa, and mush and milk now form the principal food of the whole Kaffir nation. It has spread nearly all over Africa, but some central portions yet depend entirely for farinaceous food upon the seed of the sorghum and dourra. On the Zambesi corn in all stages of growth may be seen at all seasons of the year.
The United States section, after all its troubles in getting under weigh—the very appropriation itself not having been made until after the English exhibit had all been selected, arranged on the plan and the catalogue printed—is a collection to be proud of. The arrangement is good, except for a little crowding. The space in the Palais is forty thousand square feet, with thirty thousand additional in an outside building. The latter has the agricultural implements, mills, scales, wagons and engines, with the displays of oak and hickory in the forms of wheels, spokes and tool-handles, which are exciting so much interest in Europe at the present time. There is no good substitute for hickory to be found in Europe, and it is the difference between American hickory and English ash which causes the great disparity between the proportions of American and English carriage-wheels. That we should copy the latter for the sake of a fashion is marvellous.
It is not to be denied that the ingenuity and versatility of Americans have caused them to excel other nations in many lines of manufacture. The public opinion of Europe regards their triumphs in agricultural implements as the most remarkable; but the nation which made the machine-tools for the government manufactories of small-arms both of England and Germany has established its right to the first rank in that class of work also. The system of making by rule and gauge the separate parts, which are afterward fitted, has come to be known as the "American system," and is exemplified in the magnificent collection of the American Watch Company of Waltham; the Wheeler & Wilson sewing-machine, which is the only sewing-machine with interchangeable parts at the Exposition; the Remington rifle and shot-gun, and the Colt revolvers.