420 GEOGRAPHIC CONQUESTS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



The closini;- year of the uineteentli eenturv witnessed the iieur com- 

 pletion of two well-ecjuipped exi)editions that are to set out in the 

 sunnner of llMIl for South Pohir regions -one e(|uipped I)}- (rerinany 

 and the other l)y (treat Britain. Both are led l>y competent and dar- 

 inj^ men. and oreat additions to our knowh'dii-e of the Antarctics may 

 be justly expected. 



AUSTRAI>IA. 



The last months of the nineteenth century beheld th(> ))eo-innino- of a 

 new power in the South Pacitie. Six millions of Englishmen, in a land 

 as ^•ast as the United States, united to form a new nation, which the 

 twentieth century was to inaugurate. The rirst year of the nineteenth 

 century found Australia inhal)ited by degenerate savages, with a hand- 

 ful of English settlers scattered along the coast of what is now caUed 

 New South Wales. The coast line of Eastern Au>>tralia had been detin- 

 itely traced and enough facts of the north and west coasts ascertained 

 for a rouifh outline of their extent. l)ut the soutli coast was undeter- 



Kl(.. r,. — Auslraliii as known in isuu. 



Fk;. 7. — .Vustraliii iis known in 19(X). 



mined and absolutely nothing was known of the interior. Poi-t l*hillip, 

 the magniticent harbor on which gaze the half a million iidi:i])itaiits of 

 Melbourne, the wealthiest city in the Southern Hemisphere, had been 

 entered by no European ship. The immense lifeless mass had no 

 name of its own, but appeared on the maps as New Holland. 



Captain King early in the century investigated the river mouths and 

 completed the shore line for the west, northwest, and north coast. 

 Sturt in 1828 and succeeding years explored New South Wales and 

 penetrated to the center of the continent. Eyre in 1840 traced the 

 south coast along the Great Australian Bight. The first crossing of the 

 continent was made bv Stuart in 1862. He passed through the center 

 of Australia and planned the route which the transcontinental tele- 

 graph now follows. Colonel Warburton in 1873-74, starting from the 

 central point of the telegraph line, succeeded in reaching the west coast, 

 and later Giles and Forest explored the country to the southwest. 



