208 Pickering on the Language and Inhabitants 
ens, for the distance of six hundred leagues from the coast of 
Peru; but soon there begin to appear numerous clusters or groups 
of pleasant islands, which have probably risen up through the 
waves — though scarcely above their surface —within a few centu- 
ries past; while others, more ancient, shoot their heads of granite 
to the very clouds. If we continue our voyage through this vast 
labyrinth of islands, we encounter, in about the middle of the 
passage, a fifth continent, New Holland, almost as large as all 
Europe, and presenting the picture of a world that seems to be 
reversed. We find there other constellations in the heavens, other 
beings, and other climates; there we salute the rising sun at an 
hour when night covers us here with darkness; there we enjoy 
the season of summer at the time of the year when winter spreads 
its gloom over us at home; the autumn takes the place of our 
spring; the barometer falls on the approach of good weather, and 
rises when it forebodes a storm; sometimes the forests spontane- 
ously take fire in December, and, at others, the northwest wind, 
like the khamsin of Egypt, scorches the earth, reduces it to 
powder, and thus augments the vast deserts of Australia. There 
you may see, with astonishment, a volcano without a crater or lava, 
but continually throwing out flames; gigantic plants, some growing 
in the waters of the ocean, and others in the dry sand; cherries 
growing with the stone on the outside; pears with the stem at 
the broadest end of the fruit; singular birds, as the white eagle 
and the red throat, black swans and cockatoos, the cassowary, 
_ which can run but not fly; blue crabs; lobsters without claws ; 
dogs which do not bark; the kangaroo, a strange compound of 
the cat, the rat, the ape, the opossum, and the squirrel; the spi- 
nous echidnus; mammiferous animals without mamme, and which 
appear to be oviparous; and the ornithorhyncus, which belongs at 
