What are the area and principal natural features of Australia, and the nationalities and chief occupations of its population?
Charles L. Brickwell.
Answer.—Australia, often spoken of as an island, is about ten times the size of Borneo, the largest island of the world properly so called, and is nearly half the size of South America. To be more specific, it measures about 2,500 miles from east to west, and 1,950 from north to south, containing an estimated area of 3,000,000 miles. This is about the same as the entire extent of the United States, exclusive of Alaska. Along the east and west coasts the country is broken, rising at no great distance from the sea into a succession of mountain ranges; but the vast interior is almost as level as a gently undulating ocean-bed, which it evidently was at no very distant period—geologically speaking. It seems to be for the most part a great sandstone basin, rising toward the coast in nearly every direction. The mountain range in the southeast, known as the Australian Alps, rises to a height of 7,000 feet; the granite and syenitic mountains on the west coast range from 800 to 3,000 feet in elevation, and those along the coast of Queensland, and along the greater part of the north coast, from 1,000 to 4,000 feet. There are immense quantities of coal in Eastern Australia, rich gold mines, some silver, and an abundance of iron, copper, and tin. The broken and much of the mountainous regions are well wooded, but the interior is comparatively naked, and much of it wears a parched look, like the dry, treeless plains of Eastern Wyoming and Colorado, which are available for flocks and herds the most of the year, but not cultivable with profit without artificial irrigation. There are millions of acres of fine agricultural and grazing lands without entering this interior basis to any great distance; and the governments of the several provinces are offering liberal inducements to settlers. Few of the rivers of this vast country are navigable to any great distance, although several of them may be made so for a large part of the year by slight improvements of the channels. Conspicuous among the latter are Murray River, 1,100 miles long; the Roper and the Victoria. The regions beyond the seaboard are not likely to develop rapidly until means of transportation are extended. The railroad mileage of Australia is only a little over 4,042 miles, or about the same as that of Minnesota, which is thirty-six times smaller in area and began to be settled much later. The telegraph lines measure over 30,000 miles. The climate of the Southern half of Australia is quite similar to that of Southern Brazil or Cuba, and that of the greater part of the rest of the continent is a good counterpart of that of Southern Europe. The total population of the five provinces of Australia, by the census of 1881, is as follows:
| New South Wales | 751,468 |
| Queensland | 213,525 |
| South Australia | 279,865 |
| Victoria | 862,346 |
| Western Australia | 29,708 |
| Total | 2,136,912 |
The above does not include aborigines, estimated to number 80,000. The increase by immigration is not rapid. The population is mostly of British origin, but it embraces also nearly 10,000 Polynesians and 25,000 Chinese. The chief occupations are agriculture, grazing, mining, building, and commerce. Manufactures do not flourish, the colonies being dependent almost entirely upon the United Kingdom for manufactured goods. The chief exports are wool, hides, preserved meats, copper, lead, coal, and gold. The total quantity of gold mined in Victoria alone, from the discovery in 1851 to the end of 1880, amounted to 49,500,000 oz., valued at $990,000,000. The government of the several provinces is similar to that of the provinces of the present Dominion of Canada before their union.
ALDERNEYS AND JERSEYS.
Scott, Ind.
What is the difference between Alderney cattle and Jerseys, if any? Where did the breeds originate? Your answer will settle a dispute.
A Subscriber.