76 AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



colony is as extensive as the German Empire and Italy combined, or as 

 France and the United Kingdom. The million of population which the 

 colony contains is thinly scattered about this vast territory, the country 

 districts obtaining the less, because more than a third of the people are con- 

 gregated at Sydney, the capital, and at Newcastle, the coal port adjacent to 

 the metropolis. High mountain ranges are found in New South Wales, lofty 

 tableland, and vast low-lying plains, with the result that great variety of 

 climate is obtained. For instance, on a certain day in November, 1885, the 

 newspapers state that between the Warrego and the Paroo, north of the 

 Darling, one thousand out of five thousand sheep had dropped dead upon 

 a rough day's journey, wasted by the hunger and drought, and killed by 

 heat ; that two out of a party of three travellers perished of thirst in the 

 Lechlan back blocks, and the third alone, naked and half mad, reached a 

 station to tell the tale ; that on the lower reaches of Clarence and Richmond 

 rivers travellers saw cattle in the last stages of starvation, dying in the mud 

 of the river banks, while down upon the Shorehaven a roaring spate was 

 heaving haystacks to the sea ; that while enterprising tourists were chilled with 

 ice and sleet upon Ben Lomond, and snow was flattening crops of wheat in 

 the gullies above Tumat, Sydney, despite the coolness of the daily inflow 

 of ocean water, was suffering under a heavy sweltering heat. And while 

 variations like these are the exception and not the rule, yet all these varied 

 experiences may be endured in the colony on one and the same day. 



New South Wales was discovered and named by Captain Cook, who 

 landed in Botany Bay, a few miles north of Port Jackson, on the 28th ot 

 April, 1770. A penal settlement was formed the following year, and four 

 days after the arrival of the little fleet, a French expedition, under the ill- 

 fated M. de la Perouse, cast anchor in the bay. The officer in command, 

 Captain Arthur Phillip, soon recognised that Botany Bay was in many 

 respects unsuitable for a principal settlement ; and having examined Port 

 Jackson, and found it to be ' one of the finest harbours in the world,' he 

 did not hesitate to substitute it as the position from which to commence 

 Australian colonisation. On the 26th of January, 1788, the fleet and all the 

 people were transferred to Port Jackson ; a landing was made at the head 

 of Sydney Cove (the Circular Quay), and the colony of New South Wales 

 was formally declared to be founded. The first settlers in all numbered 

 1030, of whom 504 were male exiles and 192 female exiles. On the 7th of 

 February Arthur Phillip, Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of the new 

 territory, established a regular form of government ; and, in his address to 

 the assembled colonists, expressed his conviction that the State, of which he 

 had laid the foundation, would, ere many generations passed away, become 

 the ' centre of the southern hemisphere — the brightest gem of the Southern 

 Ocean.' The peculiar audience which he addressed did not share his en- 

 thusiasm, but the prediction has been abundantly realised. The convict 



