THE IKEIOATION AGE. 



139 



markets for his 80,000,000 people. He is especially 

 interested in big railway projects for a railroad can- 

 not be built anywhere without giving work to American 

 factories, American bridge builders, locomotive mak- 

 ers, rolling mills, car-wheel works, air-brake makers, 

 <;ar buiders, civil engineers, may all expect to be called 

 upon for work or construction materials. Our wheat 

 shippers, flour mills, beef canneries and textile mills 

 also are interested, for the army of workmen to be em- 

 ployed in a wild country must be supplied with every 

 necessary of life from without. 



In many ways this proposed Australian railway 

 line, when it comes to be built, will encounter the same 

 difficulties that were met in the building of the Union 

 and Central Pacific roads. There is no mountain sys- 

 tem to be crossed and no great rivers to be bridged, 

 but there are broad reaches of desert as hot as those 

 of Arizona and so little known that the maps show 

 hlank spaces for hundreds of miles in extent. All 

 Australia taken together is within 50,000 square miles 

 as large as the United States. In the interior des- 



people on the coasts hope that there is vast wealth 

 hidden in that forbidding interior as was found to be 

 the case in the Great American Desert. She, therefore, 

 offers 90,000,000 acres of land, along the right-of-way, 

 to any company that will build and operate the road. 

 This is about fifteen per cent of the entire area of 

 South Australia. The United States gave only 25,- 

 000,000 acres to the Union and Central Pacific for 

 building a road twice as long. 



South Australia is businesslike. The bill just 

 passed by the state parliament at Adelaide says, in 

 plain language: "We are offering a good thing, and 

 we intend to have our money's worth. Whoever builds 

 that road must build it and operate it according to 

 certain specifications and, after a certain number of 

 years, the government must have the privilege of buy- 

 ing it at a price to be fixed by arbitration. It is con- 

 fidently believed in Adelaide that Canton, China, is 

 to be the great port of debarkation for European 

 traffic to the east and that Palmerston, South Australia, 

 only ninety-six hours from Canton by fast steamer, 



An Australian Dam For Irrgating Purposes. 



rts ten states as big as Pennsylvania could be dropped 

 down and lost. 



As our transcontinental railway builders had to 

 fight Indians, so the builders of the Australian road 

 may have to fight black Bushmen as they push the 

 steel rails across the burning sand, where for hundreds 

 of miles there may not be a blue gum tree or a spring 

 of water. Water, as well as food and clothing and 

 construction material, must be transported from the 

 coast. Although the distance to be covered is only 

 1,200 miles, or as far as from New York to the 

 Mississippi River, the cost will he something enor- 

 mous, and the returns must, for years, be a matter for 

 conjecture rather than a matter that can be figured 

 out. 



South Australia realizes all this, and knows that 

 her only hope of developing the great interior is to 

 have a railroad. Now, members of the South Aus- 

 tralian Parliament who live on the north coast ("South 

 Australia," you can see by the map, runs clear through 

 the continent and is really "Central Australia"), can 

 get to Adelaide, the capital, only by taking a steamer 

 and making a long voyage around the east or west 

 coast. There is known to be silver and copper in the 

 interior mountain ranges, and spots, here and there, 

 -where sheep can be grazed and crops grown. The 



is to become the great Australian seaport to connect 

 with Europe. This projected line, when built, will thus 

 be of international importance, expediting travel, 

 mails and commerce. 



Scientists are perhaps only a little less interested 

 in the proposed line than South Australians. Australia 

 is the land of connecting links and freaks in animal 

 life. Trees and fish and birds and animals have been 

 found there that occur nowhere else. There is a tree 

 without foliage, a fish that has lungs as well as gills. 

 In Australia is the duck-bill, that has the fishing bill 

 and webbed feet of a water bird and the fur covered 

 body of a land animal, and lays eggs. It is thought 

 that there may be found a living specimen of a bird- 

 lizard, whose tracks have been seen on the snow of the 

 eastern mountains. Prom these tracks scientists think 

 that there still exists in the interior of Australia a 

 creature found elsewhere only in prehistoric fossils. 

 It should have a winged and feathered body, the head 

 of a bird and jaw of a crocodile, a long, scaly or smooth 

 reptile tail, and short, strong legs. 



You may be sure, therefore, that along with civil 

 engineers and construction bosses and coolies, will go 

 scientists to capture specimens of Australian fauna 

 before the creatures are scared from their haunts by 

 the shriek of the locomotive. 



