424 



The Review of Reviews. 



Apra to, 1906. 



addressing a meeting of 4000 men, and then return- 

 ing to town the same night. Reaching home at 4 

 a.m., he would sleep and be down to breakfast as 

 fresh and vigorous as if he had been in bed all 

 night. He never spent less than four hours over a 

 sermon, and he was always preaching. While at 

 Fulham he dealt with 10,000 letters a year, and 

 wrote 3000 or 4000 with his own hand. He presided 

 iiver 500 public meetings and committee meetings 

 every vear. He held seventy confirmations every 

 year, and held annual Conferences in every rural 

 deanery, and every year he ordained 150 priests and 

 deacons. Besides all these functions there were 

 preachings, speeches, attendance at Royal Commis- 

 sions, the House of Lords, Convocation, and heaven 

 knows what else. And he lived to be eighty-one. 



and might have lived still longer if he had only 



slowed up at the end. Such, at least, is the opinion 



of his editor. 



CLOSING TRIBUTE. 



Of such a crowded life it is impossible to attempt 

 a survey here. Suffice it to quote Archdeacon Sand- 

 ford's closing tribute: — 



He stands out from amonerst the men of his day. a 

 notable figure, unlilse others, oast in a larger mould, nobler 

 than most, more self-reliant, more absolutely incapable of 

 doing anything mean or of acting from self-interested 

 motives, lie worked harder and longer, he was more un- 

 worldly, he grasped more firmly the substanoe of life, he 

 was a greater man but a man nevertheless, working with 

 and for his fellows, compelling the admiration of all. hut 

 winning most love from those who knew best the man's 

 heart within him. . . . The air of iperpetual spring 

 blows round the old man's grave, and the memory speaks 

 reality .ind hope, and these are the memories which live. 



W. T. Stead. 



THE FIRST DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA AND NEW GUINEA.* 



Messrs. William Brooks and Company Ltd., of 

 Sydney, have issued a book which will become a 

 standard work of reference upon the history of the 

 Southern Seas in the days preceding the settlement 

 of Australia. " The First Discovery of Australia 

 and New Guinea," by Geo. Collingridge, takes one 

 back to the earlv years of the fifteen hundreds, 

 when " Portugal was mistress of the sea. Spain, 

 too, indulging in an awakening yawn, was clutching 

 with her outstretched hands at the shadowy trea- 

 sure islands of an unfinished dream. England had 

 not vet launched her navy : Holland had not built 

 hers." It is interesting to follow the ships of the 

 earlv Portuguese navigators, when after, in 1497, 

 managing to clear the Cape of Good Hope, they 

 found their way to the desired Spice Islands, and 

 set to work to establish themselves '' as England is 

 doing nowadays in South Africa and elsewhere." 

 Mention is made of the interesting fact that Pope 

 Alexander VI. had most generously divided the 

 w-orld (the extent of which, by the way, was not 

 even known) between the Portuguese and the 

 Spanish. The starting point of the division was 

 first fixed in the vicinity of the Azores, but it was 

 subsequently removed westward as far as the mouth 

 of the Amazons. If the first arrangement had held 

 good, Australia and New Guinea would have be- 

 longed to Portugal, while the second arrangement 

 drew a line through Australia at the very point 

 which now separates West Australia from South 

 Australia. West Australia would therefore have 

 fallen to Portugal, and the rest of the continent to 

 Spain. Curiously enough, this line of demarcation 

 has remained, and " these two States derive their 

 boundary demarcation from Pope Alexander's 

 line." 



So the book goes on, describing the wanderings 

 of successive daring vovagers till it closes with the 



" The First Discovery of Australia and Xew Guinea." by 

 George OoUingridge : William Brooks and Co., Limited, 

 Sydney. 3/6. 



account of Torres' discovery of Australia, without 

 being aware of it, and his completion of the circum- 

 navigation of New Guinea. 



It should become a text book for use m every 

 school in Australasia ; for we are singularly lacking 

 there in good, thorough, instructive reading matter 

 upon the early history of our southern civilisation. 



The publication of this work should inspire Aus- 

 tralian writers with a turn for the romantic to 

 weave round the journeys of these early navigators 

 stories fascinating and enthralling. The later know- 

 ledge that we possess of the lands they imperfectly 

 knew, would enable a . writer to anticipate their 

 wanderings. We can sit down before tlieir painfully 

 inadequate charts, and our modern up-to-date ones, 

 •md marvel at the opportunities they missed, as, for 

 instance, when Torres, on his way from the New 

 Hebrides to New Guinea, so narrowly missed sight- 

 ing Eastern Australia, or as the haif-century earlier 

 Spanish and Portuguese mariners, navigating about 

 the long chain of islands reaching from Asia to 

 Australia, sighting the mainland as they must have 

 done, retired without a knowledge of the huge con- 

 tinent that lay beyond. Even in the necessarily 

 somewhat stereotyped narrative there is a spirit 

 that touches and thrills the reader as he pictures 

 these lonely seamen, tiny, solitary specks in the 

 Pacific Oce'an, watching with eager eyes day after 

 day for a sight of the great South Land. It is 

 curious that, though their ships covered so large an 

 area in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, they avoided 

 the great expanse of the map covered, as we now 

 know, by the Australian Continent. 



The book should find a place on every Aus- 

 tralian's book-shelf, and its romantic sequel will be 

 hailed with delight when it takes the facts as given 

 here, puts them in fictional form, and makes the past 

 of the South Seas, with its dangers and discoveries, 

 its failures and fights, its weary waitings and win- 

 nings realistic and modern. 



