The Days of a Man 1907 



British descent reacting to the varied conditions of 

 pioneering and empire building. Whatever the inci- 

 dence of novel experience, or of complications due to 

 alien mixtures, the dominant note is really British. 

 But in Australasia, as compared with the United 

 States, certain differences stand out conspicuously. 



Away from The American belongs to a country with traditions 

 of its own. On the other hand as already noted 

 the Australian or New Zealander, wherever born, 

 thinks of England as home, and, however rebellious 

 in spirit or contemptuous of English convention, bows 

 his head before most forms of English tradition. This 

 fact is shown in governmental matters generally; it 

 appears distinctly in details of university manage- 

 ment, and in student life as well. 



Again, although Australia is a monstrous continent 

 almost as large as the United States, yet its four mil- 

 lion inhabitants are scattered in a fringe along the 

 streams and shores of the temperate seaboard. For 

 Fate withheld the gift of high mountains to catch the 

 snow and hold back water, hence rivers are few and 



Huge un- precarious; the tropical north is still largely a jungle; 



occupied tne vast i nte n 0r " tn e dead heart of Australia" 

 a region almost as large as the Mississippi Valley, is a 

 trackless, rainless desert waste of sand and alkali; the 

 intervening hills of bush and scrub between coast and 

 plain are only scantily occupied by sheep stations and 

 mining camps; and during the too frequent droughts 

 the desert spreads its smothering arms, crowding man 

 and his dependents still farther outward toward the 

 sea. 

 A striking poem of the land, entitled " Drought," 1 



1 By Will H. Ogilvie. From Bertram Stevens' "Anthology of Australian 

 Verse." 



C 224 3 



areas 



