14 AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



Some of the early errors about Australia must have already faded away. 

 Few can now believe that her birds are without voice and her flowers with- 

 out perfume, and that the continent itself is a desert fringed by a habitable 

 seaboard. Yet it is perhaps hardly realised by the many how grand is the 

 heritage secured in Australia for the British race. The extent of territory is 

 enormous. Twenty-five kingdoms the size of Great Britain and Ireland could 

 be carved out of this giant island and its appendages, and still there would 

 be a remainder. Its total area, 2,983,200 square miles, is only a little less than 

 the area of Europe. 



At first it was supposed that only a limited portion of this enormous 

 tract would be available for settlement, but this fear is dying out. The 

 central desert, that bugbear of a past generation, has an existence, but man 

 is pushing it farther and farther back. Where the explorer perished through 

 thirst a few years ago we now have the homestead and the township ; water 

 is conserved, flocks are fed, the property, if it has to be offered for sale, is 

 described as ' that valuable and well-known squatting block.' The tales that 

 were first told were true enough, but man, as he advances, subdues the 

 country and ameliorates the climate. 



Already Australia exports to the markets of the world the finest wheat, 

 the finest wool, and the finest gold. Her produce in these lines commands 

 the highest prices, and no test of superiority could be more conclusive. In 

 two at least of these items the export could be indefinitely increased, and 

 meat and wine can be added to the list. On such articles as these man 

 subsists, and they are produced here with a minimum of expense and effort. 



The total population of Australia is 2,800,000. The settlers have drawn 

 about themselves over 1,100,000 horses, 8,000,000 cattle, and 70,000,000 

 sheep. But three millions of men and tens of millions of creatures fail to 

 occupy ; they do little more than dot the corners of the great lone island- 

 In the north-west of the continent there are tracts of country which the white 

 man has not yet penetrated. Tribes still roam there who may have heard 

 of the European stranger, but who have never seen him. Adventurous 

 spirits are now pushing into these distant regions, but there will be pioneering 

 work for many a long term of years, and after the pioneer has had his day 

 the task of settlement begins. Even in Victoria and New South Wales, 

 the most thickly populated of the colonies, there are many fertile hillsides 

 and valleys as yet untrodden by man. The population has sought the plains, 

 where the least expenditure was required to make the earth bring forth its 

 increase. Some of the richest land in both colonies has yet to be appropriated, 

 the settler having neglected it because it has to be cleared. The giant 

 eucalypt of the uplands frightened the colonist away to the lightly timbered, 

 park-like plains ; but now, thanks to the extension of the railways, the 

 mountain ash, the red gum, and the blackwood, with their companions, are 

 found to be sources of wealth. Thus, in the old states and in the new 



