20 



AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



•The peculiarity is that all its mountain ranges worth taking notice of — all 

 that are factors in the climate — are comparatively near the coast. Thus the 

 main dip is rather inland than outward, and this formation is fatal to great 

 rivers. An interior mountain chain such as the New Zealand Alps would 

 have transformed the country. The enormous coast-line from Spencer's Gulf 

 to King George's Sound is not broken by the mouth of any stream. Such 

 rainfall as there is in this district must drain either into the sea by sub- 

 terranean channels, or into the inland marshy depressions called Lake Eyre, 

 Lake Gairdner, and Lake Amadeus, which are sometimes extremely shallow 



Junction of Murray and Darling Rivers. 



sheets of water, sometimes grassy plains, and sometimes desert. The best 

 land is that between the various ranges and the sea, because there most 

 rain falls. And the greatest of the ranges is that which runs from north to 

 south along the east coast of the island, passing through Queensland, New 

 South Wales, and Victoria, and culminating in Mount Kosciusko, whose 

 peak is 7120 feet high, and whose ravines always contain snow. Only at 

 Kosciusko does snow lie all the year round in Australia, though the moun- 

 tains near it, about 6000 feet high, are also almost always covered. To 

 this range we owe the one river system at all worthy of the continent. 



